ethical relativism Philosophical view that what is right or wrong and good or bad is not absolute but variable and relative, depending on the per¬ son, circumstances, or social situation. Rather than claiming that an action’s rightness or wrongness can depend on the circumstances, or that people’s beliefs about right and wrong are relative to their social condi¬ tioning, it claims (in one common form) that what is truly right depends solely on what the individual or the society thinks is right. Because what people think will vary with time and place, what is right will also vary. If, however, changing and even conflicting moral principles are equally valid, there is apparently no objective way of justifying any principle as valid for all people and all societies. This conclusion is rejected by consequentialists (see consequentiausm) and deontologists (see deontological ethics) alike.
ethics Branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of ultimate value and the standards by which human actions can be judged right or wrong. The term is also applied to any system or theory of moral values or prin¬ ciples. Ethics is traditionally subdivided into normative ethics, metaeth¬ ics, and applied ethics. Normative ethics seeks to establish norms or standards of conduct; a crucial question in this field is whether actions are to be judged right or wrong based on their consequences or based on their conformity to some moral rule, such as “Do not tell a lie.” Theories that adopt the former basis of judgment are called consequentialist (see con- sequentialism); those that adopt the latter are known as deontological (see deontological ethics). Metaethics is concerned with the nature of ethical judgments and theories. Since the beginning of the 20th century, much work in metaethics has focused on the logical and semantic aspects of moral language. Some major metaethical theories are naturalism (see NATURAUSTIC FALLACY), INTUITIONISM, EMOTIVISM, and PRESCRIPTIVISM. Applied eth- ics, as the name implies, consists of the application of normative ethical theories to practical moral problems (e.g., abortion). Among the major fields of applied ethics are bioethics, business ethics, legal ethics, and medical ethics.
Ethiopia \,e-the-'o-pe-3\ officially Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia formerly Abyssinia Country, eastern Africa. It is situated on the Horn of Africa, the continent’s easternmost projection. Area:
435,186 sq mi (1,127,127 sq km). Popula¬ tion (2005 est.): 73,053,000. Capitaclass="underline" Addis Ababa. The people are about one-third Amhara and one-third Oromo, with the bal¬ ance mostly Tigray, Afar, Somali, Saho, and
Agew. Languages: Amharic, Oromo. Religions: Christianity (predomi¬ nantly Ethiopian Orthodox; also Protestant), Islam, traditional beliefs. Cur¬ rency: birr. The landlocked country is mountainous in the north, with lowlands to the east and west. The central Ethiopian Plateau is split by the Great Rift Valley, which divides the eastern and western highlands. The cli¬ mate is temperate in the highlands, which are mainly savanna, and hot in the arid lowlands. Intensive farming and deforestation have led to severe erosion; this, along with periodic droughts, has produced periodic food shortages. The country’s once abundant wildlife has been decimated; many species are endangered. Ethiopia is one of the world’s poorest countries. Agriculture is mainly for subsistence, with cereals the main crop. Live¬ stock is also important. Coffee is the main export, followed by hides and skins. A new republic was established in 1995; it has two legislative houses, the chief of state is the president, and the head of government is the prime minister. Ethiopia, the Biblical land of Kush, was inhabited from earliest antiquity and was once under ancient Egyptian rule. Ge'ez-speaking agri¬ culturalists established the kingdom of Da’amat in the 7th century bc. After 300 bc they were superseded by the kingdom of Aksum, whose King Menilek I was, according to legend, the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Christianity was introduced in the 4th century ad and became widespread (see Ethiopian Orthodox Church). Ethiopia’s prosper¬ ous Mediterranean trade was cut off by the Muslim Arabs in the 7th-8th century, and the area’s interests were directed southward. Contact with Europe resumed in the late 15th century with the arrival of the Portuguese. Modem Ethiopia began with the reign of Tewodros II, who began the con¬ solidation of the country. In the wake of European encroachment, the coastal region was made an Italian colony in 1889, but under Emperor Menilek II the Italians were defeated and ousted in 1896. Ethiopia prospered under his rule, and his modernization programs were continued by Emperor Haile Selassie in the 1930s. In 1936 Italy again gained control of the country and held it as part of Italian East Africa until 1941, when it was occupied by the British. Ethiopia incorporated Eritrea in 1952. In 1974 Haile Selassie was deposed, and a Marxist government, plagued by civil wars and famine, controlled the country until 1991. In 1993 Eritrea gained its independence, but there were continued border conflicts with it and neighbouring Somalia.
Ethiopian Orthodox church Independent Christian patriarchate in Ethiopia. Traditionally thought to have been founded by the preaching of the apostle Matthew or the eunuch of the Acts of the Apostles, the church was established in the 4th century by St. Frumentius and his brother
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Ethiopianism ► Etobicoke I 639
Aedesius. Based in Addis Ababa, the church adheres to Monophysite doctrine (see Monophysite heresy). It accepts the honorary primacy of the Coptic patriarch of Alexandria, who appointed its archbishops from the 12th century until 1959, when an autonomous Ethiopian patriarchate was established. Its customs include circumcision, rigorous fasting, and the participation of laypersons known as debtera, who perform liturgical music and dances and act as astrologers, scribes, and fortune-tellers. Its principal adherents are the Amhara and Tigray peoples of the northern and central highlands. See also Coptic Orthodox church.
Ethiopianism Religious movement among sub-Saharan Africans during the colonial era. It originated in South Africa in the 1880s, with the forma¬ tion of all-African Christian churches such as the Tembu tribal church and the Church of Africa. The term was first used by Mangena Mokone when he founded the Ethiopian Church in 1892. Africans resented the blatant rac¬ ism of European colonialists, who denied them advancement in religious and political hierarchies. They also wanted a version of Christianity rel¬ evant for Africa and a return to tribal life. Parallel developments occurred in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, and other locations. Ethiopian movements played some part in the Zulu rebellion of 1906 and the Nyasa- land rising of 1915. In the 1920s political aspirations moved away from religion and became tied to political parties and trade unions.
Ethiopic \,e-the-'o-pik\ languages Group of Semitic languages, spo¬ ken by more than 25 million people in Eritrea and Ethiopia. Ethiopic has been divided by linguists into North Ethiopic, comprising Ge’ez, Tigre, and Tigrinya (or Tigrai), and South Ethiopic, comprising the rest of the 22 languages. Ge’ez (or Ethiopic) is the oldest Ethiopian Semitic lan¬ guage, first attested in inscriptions from the kingdom of Aksum. It became the language of Christianity in the Aksumite period, and—though prob¬ ably extinct as a vernacular sometime before the 10th century ad —it remained the classical language of highland Ethiopian civilization and the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox church into the 20th century. Tigre has about 800,000 speakers in northern Eritrea, while Tigrinya has about 4 million speakers. The estimated 1.3 million Tigrinya speakers in Eritrea constitute about 50% of the country’s population. The most impor¬ tant South Ethiopic language is Amharic.