Meta-ethics is the area of ethics which specifically deals with the nature of ethics. While normative and applied ethics are concerned with developing and applying moral values for the everyday world, meta-ethics focuses on the nature of ethics (or morality) itself.

Meta-ethics is concerned with the present status of morality in the eyes of individuals, and with whether or not that status is correct or desirable.

On the nature of morality

Moral Objectivism, which holds that moral truths exist independent from opinion or social convention

Moral universalism

Moral realism

Moral absolutism

Moral Skepticism, which denies the real existence of moral truths to various degrees

Moral Nihilism

Error Theory

Non-Cognitivism

Ethical Subjectivism

Ethical Relativism