Robin hood is an ethical dishonest guy

A few days ago during our meeting about ethic, the question turns around whose beyond our avatar, am'I me? or....
I saw a confusion between ethics and honesty.
My intuition is that ethics has nothing to do with honesty, and associating them put the debat in a wrong way.
Can we determine that ethics is more on the side of instinct and honesty has more to see with code?
the question is not of your honesty with what you say you are but what must be youre attitude regarding what you seem to be
thanx

Robin Hood was not ethical because he uses theft. He is instead compassionate.

Depending on who he is interacting with, he is both honest and dishonest. He uses deception to achieve his goals, hence dishonest to his victims, but his motivations to help his beneficiaries is driven by compassion and is true, thus honest in that scope.

Very often honesty is a part of ethics. Most if not all professional codes of ethics have a prerequisite of honesty.

Professional ethics, for example in the sciences, dictates that regardless of who you are, or what your personality is like, you must report honest results from experiments. Whether you are the biggest jerk or the most hardworking saint, whether successful or a failure all do not matter, your results must be reported honestly.

I'm going to start with the premise, as I presented earlier, that morality is what the individual thinks is right, and ethics is what the group thinks is right.

With that as a premise, then it follows that it depends on what group our young Robin thinks he is a member of.

If he considers himself to be one of the "merry men", and robbing from the rich and giving to the poor is eithical to this group, then he behaves ethically.

If he considers himself to be one of the "king's men", and the laws of the land define ethical behavior, then he behaves unethically.

The challenge, imo, becomes when an individual considers themselves to be a member of more than one group, and 2 (or MORE!) of the groups have conflicting ethics about a specific behavior. So if Mr. Hood considers himself to be both a merry man and a king's man, then he will be in violation of group ethics no matter what choice he makes.

The western way of thought is to decide which set of ethics is overridding, and accept the restrictions (and freedoms!) of that set of ethics.

The eastern way of thought says both are overriding, and any choice will cause a loss of honor. Hence, seppeku as a way of reclaiming lost honor when faced with an impossible choice.

But, again, this is a bit of a digression....

I'm a huge fan of Robin Hood. I have studies the various stories extensively, and even wrote a draft for a modern day movie.

The premise of the movie is the rich have basically taken the poor for everything they have because of their might. Robin Hood is a wise thief that runs a band of theives who take money from the rich for the sake of the poor in the kingdom. The rich are fristrated by this slippery individual who's wit and cunning are unsurpassed.

Robin did not just have skills as a great thief. He used his skills to help others instead of take advantage of others. He could have easily joined the ranks of the noblemen, but he chose to remain an outlaw. He would rather steal from them than support their actions.

Part of the premise is that the law i never the guidline for ethics. Ethics (right and wrong) are not based on the law. The law is based on ethics. But sometimes the law is basedo on the progfit of the law makers. Even Martin Luther King Jr. said something about how unjust laws should not be followed.