Applied ethics, applying ethics and the methods of ethics

Ursula Wolf

pp. 187-196

in: Herlinde Pauer Studer (ed), Norms, values, and society, Berlin, Springer, 1994

Abstract

The subject of my paper are the methodological questions of applied ethics. In order to address this problem, we should clarify, in the first place, what it is that is called applied or practical ethics. The latter expression may appear a bit curious, indeed, for it might seem to suggest that there is an ethics which has nothing to do with practical matters. On the other hand, "applied ethics" may be taken to mean the same as "application of ethics". In this case, the sense of the expression is rather clear; but it already involves a strong premise in that it says that ethical method consists in applying a previously given standpoint to concrete cases. There are, however, some positions which would reject this view (e.g. intuitionism or situation ethics), so that it would be question-begging to presuppose its truth at the very beginning.