The Genesis of Practical Ethics

In the midst of this era of technical anxiety an academic offshoot from traditional moral philosophy emerged. This academic discipline of practical ethics developed over the past sixty years in order to simplify the process of moral deliberation.²⁵ The justification for this simplified model of ethics was that a shared ―common morality‖ theory was thought to be necessary in order to overcome the divisions between consequentialists and consequentialists and between theists and non-theists.²⁶

23 See Richard Saul Wurman, Information Anxiety (New York: Doubleday, 1989).

24 One of the primary goals of the LHC is to create a mini-black hole to replicate the first micro-second of the universe prior to inflation.

25 Most writers place the birth of bioethics during the 1950s. See Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 3; Albert R. Jonsen, The Birth of Bioethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), vii-xiv; and Carol Levine, ―Analysing Pandora‘s Box: The History of Bioethics,‖ in Lisa A. Eckenwiler and Felicia G. Cohn eds., The Ethics of Bioethics: Mapping the Moral Landscape (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 3-23.

26 Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, fourth edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 120ff.

This agenda has proved problematic for two reasons. First, it side-stepped contemporary debates in epistemology over concepts such as reason and objectivity and, second, the decision making protocols advocated in practical ethics texts turned out to be just as disputatious when applied to practical issues as the traditional theories they were trying to replace. The fixed divide between rival moral theories is not solved by the application of decision making protocols. If anything, it may even make the separation between rival points of view more fixed than it needs to be. Decision making protocols quickly gained a legitimacy that belied the infancy of practical ethics as a separate discipline.²⁷

In the historical life setting into which philosophers like Kant and Bentham were born, the ―flight from authority‖²⁸ seemed warranted in order to find a philosophical foundation for the moral life that did not rely on the authority of religious or civil leaders. Problems associated with the appeal to traditional authorities (Church and State) were obvious, and the Cartesian anxiety over foundations was not unreasonable. Modern moral thinkers of this period wanted to establish a rational foundation for ethics for the same epistemological reasons that scientists of the period sought to establish a rational foundation for scientific disciplines. The attempt to link the objectivity of scientific enquiry with the objectivity of moral enquiry seems to be mistake, however. It is certainly a mistake for teleological thinkers like Aristotle, virtue ethicists like MacIntyre, and casuists like Toulmin because a sense of purpose or place, experience, awareness

27 Benefits and problems associated with two major common morality theories will be examined in detail in Chapters 4 and 5.

28 See Jeffrey R. Stout, The Flight from Authority: Religion, Morality, and the Quest for Autonomy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981).

and development of habits of action, together with a partial consideration of time, place, and circumstance are all necessary for practical wisdom.

The type of rational objectivity appealed to in science is referred to as methodological reductionism²⁹ because knowledge about a complex thing is enhanced by understanding the interaction of its constituent parts. When it comes to moral enquiry, however, there are good reasons to think that Aristotle was right because a complex discipline like ethics is not reducible in the same sense.

Aristotle argues that scientific knowledge is derived from universals or first principles that are demonstrable without variation (that which is true cannot be made false). Practical wisdom (ethics and politics) cannot be scientific knowledge, however, because ―that which can be done is capable of being otherwise‖ and so for prudential reasons political and ethical decision making involves an appreciation of life‘s variables.³⁰

Aristotle suggests that the study of ethics is first and foremost a practical discipline, but for him the object of this type of enquiry is not knowledge for its own sake but rather for the practical benefits that flow from this type of enquiry for the life of the polis.³¹ In the opening chapter to his Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle explains why politics is the ―master art,‖ primarily because ―politics uses the rest of the sciences.‖³² In Book VI Aristotle expands on the intricate relationship between politics and ethics by first showing the difference between

29 Reductionism in this context is empirically based and does not imply metaphysical or philosophical reductionism.

30 Aristotle, ―Nicomachean Ethics,‖ 1140^b and 1141^a, 389.

31 This theme will be developed further in Chapter 7.

32 Aristotle, ―Nicomachean Ethics,‖ 1094^a, 339.

scientific knowledge and practical wisdom. For Aristotle scientific knowledge involves ―judgment about things that are universal and necessary,‖ as derived from ―first principles.‖³³ Practical wisdom, on the other hand, is ―concerned with things human and things about which it is possible to deliberate.‖³⁴ Aristotle is drawing from a tradition in which ethics (in the classical sense) is implemented within the life of the polis and therefore ethics requires politics for its implementation. This ancient link between ethics and politics was less significant for Modern thinkers. Prudent thinkers will exhibit different types of excellences because they have different ends in mind. In this respect Aristotle departs from his mentors (Socrates and Plato) when he says that ―there is no such thing as excellence in practical wisdom‖ because ―excellence‖ is a term that involves comparison of particular activities that are variable with respect to time, place, and circumstance, or as the occasion demands (pros ton kairon).³⁵