Goals of Applied Ethics Courses

Abstract

Increasing amounts of academic and corporate educational resources are being devoted to the area of applied ethics. Although this category can include any course which brings moral and ethical reflection to bear on concrete moral problems, in this article I will be concerned primarily with courses in business and professional ethics. But what are the appropriate goals of such courses in institutions committed to free inquiry and tolerance toward divergent viewpoints? Or, more broadly put, why are these courses finding a home in universities and colleges? This why? has several related but separable answers. It can be answered in terms of the events in the larger society that have given a new urgency to these concerns; in terms of the motivations of administrators, instructors, and students involved in the courses; and in terms of the anticipated outcomes of the courses. Some of the uncertainties still plaguing this field derive from tensions among these different answers. The specific societal stimuli behind applied ethics vary with the ethical issues that are seen as critical in a particular period. Different lists will feature the electrical price-fixing conspiracy of the sixties, the consumerism of Ralph Nader's Corvair campaign, the Ford Pinto gas tank case, illegal foreign payments by major corporations, illegal corporate political payments and other elements of the Watergate scandal, Love Canal, acid rain, E. F. Hutton's check-kiting, and on and on.