Self-enlightenment of Applied Ethics

Abstract

This chapter outlines some changes in the social status of morality that are linked with the project of applied ethics. The political success of applied ethics and the responsibility stemming from its new public role could have provided a good opening for self-reflection and self-enlightenment. Appropriately, the self-reflection of applied ethics should start with an account of the social context in which it developed and its function within the context. If ethical reflection is seen as part of society's self-reflection and if society is divided into various sub-subsystems and institutions, this differentiation must be reflected in a similar differentiation of ethics. Modern societies have developed special organs for self-observation, particularly the sciences and the media – and most recently applied ethics. Applied ethics is sometimes charged with a lack of philosophical depth, the source of which is, in fact, the goal of connectedness.