How has Philosophical Applied Ethics Progressed in the Past Fifty Years?

• Published in: Metaphilosophy Vol. 44; no. 1-2; pp. 58 - 62
• Main Author: Steinbock, Bonnie
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.01.2013; Blackwell Publishing; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subjects: applied ethics; Ethics; human identity; moral status; Morality; non-identity problem; Philosophy; practical ethics; right to life; SYMPOSIUM: CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN AND AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY IN INTERACTION
• ISSN: 0026-1068; 1467-9973
• DOI: 10.1111/meta.12003

Applied ethics is relatively new on the philosophical scene, having grown out of the various civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the student demand that college courses be relevant. Even today, there are those who think that there are no philosophically interesting practical ethical questions, and that applied ethics is not a branch of philosophy at all. This article rejects that view, both because some of the most interesting and respectable philosophers in the world have worked in applied ethics and because applied ethics has been the source of many difficult conceptual questions in theoretical ethics and even metaphysics. These include the grounds for moral status, human identity, how to conceive rights in general and the right to life in particular, the question whether existence itself can be a harm (the nonidentity problem), and the nature of moral principles.