Ethics Resource Compository
Applied Professional Ethics:
"Applied ethics is a relatively new idea. Religious and philosophical traditions have provided guidance for human behavior for thousands of years. But, the notion that moral principles might usefully be applied to practical problems in society only gathered broad public attention in the aftermath of World War II. So many unprecedented events of social significance—the atomic bomb, holocaust, computers, international expansion of business, organ transplant technology, scarcity of new life-saving devices such as kidney dialysis machines, and an expanding interest in global human rights, to mention a few—overwhelmed people’s moral decision-making capacity. Applied ethics, the goal of which is to secure improvement in the human condition by means of moral reasoning, reflection and discourse, was created to help leaders and the public at large cope with the many challenging issues brought about by technological and social change.
The domain of applied ethics is wide and growing. It includes medical and bioethics, business and economics, law, politics, environment, the media, science and technology, education, the family and personal relationships, mental health, social work, law enforcement and policing, incarceration and punishment, and minority and gender rights.
'To secure' is the pivotal, and most problematic, notion in the mission of applied ethics. It implies that actions are taken and habits and attitudes changed. This, of course, is a daunting task. In his essay 'On Claiming Too Much and Too Little for Applied Ethics' in the first issue of our newsletter, founding director William F. May cautioned the reader to put the potentiality of applied ethics in perspective. Applying ethics to practical problems 'may not always eliminate moral quandaries,' he observed, 'but it opens up a wider horizon in which they may be seen for what they are and thus become other than they were. To this degree, {applied ethics} creates a little clearing and space for men and women to act a little differently. It throws the accepted world in a new light, an unexpected perspective, it opens up new possibilities for action, so that behavior that previously seemed plausible and imperative now loosens its hold, its power to compel.' Thus, while applied ethics seeks secured changes in behavior as its highest goal, it requires, as a minimum, adding clarity and perspective to pressing moral problems. This much we should expect and demand from applied ethics."
From, Director Richard O. Mason, former director of the Maguire Ethics Center