Blackwell Reference Online

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Although applied (or “practical”) ethics borrows insights from theories of moral axiology (i.e., theories of the morally good and evil), theories of moral obligation (i.e., theories regarding what is morally permissible, morally required, and morally impermissible), and from metaethics (i.e., theories regarding the meaning of moral terms, the nature of moral discourse, and the justification of moral claims), the task in engaging in practical ethics is not simply to work out applications of existing ethical theories. It is, rather, to attempt to find acceptable resolutions of moral problems of present and practical urgency. This involves much more than merely doing some sort of philosophical technology where high‐level theory is simply brought over to practice. When done well, questions addressed within practical ethics continually raise important theoretical and methodological questions for general theories of moral good and moral right, and for metaethics. For example, attempting to answer questions pertaining to choosing and changing jobs raises a number of significant questions about what it means for any choice to be rational and genuinely voluntary. Similarly, questions in professional ethics regarding the distribution of certain goods and services raise deep questions regarding basic human goods and the possibility of maximizing the potential of characteristically human lives. ... log in or subscribe to read full text