Wednesday, February 18, 2004

"Ethics Missionaries"

Interesting article in The Chronicle entitled “Before Teaching Ethics, Stop Kidding Yourself." Written by Gordon Marino, who is a professor of philosophy and director of the Hong Kierkegaard Library at Saint Olaf College.  The piece explores the profusion of ethics workshops and professional ethicists, i.e. ”...bioethics, medical ethics, legal ethics, computer ethics, and so forth." From the article.

"Ethics missionaries are driven by the assumption that improving our moral lives is a matter of developing our conceptual understanding and analytical acumen. The fantasy seems to be that if up-and-coming accountants just knew a little more about ethics, then they would know better than to falsify their reports so as to drive up the value of company stock. But sheer ignorance is seldom the moral problem. More knowledge is not what is needed. Take it from Kierkegaard: The moral challenge is simply to abide by the knowledge that we already have."

Via Arts & Letters Daily.

Posted by John Venlet on 02/18 at 08:56 AM
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