L' Indifférence des philosophes pour l'éthique appliquée

Abstract

In his 1982 article titled “How Medicine Saved the Life of Ethics”, the British philosopher Stephen Toulmin explained how the ethical problems posed by medicine had revived interest in ethics and forced philosophers to reinvest this disciplinary subfield, which had been neglected since the beginning of the 20^th century. In the same way, the ecological crisis and the malfunctioning of the economy, not to mention the crisis of institutions, have also put the question of ethics back on the agenda. Despite Toulmin’s conviction that philosophers should address these issues, it must be said that, with a very few exceptions, Quebec philosophers have remained deaf to the siren calls of applied ethics. As a result, applied ethics has developed in areas of practice from which philosophers are absent.

Based on this observation, I will first draw a brief portrait of the development of applied ethics in Quebec over the past 50 years. From there, I will discuss the fact that the absence of philosophers in the areas of practice where applied ethics has developed is due to their conception of philosophical work. Some in the pragmatist tradition have associated philosophy with an attitude, while others have argued that philosophers should regard their work as an inquiry. Drawing on this tradition of thought, I will defend the idea that the attitude and stance of philosophers lead them to discredit applied ethics – too closely associated with the singularity of the world, when they are looking for the foundations and the universal.