| Popis: |
Professor Adams: Graduate studies in the field of ethics, as in other fields, are presumably focused upon fundamental theoretical problems awaiting an adequate answer, rather than upon imparting information concerning what is tolerably stable and secure. But if this is the case, I do not know where to draw the line, in the field of ethics, between undergraduate and graduate instruction. The basic theoretical problems are, in my judgment, precisely what an elementary course in ethics should be concerned with. The only difference is that graduate students are expected to have some familiarity with the more important classical and contemporary literature of the field. There are two regions into which the student of ethics must venture if ethics is to recover, as I believe it should, something of the scope of "moral philosophy" in the older sense of that term. No reflective analysis of fundamental ethical concepts can for long be exempt from logic and metaphysics. This is especially true of the central ethical concept, that of "value" itself. What the good life for man really is, as well as what good institutions and a good civilization are, depends upon the sort of creature man is supposed to be, and this is surely an affair of metaphysics if anything is. In the second place, but not less important, ethics should occupy a central position in the whole field of the humanistic, historical, and social studies. An understanding of human conduct and its achievements in the historical life of humanity is everywhere concerned with human valuations. An adequate ethics would play a r6le in the studies concerned with man similar to that played by mathematics in the study of the physical world. Hence I think that graduate studies in ethics cannot be safely divorced from the fields of economics, philosophy of history, and social theory. I do not necessarily mean that ethics should concern itself more with "practical" problems and less with "theoretical" issues. Any problem, when reflectively analyzed and treated, perforce becomes a matter of theory. What we so much need is a theoretical understanding and analysis of the contemporary human and social scene. This is the scene of values no less than of facts and factual processes. Nothing which pertains |
