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– 1 – This Is a Post-Peer-Review, Pre-Copyedit Version of an Article This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in History of Philosophy Quarterly 35 (2018), 371–387. Ethical Culture. Felix Adler and the Emergence of Applied Ethics from the Spirit of American Pragmatism Bert Heinrichs Abstract In this article, I seek to show that—contrary to the two prevailing views—applied ethics has neither existed “all along,” nor should it be regarded as an unforeseen philosophical response to new kinds of social challenges in the 1960s. In contrast, applied ethics is a genuine philosophical innovation whose origins can be traced back to the late nineteenth century. It is my central thesis that the key step in its development occurred in the intellectual environment around American Pragmatism. To be precise, I will claim that Felix Adler can be regarded as the founder of applied ethics in the modern sense. Consideration of the historical context allows for an understanding of applied ethics as an approach deeply rooted in the philosophical tradition and, at the same time, facilitates comprehension of important methodological characteristics that are still relevant for contemporary practice. Keywords Applied ethics, Felix Adler, pragmatism, Kantianism 1. The Notion of Applied Ethics In this article, I seek to show that—contrary to the two prevailing views—applied ethics has neither existed “all along,” nor should it be regarded as an unforeseen – 1 – philosophical response to new kinds of social challenges in the 1960s.1 In contrast, applied ethics is a genuine philosophical innovation whose origins can be traced back to the late nineteenth century. It is my central thesis that the key step in its development occurred in the intellectual environment around American Pragmatism. To be precise, I will claim that Felix Adler can be regarded as the founder of applied ethics in the modern sense. Consideration of the historical context allows for an understanding of applied ethics as an approach deeply rooted in the philosophical tradition and, at the same time, facilitates comprehension of important methodological characteristics that are still relevant for contemporary practice. (cf. Jamieson, “Constructing Practical Ethics,” 843-65) In a broad sense, the notion of applied ethics “refers to any use of philosophical methods to treat moral problems, practices, and policies in the professions, technology, government, and the like.” (Beauchamp, “The Nature of Applied Ethics,” 3) This broad understanding of applied ethics is prevailing in contemporary debates. In this view, the notion of applied ethics is synonymous to practical ethics—a notion that can be traced back at least to the seventeenth-century writer Charles Davenant (Beauchamp, “History and Theory in ‘Applied Ethics,’” 58-59)—and closely related to professional ethics. (Beauchamp, “The Nature of Applied Ethics,” 1-3) However, in a narrow sense applied ethics designates the application of abstract ethical principles to concrete moral problems. A clear case of this narrow understanding of applied ethics can, for example, be found in the influential Belmont Report that was published by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research in reaction to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in 1979. Part B of this report starts with the following clarification: The expression “basic ethical principles” refers to those general judgements that serve as a basic justification for the many particular ethical prescriptions and – 2 – evaluations of human action. (National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, The Belmont Report, Part B) Subsequently, three principles are stated (respect for persons, beneficence, and justice). Under the title “Applications”, Part C of the report is, then, dedicated to the application of these principles to the the conduct of research. According to the Commission, the three principles mentioned earlier lead to the requirements of informed consent, risk/benefit assessment, and the (fair) selection of subjects of research.2 It is important to note that, according to this second understanding, the notion of applied ethics implies a subdivision of normative ethics in (at least) two subbranches, namely pure or theoretical ethics on the one side and applied ethics on the other side. While applied ethics is concerned with the application of principles, pure or theoretical ethics deals with providing such principles. Applied ethics so conceived is, therefore, different from practical ethics which does not necessarily entail any systematic division. Critics of the narrow understanding claim that its commitment to abstract principles or—more generally speaking—to a certain form of ethical theory is too strong and excludes many other accepted methods and approaches. Such critics prefer a notion of applied ethics in the sense of practical ethics that allows for a wide variety of theories and methods. However, as the term “applied” suggests, applied ethics was originally committed to the idea of abstract principles and their applicability to concrete cases. Among others, Kantian ethics provided a basis for this concept of applied ethics. In fact, the division noticeable in Kant’s ethical writings between a Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and a subsequent Metaphysics of Morals presages the division of pure and applied ethics. (cf. Heinrichs, “Kants Angewandte Ethik,” 260-82) However, Kant himself was skeptical regarding the possibility of applied ethics as part of the system of ethics. The nineteeth century Neokantian – 3 – philosopher Hermann Cohen acknowledged in principle that pure ethics needs to be supplemented by applied ethics (see below). Yet, his specific interest was in the pure branch of ethics rather than in the application of principles to concrete moral problems. Moreover, his adherence to the idea of a philosophical system prevented him from elaborating an applied ethics. Nevertheless there is evidence that he presented the idea of a two-tier ethics—pure and applied (in the narrow sense)—to his students. In the early 1870s one of them was the German born American Felix Adler. 2. Felix Adler and his Intellectual Background The leading figure in the emergence of applied ethics has largely been forgotten today: Felix Adler.3 Among other places Adler worked at Columbia University, where for a time he was a contemporary of John Dewey in the Department of Philosophy.4 In 1924 he was even elected president of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association. (Friess, Felix Adler, 220) Compared to his limited academic impact, Adler was more influential in his role as the founder of the Ethical Culture Society, (cf. Radest, Toward Common Ground, 14 ff.; Friess, Felix Adler, 47 ff.; MacKillop, The British Ethical Societies, 38-40) a humanistic movement that originated in New York in 1876 before spreading to several other US cities and later to Europe. (cf. Radest, Toward Common Grund) Lectures on ethical topics given by Adler made up a substantial part of the society’s weekly gatherings. Among the questions he addressed were family relationships, the role of women, child rearing, and social questions that had become increasingly explosive as a result of industrialization. (Friess, Felix Adler, 54) Prior to his work with the Ethical Culture Society, Adler had been influenced in important ways during a stay in Germany. From 1870 to 1873 he studied in Berlin, where among others he heard the Neokantian Hermann Cohen speak and participated – 4 – in a Kant reading group led by him. (Holzhey and Röd, Neukantianismus, Idealismus, Realismus, Phänomenonologie, 42) In the introduction to his book An Ethical Philosophy of Life Adler explicitly refers to Cohen as “my teacher in philosophy.” (Adler, An Ethical Philosophy of Life, 11) One can thus presume that Cohen influenced his thinking, specifically with respect to the idea of an applied ethics. In his 1877 book Kants Begründung der Ethik (Kant’s foundations of ethics) Cohen explicitly took up the systematic division of the field into pure and applied branches that had been inherent in Kant’s work. (Heinrichs, “Kants Angewandte Ethik,” 260-6) While committed to elaborating the foundations of ethics on the basis of reason alone, he also emphasized the “shaping of the human world” and specifically the “ethicization of culture” as “a principal task of ethics.” (Cohen, Kants Begründung der Ethik, 8 [translation by the author]) In this context Cohen speaks expressly of applied ethics: The problem of ethicizing the human world is a task for applied ethics […] And applied ethics will arise out of pure ethics and assert itself. (Ibid., 10 [translation by the author]) Not only in substance, then, but in explicit terms does Cohen’s work contain the idea of an independent branch of ethics that, under the heading of applied ethics, concerns itself with the moral shaping of society. Admittedly he goes no further than these few references, which he in fact significantly modifies in the second edition of Kants Begründung der Ethik from 1910.5 He himself sees his task as lying in the “description and discussion of Kant’s foundations of pure ethics.” (Ibid. [translation by the author]) It is said that on the whole Adler found Cohen’s philosophy “too intellectualist.” (Friess, Felix Adler, 32 and 209) Apparently he did not find any pertinent points of connection between the systems thinking of Neokantianism and his own theoretical reflections and practical initiatives. This would explain why he does not explicitly engage with Cohen anywhere in his work.6 Notwithstanding this reservation, Adler – 5 – may very well have been inspired by Cohen in relation to the notion of applied ethics. Meanwhile, the development of Pragmatism in the United States at this time offered more fertile intellectual ground for this new appraoch. 3. Some Elements of American Pragmatism The term “Pragmatism” has long been well established as a label for a particular current of philosophical thought,7 though it is used to subsume thinkers and theories that are thoroughly different from one another, and in some cases even contradictory.
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