Applied ethics, rather than an application of moral theories, is, according to Michela Marzano, a theorization of concrete ethical practices and problems. This requires an opening of both the history of philosophy and the positive knowledge of the human sciences.
With a wealthy pen, on a sustained pace, Michela Marzano makes us discover the field of what is agreed today to call “ Applied ethics ». The task is difficult, because this discovery must hold in the narrow space of a that I know ? The work is structured in 7 chapters. The first two constitute a form of introduction, both historical and theoretical. The following five chapters approach, according to the author’s choice, some of the main themes worked in this field: death, approached from the angle of the debates relating to euthanasia ; the environment (nature and animals), envisaged from the angle of its protection ; International relations, analyzed in the prism of the question of respect for human rights and the concept of “ just war »» ; Sexual freedom, a subject dear to Michela Marzano ; And finally, the problem of corporate social responsibility.
The French philosophical environment is just starting to familiarize itself with the idea of applied ethics and its practice. The Department of Philosophy of the University of Paris 1 – Sorbonne is the only one to welcome a teacher position under this title. Catherine Larrère occupies it, and develops her research and her teaching in political and moral philosophy, a foot in the thought of XVIIIe century, and singularly in the work of Montesquieu, another in reflection on environmental ethics and nano-technical. It must be said that the very expression of “ Applied ethics »Takes meaning in relation to the Anglo-Saxon analytical tradition. As Michela Marzano recalls, the expression appears in the 1960s in the United States in the context of an internal evolution in this tradition or in a critical movement in relation to it: from that time, the so-called “questions of” substantial ethics ” Or “ meta-ethics “,” which was to reflect on the epistemological scope and the language structure of ethical discourses (P. 3) are no longer systematically privileged. Other questions appear and make room for the kingdom of Anglo-Saxon philosophy, relating to the growing development of technique and the moral implications (both for the individual and for the community) scientific discoveries. To put it simply, the idea of an application of ethical thought (to such or such a particular question) comes from the fact that one starts from a movement of reflection dominated by problems deliberately defined as strictly formal or theoretical.
Once we are interested in the questions addressed by “ Applied ethics “-Should we protect animals as are protecting men ? Does nature in its diversity have rights ? Can we follow up on the request to let a patient die ?, etc. -, we realize that the field covered by it in fact refers to a practice of philosophy developed in multiple forms for a very long time. The specificity of this field, if it is one, is therefore not to be interested in concrete problems: what philosophy, as its history demonstrates, has never repugnant. Michela Marzano points out: “ From Antiquity, in fact, the great authors are interested in practical questions. Plato does not hesitate to analyze the problems of suicide or the best way to govern the city. Christian philosophers, such as Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas, carefully tackle issues of applied ethics, including, for example that of just war. Authors like Hume, Bentham and Mill express themselves on suicide, on capital punishment, on freedom of expression or on the emancipation of women (P. 4). Perhaps applied ethics devoted itself in a particular and original way to concrete problems, but that remains to be demonstrated.
Let’s take a closer look at this aspect. According to Michela Marzano, applied ethics is not to apply “ moral theories pre -established to different objects (P. 4). Rather, it should be conceived as a theoretical development practice in the light of the questions aroused by such or such social practice. Therefore, understanding the context in which questions arise is essential, a fortiori when it comes to “ propose agreements on the strategies to be carried out which are recognized by as many people as possible (P. 5). Furthermore, Mr. Marzano insists on the “ transdisciplinarity “In the sense that applied ethics unites research” fundamental “And research” practical ».
Reading the following chapters makes it possible to see how this conception of applied ethics is implemented. Mr. Marzano first recalls how philosophical interrogation on concrete moral problems is anchored in his oldest tradition. She walks fast in this tradition, evoking Aristotle, Kant and utilitarianism, according to an order based on the question of the pursuit of happiness and its status in moral philosophy. Thus, Aristotle then the utilitarists are first presented as nourishing the same line of reflection, against Kant, according to which “ Moral action is always the fruit of the recognition of a constraint which imposes itself independently of any concern and prior to the preferences, the desires and mobiles of the sensitive subjectivity ; a constraint that the will is imposed on itself freely and which allows an individual to be autonomous (P. 14-15). Each theme approached conceals its own viaticum with philosophical references, according to a mixture which grants its share to the history of philosophy but also to a reflection which is developed in the event or social practice, in an academic discourse but also often public and at the crossroads of several knowledge or disciplines (theological and philosophical, legal and medical, etc.).
The very choice of the themes addressed, the way of treating them, the defended theses, the privilege given to this or that part of the bibliography on the different subjects: everything can be discussed in this work. But the important thing is probably not there. The value of this book is in our opinion in what it does not seek to hide: applied ethics is a constant reflection. No doubt she can never be something else, insofar as she claims to draw her existence from concrete and present problems. Even more, it is a project.
From this point of view, for all those who make applied ethics, it is necessary to further deepen the relationship between borrowing from the philosophical tradition of such or such thought and the apprehension of a contemporary problem (for example that of Hume on suicide and euthanasia), the reference to a normative moral theory and “ solution »Morals proposed to this or that dilemma. It is also a question of elucidating the best methods of knowledge that a philosopher can today have elements necessary for his speculation on this or that concrete problem. The transdisciplinarity invoked by Michela Marzano must be from this point of view more than an articulation between fundamental research and practical research. The term also refers us to the way in which philosophy can incorporate, and this in a reflexive way, positive knowledge, resulting in particular from the social and human sciences, necessary for the speculative effort appliedand learn, within the limits of the contemporary specialization of knowledge, languages specific to the field it considers. If there is a specificity of applied ethics in relation to the past multiple forms of philosophical interest for concrete problems, it is undoubtedly where it is to be found.
To put it more broadly, if empirical philosophy undoubtedly has a heyday before it, it constitutes one of the most demanding form of philosophical reflection that is, and not, as some would like to believe, a form of thought as soft and evanescent as its matter, which gives us between our fingers, so much it is difficult to grasp in all its complexity a social practice and the challenges raised by it. Applied ethics of Michela Marzano constitutes a very alive and relevant illustration.