Professor Gracia distinguished in his speech “two extreme and opposite models of teaching ethics” and marked them as “«indoctrination» model and the «toleration» model”. This distinction is important while one speaks on value oriented education of Ethics. It is clear that one cannot expect anything different than indoctrination model of teaching Ethics at theologian seminaries or departments of theology in universities. Meanwhile, an intermediary model is possible as well. I know that in Orthodox higher education institutions in Russia they may teach Moral Theology and Ethics as Moral Philosophy. The latter tells about different types of moral theories. But Normative Ethics is given either within the course of Moral Theology or within Ethics, but then in the spirit of Christian Ethics, specifically in its Orthodox version.
But teaching Ethics is not only about “values and beliefs”. It is also about different understanding the phenomenon of morality, its nature and function, the rules and reasoning, criteria of evaluation, main moral concepts with their further normative and applied implications. Such is a traditional approach to teaching Ethics. I mean teaching Ethics in universities. In secondary and high school Ethics as far as it is present there is usually reduced to teaching values and how to make practical decisions. However, during the last four-five decades Ethics has altered considerably as a university discipline. It has ceased to be exclusively a philosophical discipline and a part of education of humanities.
A modern and much more popular approach presents Ethics as applied Ethics, usually in one of its versions: Bioethics, Business Ethics, or any other “minor” versions of professional ethics. In its applied versions Ethics has been more and more becoming an integral component of professional education.
I see a hard alternative in teaching Ethics determined by divergent understanding of aims and tasks in teaching Ethics: should Ethics be a part of teaching humanities or a part of professional education?
The changes of role and function, which Ethics has survived during the last decades is significant and I consider the increasing share of Applied Ethics in various modes of teaching Ethics as a result of deep transformation in moral practice and moral requirements of postmodern society. It is still post-modern in the sense that it is still ready to appeal to an individual, personal dignity, sense of freedom, and conscience. However, it is post-modern for it is the perplexed society with radically transformed institutions of family, parenting, and family education. It is post-modern society in the sense that it is complicated and intricate in its structure and function and, hence, requiring a growing role of formal, inner-corporate, and inner-professional means of regulating public and private behavior.
Modernity ultimately manifested itself in the ethics of categorical imperative, which was called to tear out an individual from the tenets of family, church, local community, given education, particular fashion, etc. and thus to individualize him. Post-modern society is the society of plural standards, different types of family, varied confessions and denominations, amorphous community, loose education, licentious fashion, etc. Such society needs a different type of social discipline, or social ethics. Modern ethics was contented with an atomized individual – individual given to oneself. Though Kant was speaking about duties to oneself and to others, there were no personalized others in the ethics of categorical imperative. Modern moral philosophy was concerned about the Self, but it almost did not know the Self in its attitude and relation towards the personalized Other; it was presenting virtues, duties, and happiness out of the context of communication.
The postmodern era became a kind of nutrient broth for different conceptions of morality: ethics of discourse, or communicative ethics, ethics of care, communitarian ethics and so forth. All these types of ethics take stock in the role of human relations, community, solidarity, mutual trust, collaboration. This shift in moral experience has required special means of normative regulation, its institutionalization and sanction. This requirement was accomplished by various kinds of professional ethics.
With the decay of traditional institutions of modern society which seemed to be natural and worked almost invisibly, the necessity of new forms of ‘soft’ (as opposed to ‘hard’, i.e. based on law) regulation of conduct became imperious. I consider the multiplying variety of systems of practical ethics as the embodiment of this social demand. The purpose of all these different codes of practical ethics is to adapt individual behavior to legitimate forms of activity, in particular social spheres and in this sense to make it effective and equally advantageous to all involved parties and stakeholders. By codes of practical ethics I mean business ethics, biomedical ethics, research ethics, engineering ethics, ethics of teaching and education, management ethics, computer ethics, accountancy ethics, counseling ethics, and even such exotic codes as ethics of conference interpreters.
It is evident for me that the above mentioned divergent tasks of teaching Ethics – Ethics as a part of teaching humanities or professional education – should be converged. But there is evidence of one more role Ethics should play in universitites. I mean moral and social education, which would give students orientation towards good and right living in a society and working collaboratively in a professional community for the sake of public good. But moral and social education is vain if it is restricted to auditorium. It is strongly correlated to principles of teaching and learning, the values a university curricular based on, the ethos of a university including the level of academic freedoms for teachers and students, and the character of academic relations between teachers and students. I realize that telling this I am indicating a turn in our discussion from the given topic, ‘Education of Ethics’, to a much broader topic – ‘Ethics of Education’, but this is an overwhelming logic of thinking on the subject: education of Ethics may be efficient and successful only in an appropriate academic environment or, applying a word, which Professor Gracia used, sustainable academic environment.