Applied Ethics as a Project-oriented Knowledge (Theory and Experience of New Mastering of Oecumene of Applied Ethics)

Abstract

In the article, we proceed the study of the modern Russian applied ethics development from its original image attached to the metaphor “ethics is practical philosophy” to the “change” of its name which sounds as “innovation paradigm of applied ethics”. At the first stage, implicit image of the future applied ethics stays within the banal idea of the efficiency of ethical-philosophical knowledge focused on the praxeology of moral choice that is provided with a technology of professional and ethical education as a method of ethical practical work. In this method, the application of already existing ready ethical knowledge to learning situations of choice was dominant. Stages of life of innovative paradigm itself differed by their focus on the development of moral situations in modernized society with its specific ambiguity of choice and thereafter, orientation of the ethics on project-oriented mastering of new situations of public morality ofa society that is becoming civil. The crucial know-how of innovative paradigm defining the type of its practicality – a test by a situation of moral choice.

The motive of insistent identification of the direction as an innovative paradigm is in the forecasting determination of the limited practicality of many new other paradigms of applied ethics and in legitimating of a project-oriented knowledge, not allowing being satisfied with an application of ready ethical and philosophical knowledge. A project-oriented knowledge subordinates the cognition of “small” systems to the objective of their development. Know-how of a project-oriented knowledge is the formation of special style of project activities implying the reliance on the moral creativity of the subject, the technology of creation and application of a project-oriented ethical knowledge providing full efficiency of such creativity.

Innovative paradigm enables targeted capacity reflection of a project-oriented knowledge in the study of university ethics in general, and its agenda and the Code of Ethics of the university in particular. The author presents the capacity of a project-oriented knowledge on the basis of university ethics – model experience of elaboration of Professionally-ethical code of the Tyumen State Oil and Gas University. And within this experience the author highlights the stage of “conceptual requirements specification” development, involving the identification of the Code as (a) the phenomenon of applied morality and (b) the subject of ethical and applied knowledge.