Abstract

By conventional standards, the papers collected in this first volume of invited contributions to the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy fall roughly into the two broad categories of moral theory and applied ethics. However, a closer look will reveal that there is nothing conventional about them. Not only do some of the applied ethics papers challenge some widely acknowledged positions in bioethics or suggest a new framework for the reconciliation of nature and culture in environmental ethics, the papers in moral theory broadly conceived show a remarkable preparedness to rethink traditional boundaries, positions, and methodological approaches altogether. Thus the traditional boundaries between normative ethics and metaethics come under pressure once it is realized that, for instance, normative disagreements concerning different conceptions of the good life presuppose an agreement to the effect that the good life is indeed something we ought to strive for. Based on observations like these, it is possible to develop a powerful argument for the reintegration of normative ethics with metaethics. Again, the divisions within moral theory become less important, not to say irrelevant, when the established normative positions seem to lose their universalistic standing in a confrontation with culturally based ethical pluralism. One may then even go so far as to speak of the “demise of moral theory” due to its inability to defend an unambiguous notion of morality.