Abstract

It is generally assumed that applied ethics originated in the United States in the 1960s as a reaction to new social challenges (particularly in the field of medicine), to some extent superseding the metaethical analyses of moral language dominant at that time. This widespread portrayal of applied ethics as an unforeseen reaction of philosophy to new social challenges is inaccurate. In this article, I seek to show that applied ethics should be regarded as a philosophical innovation whose origins can be traced back to the ethics of Kant and the Neokantianism of Hermann Cohen. It is my central thesis that the key step in its development occurred with American Pragmatism, or, to be precise, in the intellectual environment around American Pragmatism.