In recent years philosophers have welcomed the development of a widespread interest in philosophical ethics. In their concern about the bewildering ethical questions generated by medical technology, legal practice, and the power and responsibility of the modern corporation, members of the professions and of the public have turned to philosophy, traditional repository of rigorous moral thought. This concern has provided philosophers with an opportunity to show that our subject is important and useful, and that we have knowledge on which others might draw. And so the profession has responded with the development of courses, textbooks, and a vast literature on the questions of “applied ethics.”

Yet a gap between traditional ethical philosophy and the solution of ethical problems remains. Writers on applied ethics do not seem to draw very heavily on traditional theories, and certainly do not draw on their details. Often the “application” consists simply in borrowing a principle which the theory defends. And often that principle gives an answer which seems too facile and too extreme. Theorists, in turn, know that you can have a real mastery of the concepts and arguments of a complex ethical theory and yet, when confronted by an ethical problem, find that you have no idea what resolution the theory provides. To some extent this gap is sociologically produced, for often different people are drawn to the different kinds of work. But it may also be that we have not thought enough yet about what sort of an activity “applying” an ethical theory is.