Moral Philosophy And Moral Problems

The unprecedented technological advances and social changes of recent years have created problems that were never thought of before. Is it right to prolong life at the cost of human suffering? Is there such a thing as a right to privacy? Should drugs be depenalized ? etc ... It is to these concrete cases and specific moral problems that moral philosophers have been challenged to apply the concepts, principles and methods of their discipline. This led to what is called «applied ethics» ; with applied ethics moral thinking is no longer the business of the philosophers alone but something in which the larger public is now engaged.