Bringing moral values back in: The role of formal philosophy in effectiveethicalpublic administration
Titel:
Bringing moral values back in: The role of formal philosophy in effectiveethicalpublic administration
Auteur:
Hetzner, C. Schmidt, V. A.
Verschenen in:
International journal of public administration
Paginering:
Jaargang 8 (1986) nr. 4 pagina's 429-453
Jaar:
1986
Inhoud:
Ethics can and should be taught to public administrators. But it cannot be taught effectively if it takes the form of moral prescriptions, codes of ethics, or ideological indoctrination. Rather, moral judgments should be treated no differently from other kinds of value judgments such as legal, technical, prudential, and aesthetic for which a variety of standards and criteria from relevant academic disciplines and professions are generally used in the decision- making process. In ethics, the academic discipline to offer appropriate tools for analysis is formal philosophy, because it alone enables us to justify our moral judgments on the basis of such standards as justice, fairness, social equity, rights, and obligations as well as according to utilitarian and non-utilitarian criteria. This article, by demonstrating how those standards and criteria apply to realistic and routine examples of ethical issues which arise in administration and policy-making, seeks to show how public servants can bring moral values back into the policy process by giving good reasons for their actions on ethical grounds as well as on all the other grounds which they ordinarily consider.
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