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Republica Americana as Promise and Quest

Ethics is a discipline of critical thought about what is right and wrong, good and evil, appropriate and inappropriate in human action. Its questions are both substantive and methodological. Substantively, its concerns range the full gamut from the more particular to the more general, from a consideration of individual cases of decision making to questions about the character and significance of whole civilizations or even of the "human condition." Methodologically, its concerns are equally diffuse, involving at times broad questions of metaphysical construction and theological method, but at other times the apparently more constricted questions of language analysis and logical criticism. Ethics is, however, a human discipline, subject to all the influences that condition human thought. It is as affected by variations in the climate of opinion and developments in socioeconomic relations as are other disciplines, and perhaps more so. Yet ethics is also, at least by intent, relatively autonomous. It is designed to constitute an influence in determining the course of human sensibilities and relations. It is in this sense a practical science. Thus, by claim, while ethics is conditioned by its context, it has itself a formative impact in the shaping of that context. Ethics does indeed have historical location, but it does not thereby lose its character as a discipline of critical thought. James Sellers, in Public Ethics: American Morals and Manners, acknowledges and embraces this dialectic of the discipline of ethics, turning it into a grand proposal for the discipline in America. (It should be noted that by America, Sellers means more precisely the United States of America. His proposal would assume a different character were his focus broadened to include the