A limitation on the applicability of theory to ethics: with special reference to concerns which arise within the context of serious illness

There is, I argue, that about human life, and pre-eminently about what we might call our moral life, which seriously limits the extent to which ethical theory can be applied to it. There is no standard word or phrase which satisfactorily describes this theory limiting characteristic.

I refer to it here as "open-endedness" and speak of our moral life as being "open-ended" in character. My thesis then may be briefly stated as follows: our moral life both presupposes and involves an open-endedness which seriously limits the applicability of ethical theory to it. The thesis is as much concerned with trying to develop a clearer conception of this open-endedness and with showing that it is an enabling condition of our having any sort of moral life at all as with arguing that because of the open-endedness of human life there are limits in principle as to how far ethical theory is applicable to it.

Of the traditional approaches to ethics I examine three, namely, the Utilitarian, the Kantian and the Aristotelian. I argue that, despite the great differences between these approaches, they share a common failing. Each fails to do justice to the open-ended nature of our moral life. I proceed mainly by way of examples, some of which concern young children and their early participation in our shared moral life. Many of the other examples are drawn from my experiences as a social worker in a specialist cancer unit of a major public hospital. These examples are given in the belief that serious illness and the care of and treatment of people who are seriously ill can reveal something of importance about our moral life more generally, namely that we are vulnerable in all kinds of ways and that we need and depend on each other. Reciprocally, my open-endedness thesis has implications for the way we think and speak about the moral dimension of medical practice in the context of serious illness.