Professional ethics
The apparent neglect of the moral education of adults is relatively recent for, according
to Bumyeat, Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics represents a series of lectures aimed at
those young men of good upbringing who already have “... the necessary beginnings or
starting points ... [that is] ... correct ideas about what actions are noble and just...”
(Bumyeat 1984 p. 57). Thus Aristotle was concerned with the moral education of
adults, or at least the moral education of those young adults who have already learned
something about moral character, rather than with the moral education of children as
such. Additionally, there is a significant body of writing about professional ethics from
the second half of the 19th century. For example, both Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) and
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), albeit from rather different perspectives, highlighted
the need for those engaged in professional life to cultivate certain sorts of habits of
character.
For Durkheim the development of professional ethics was core to ensuring the
increasingly complex modem society of his time could withstand the apparent
fragmentary forces of capitalism. As Turner puts it “.. .Durkheim’s major concern ...
was: how can we find a system of moral restraint which is relevant to modem
conditions?” (Turner 1992 p. xiv). In a large part the answer is to be found in the title,
Professional Ethics and Civic Morals, given to the book published in 1957 containing a
series ofDurkheim’s previously unpublished lectures. For Durkheim, professional
moral codes are essential because as he forcefully reminds us “There is no form of
social activity which can do without the appropriate moral discipline” (Durkheim 1957
edn. p. 14). Durkheim’s analysis remains relevant at the beginning of the 21st century
precisely because in many respects the problems with which he was concerned remain
central to civic life in modem liberal democracies and beyond.
Florence Nightingale’s concern was bom from practical necessity. The public
perception of nurses as callous gin-soaked miscreants illustrated so evocatively by
Dickens in the form of Sarah Gamp was a barrier not only to the recruitment of ladies as
probationers who would be able to provide care appropriate not only to the needs of the
sick but also to the well-being of patients. Nightingale’s insistence that probationers
needed further instmction in cultivating certain types of character traits reflected her
view that the moral education of those ladies to date was insufficient preparation for
professional life (Sellman 1997). In other words, Nightingale took the view that moral
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