ABSTRACT
These are troubled times for ethical theory. Many philosophers, and perhaps more nonphilosophers working in bioethics, have lost their hope of discovering an adequate ethical theory in the traditional sense-which would serve as the ultimate court of appeal in the justification of particular moral judgments (see, for example, Williams, 1985; Maclntyre, 1984; Baier, 1985, chs. 11-12). An ethical theory in the traditional sense is a unified, comprehensive ethical system comprising one or more principles or rules related to each other in explicit ways; I will call such theories "deductivist" and the general approach of working from them "deductivism." Just as troubling as the perceived failure of deductivism is the fact that no alternative model has earned greater theoretical confidence. Clearly, this problem concerns ethical theory as a whole. But attempts to develop detailed theoretical frameworks in bioethics (for instance, for justice in health care microallocation) and to use theory in clinical teaching and practice have played a major role in revealing the current difficulties. For that reason, and because of the intrinsic interest of some recent developments in bioethics, this paper will focus on approaches developed by scholars working in that field-that is, on contributions in "bioethical theory."1
