ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the problems and potentialities of discourse ethics as a platform for the various applied ethics. It examines the status of discourse ethics as applied ethics. The chapter focuses on to show that the Habermasian conception of the application of the moral point of view is totally insufficient and does not justify the potentialities embraced in the discourse ethics approach. It provides an attempt to broaden the margins of discourse ethics as applied ethics, a reconstructive analysis of civil society is undertaken to demonstrate the role of moral resources as basic mechanisms for the coordination of action. The chapter discusses a methodological perspective is proposed for applied ethics of a discourse nature as a three-level progressive integration between theory and praxis. This enables us to operationalise criteria of moral validity without losing the normative, and thus critical, perspective, and also avoids any utopianism.
