ABSTRACT
Abraham Edel did not lack either knowledge or wisdom when he embarked on his work on methodology of ethics in the late 1940s and 1950s. He was well acquainted with dominating ideas of analytical philosophy of that time, but he understood their limitations. Before Method in Ethical Theory appeared in 1963 several of his books were already published on ethical theory and on comparative study of world moralities. Edel’s comparative approach belongs obviously to this last form of wholism. He wants to embrace as much information as possible about various existing moralities. Edel distinguishes four types of coordinates of criticism: logical, scientific, historical, and valuational. There is a certain ambiguity in the way Edel organizes his material in Method in Ethical Theory. On the surface this is a comparative analysis of actual methods in ethics. But method is an ambiguous and multileveled concept.
