ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author makes the claim that the important turn to ethics that one has experienced in the realm of science and technology during the 1990s now brings about a need to develop a toolbox for practical ethics that makes ethical advice amenable to quality assurance and democratic transparency. He believes many ethicists have as yet only partially recognised the need to put their own activity on much firmer grounds that answer the needs of a modern and deliberative democracy. The typical response to re-occurring ethical issues related to the policy work of a public body or governmental institution is to appoint an ethics committee of some sort. This is the institutionalisation of ethics. The major function of a toolbox for practical ethics would be to make possible some kind of quality assurance of the ethical advice and to make ethical advice amenable to democratic transparency and ideals of deliberative democracy.
