ABSTRACT
Following the preparatory introductions to nanotechnology (Chapter 2) and the ethics of technology (Chapter 3), the issue now is to formulate a program for philosophical and ethical reflection on nanotechnology that can be worked through in the following chapters. To this end, I will first describe the motivations, expectations, and definition of goals given in the available literature for an ethics of nanotechnology (Section 4.1), then cope with the question of whether nanoethics might claim the status of a separate subfield in applied ethics (Section 4.2), and finally mark out the field of a problem-oriented ethics of nanotechnology (Section 4.3).
