Introduction: Why Ethics and Theory.

Blaise Pascal once exhorted, “Let us endeavor, then, to think well, this is the principle of morality” — sound advice, indeed, especially in an era such as ours in which both the substance and the character of morality appear “up for grabs.“

That a moral or ethical perspective can facilitate classroom instruction, particularly with regards to the development of clear, competent, cogent, even, compelling reasoning, has not gone unnoticed by both readers and contributors to the NEWS. On the contrary, several recent issues have linked moral perspectives to the teaching of various subjects, eg., Guenter Lewy, “Teaching War and Morality,” (Winter, 1982, No. 32) and William P. Brandon and William T. Bluhm, “Teaching Ethics in a Not- So-Ivory Tower of Babel: Using Health Politics as a Text,” (Fall, 1984, No. 43).