Professional Responsibility

My subject is a criticism of conduct which runs something like this: 'That's not acting responsibly, that's just rules. The criticism appears as an attack on legalism in both business and profes sional While my focus here will be on professional ethics, everything I say should, with minor changes, apply equally well to corporate or other business codes of Legalism (it is said) reduces professional responsibility to doing as profession's code of requires; professional responsibility, like moral responsibility generally, is more open-ended, including (among other things) certain virtues.2 My subject thus overlaps larger debate in moral theory between principle ethics and virtue ethics. I shall draw some conclusions relevant to that debate. My thesis is that the while not all there is to professional ethics, is generally enough for responsible conduct (or, at least, is so when profession's code of is reasonably well-written, as most are). Rules set standard of professional conduct; just those rules, in a relatively robust but not unusual sense of following those just is acting as a responsible professional.