When things go wrong: A reflection on students as youth researchers

For those of us who live and work in a 'western' cultural frame we have long understood that ethical issues are practical issues. Aristotle observed some time ago, 'every [human] action and pursuit is thought to aim at some good' (1998: 1), even as he acknowledged that people seem not always to agree about those goods. Several millennia later the philosopher Williams agreed that 'moral conflict .is a basic fact of mortality' as he also emphasized the ethical character of human practice (1976: iv). On both accounts ethical issues are central to the choices we make on a daily basis. Faced with possible differences of view about the goods that are at stake, Aristotle suggested that all we needed was to be a good person which entailed cultivating 'practical wisdom' or what he called pllro11esis. By phronesis he meant 'a true and reasoned state of capaciry to act with regard to the things that are good or bad for man' (Aristotle 1998: 143). Like Aristotle, Williams (2006) argued there is no universal perspective in moral philosophy which can be used to determine what is right or wrong, good or bad, or which could discern moral values for us or arrive at ethical judgments.