This article presents the notions of ethos and eidos as field level concepts for the sociology of morality and the anthropology of ethics. This is accomplished in the context of Bourdieuan social theory and, therefore, from the broad standpoint of practice theory. In the first instance these terms are used to refer to the normative structures of social fields and are conceived so as to represent the way in which such structures fall between two planes, that of the implicit and the explicit. Subsequently, they are used to further understand a distinction between morality—roughly, the implicit moral order of a social field—and ethics—the more explicit and often codified elements of a social field’s normative structure. When presented in relation to academic philosophical inquiries into the ethical issues in healthcare and the life sciences—meaning the disciplines of applied ethics in general and applied (bio)ethics in particular—the analytic perspective these terms facilitate enables us to represent the fundamental conditions required for academic enquiry; taken together the ethos and eidos of an intellectual field constitute the requisite background of its normative epistemic and methodological commitments, thereby providing the structures of disciplined intellectual practices. Seen in this light it not only becomes possible to grasp applied (bio)ethics as a socially structured practice but to understand it in terms that can also be used to frame our everyday moral practices. In this way applied (bio)ethics can be acknowledged as a relatively unique part of our contemporary moral culture.

本文介绍了作为道德社会学和伦理人类学领域领域概念的精神和精神观念。这是在布尔迪安社会理论的背景下完成的，因此是从实践理论的广泛角度出发。在第一种情况下，这些术语用来指代社会领域的规范结构，并被构想成代表这种结构落在两个平面之间的方式，即隐性和显性两个平面之间。随后，他们被用来进一步理解道德（大致是社会领域的隐含道德顺序）与道德之间的区别，道德是社会领域规范结构中更明确且经常被编纂的要素。当涉及到有关医疗保健和生命科学中的伦理问题的学术哲学研究时，这意味着广义的应用伦理学学科，尤其是应用的（生物）伦理学学科。这些术语所提供的分析视角使我们能够代表所需的基本条件用于学术查询；知识领域的精神和精神共同构成其规范的必要背景认识论和方法论上的承诺，从而提供纪律严明的知识实践的结构。从这个角度看，不仅有可能将应用的（生物）伦理学作为一种社会结构的实践来加以理解，而且可以以可以用来构筑我们日常道德实践的术语来理解它。通过这种方式，可以将应用的（生物）伦理学视为我们当代道德文化中相对独特的一部分。