SOCIO-HISTORICAL FUNDAMENTALS OF ETHICS AND THE CHALLENGES FOR THE ETHICAL-POLITICAL PROJECT OF SOCIAL WORK

Abstract

This work sought to discuss the socio-historical foundations of ethics for Social Work and how they can elucidate the possibilities and limitations of implementing the Ethical-Political Project of the category. Through an analytical literature review, it was possible to see how the ethics approach had historical changes by Social Work, presenting a substantial change from the insertion of the Critical Social Theory. In this sense, ethics broke with the moralist, metaphysical and utilitarian perspectives to assume an instrumental character, as a possibility of realizing a certain societal project. However, it is constantly threatened by changes in the dynamics of capital, which, among many contradictions, also generate those that directly affect the category and its socio-occupational spaces. For this reason, it is important to highlight the centrality of ethics as a constant in the training and interventional processes of the profession, so that its mediating and transforming capacity for the implementation of a specific Ethical-Political Project is not lost sight of.