> have one of Germany's best departments of philosophy.
So what? Philosophy has barely anything to do with ethics. You can study philosophers that can argue for complete opposite sides of the same point at hand, so it does not give you any indication as to what is right or wrong.
And Germany has a pretty poor record so far in terms of privacy protections/provisions, so I am not sure there is any indication that post-WW2 or post-RDA experiences have had much impact.
Ethics is one of major branches within philosophy. You can, obviously, dismiss the modern practice of philosophy if their results go over your head. But it's really difficult to argue the terminology, because ethics is part of philosophy more or less by definition.
As to your objection: differences of opinion do not render the discussion worthless. Otherwise, non-philosophers would have just as little legitimisation to argue ethics as they do, considering religion, politics, and kindergarten kids similarly have people arguing opposing points of view.
The argument is also selling philosophy somewhat short: Because while there are completely different paradigms of how to investigate ethics, they happen to agree on a surprisingly large canon, i. e. "don't kill too many innocents" (and, to incorporate the Greeks: "...and try looking good while doing so").
Many ideas of moral philosophy have become so widely accepted that we no longer notice them, sort of like the fish that don't have a concept of "water". "All men are created equal" came from those ivory tower talking heads at a time where it was a rather radical idea and got about as much ridicule as animal rights or the trolley problem are getting today in some quarters.
An education should not hand you a canned answer to what is "right" or "wrong", it should do almost the opposite. Learning to evaluate well founded opposing arguments is certainly more useful than being force fed moralist dogma du jour.
Calling it "merely the art of debating" implies it lacks actual substance. I think philosophy concerns itself with what you debate about, not how you do it.
Besides, nothing outside of dogma can "give you" a value system, but philosophy does present candidates. It's up to you to choose your own, the hope being that this is better than unquestioned inheritance of values.
So what? Philosophy has barely anything to do with ethics. You can study philosophers that can argue for complete opposite sides of the same point at hand, so it does not give you any indication as to what is right or wrong.
And Germany has a pretty poor record so far in terms of privacy protections/provisions, so I am not sure there is any indication that post-WW2 or post-RDA experiences have had much impact.