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Based on the analysis of an experiment involving the training of French social workers, this paper proposes a didactic conception of ethics. Through an analysis and a theoretical assessment of the experiment, this paper demonstrates how ethics cannot be abstractly limited to its modern dialectical definition, regardless of how decisive that may be. In other words, it cannot be reduced to the problematic contemporary tension between standards and values, between universal (or general) and singular (or particular). It is advisable to be attentive to the rational process of ethical judgment that develops through hindsight. Ethics appear as a dynamic determinant of social existence. This permits a reassessment of the radical moral nature of the “ethical demand” that arises only in unbearable situations or in conflicts through subjective confrontations with standards when subjects experience a temporal encounter.