Ethics without Avot?

I've recently been reading Modern Jewish Ethics: Theory and Practice (1972)-- a collection of essays edited by Marvin Fox and originally delivered at meetings of the Institute for Judaism and Contemporary Thought, this being an initiative from a group of professors at Bar-Ilan University. 

What is this book about? According to the Preface:

"The purpose of the institute is to explore in depth the ways in which classical Judaism and contemporary thought may illuminate and fructify each other". 

So who is doing the illuminating and fructifying?

"The participants ... represent a wide variety of Jewish positions and life-styles, ranging from orthodoxy to secularism and from total religious observance to very little or none at all".

What is the common ground on which this meeting of minds takes place?

"... the strong conviction  that Judaism is an intellectually alive and significant option for contemporary men, and the equally strong conviction that a living Judaism must be in touch with and responsible to the best in contemporary thought".

The roll-call of contributors is impressive. Apart from Marvin Fox, an eminent Maimonidean scholar, many readers will instantly recognise the names of Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein and Nachum Rabinovitch. The others boast between them a wide and impressive spread of academic and other credentials. 

I must confess that, in my ignorance, I was attracted to this book by the assumption that any book on Jewish ethics was bound to contain some meaningful discussion of the contents of Avot, a tractate of the Mishnah that has been generally regarded by Jewish sages for the past two millennia as having had something to do with ethics. This book, which covers some 250 pages of fascinating discussion, contains only two small references to Avot, thrown in en passant. And it's not as if there was no place for Avot either. For example, Emmanuel Levinas' florid and at times almost unreadable piece on "Ideology and Idealism" gives ample space to 'The Other' and to 'The Other as the Other Man', but the notion of man's relationship to himself and to real or constructed others -- a major theme in Avot -- gets no mention at all. 

To be fair, part of the book addresses moral issues that do not fall comfortably within the scope of Avot. There is a fascinating discussion of the ethics of war and the conduct of the Israel Defence Force to which its mishnayot are not of obvious application.

One is nevertheless led to ask an important question: does Avot -- taken together with the written Torah -- provide any sort of content or structure for the building of a Jewish ethical system, or is it simply a slightly more than averagely meaning book of etiquette for the Jews who lived 2,000 years ago?

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Postscript: does anyone know whatever happened to the Institute for Judaism and Contemporary Thought? It doesn't appear to be extant under that name today.