Perfection

2020 ◽  
pp. 166-186
Author(s):  
Owen Ware
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Final Shape

After considering recent efforts to read Fichte as a deontologist or as a consequentialist, this final chapter gives evidence for understanding the final shape of Fichte’s moral philosophy as a form of social perfectionism. The chapter then returns to what looks like a final puzzle threatening the integrity of Fichte’s position in the System of Ethics: the puzzle of whether cases of moral disagreement are resolvable on the basis of a personal principle (one’s own conscience) or on the basis of an interpersonal principle (rational dialogue). The solution this chapter proposes is that, for Fichte, the verdicts of one’s own conscience are never meant to overrule the process of rational dialogue that makes a living community between persons possible.

Civilised Warfare

2019 ◽  
pp. 192-229
Author(s):  
Craig Smith
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Moral Science ◽  
Commercial Society ◽  
Moral Judgements

The final chapter turns to Adam Ferguson’s preoccupation with warfare and citizen militias. It argues that Ferguson saw war as a human universal and a key feature of politics. The chapter covers Ferguson’s account of the rise of nations and of the superiority of modern rule-governed warfare over that of the ancient world. It links this to his view that we can pass moral judgements on the ‘spirit’ of nations. Judging nations through moral science and in line with the values developed in moral philosophy helps us to understand the benefits of commercial society and the potential dangers to which it is subject.

Community

2020 ◽  
pp. 144-165
Author(s):  
Owen Ware
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Reciprocal Interaction ◽  
Final Shape ◽  
Crucial Feature ◽  
Open Dialogue

This chapter and the next consider the final shape of Fichte’s moral philosophy as it appears in Part III of the System of Ethics. It has surprised many readers that Fichte ends up defending a vision of our ethical vocation in terms of acting for the sake of the rational community to which we belong. This chapter traces the origin of this claim to Fichte’s social theory of intersubjective relations, in particular his theory that we require a ‘summons’ issued by another rational being to exercise free choice at all. A crucial feature of Fichte’s moral philosophy comes to light when we begin to understand the parallels between his view of our natural drive, which strives to unite with objects in reciprocal interaction, and his view of our ethical vocation to agree with others in open dialogue.

Freedom, Resentment, and the Metaphysics of Morals

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela Hieronymi
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Metaphysics Of Morals ◽  
Future Work ◽  
Modern Moral Philosophy

P. F. Strawson was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, and his 1962 paper “Freedom and Resentment” is one of the most influential in modern moral philosophy, prompting responses across multiple disciplines, from psychology to sociology. This book closely reexamines Strawson's paper and concludes that his argument has been underestimated and misunderstood. Line by line, the book carefully untangles the complex strands of Strawson's ideas. After elucidating his conception of moral responsibility and his division between “reactive” and “objective” responses to the actions and attitudes of others, the book turns to its central argument. Strawson argues that, because determinism is an entirely general thesis, true of everyone at all times, its truth does not undermine moral responsibility. The book finds the two common interpretations of this argument, “the simple Humean interpretation” and “the broadly Wittgensteinian interpretation” both deficient. Drawing on Strawson's wider work in logic, philosophy of language, and metaphysics, the book concludes that the argument rests on an implicit, and previously overlooked, metaphysics of morals, one grounded in Strawson's “social naturalism.” The final chapter defends this naturalistic picture against objections. The book sheds new light on Strawson's thinking and has profound implications for future work on free will, moral responsibility, and metaethics. It also features the complete text of Strawson's “Freedom and Resentment.”

Descriptive Moral Philosophy

2020 ◽  
pp. 185-210
Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Moral Orientation ◽  
Moral Philosopher ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Moral Change ◽  
Work Done ◽  
Moral Attention

The final chapter develops the conception of a descriptive, pluralistic, and elucidatory moral philosophy established throughout the book and investigates the relationship between moral philosophy and moral life. It expands on two central suggestions of this work, namely that moral philosophy is fundamentally descriptive, and that the moral cannot be delineated, but is a pervasive presence in moral life. This leads to a discussion of how we are to understand the practicality of moral philosophy, and how it can be said to be aiding moral life, namely by advancing moral orientation, by making recommendations for moral attention, and by inviting us to develop and engage with new forms of moral thought, even forms of moral change. A central discussion concerns the role of the moral philosopher, and it is argued that philosophical work is an activity that itself involves a two-sided responsibility, an inward responsibility to continuously work on one’s wants and expectations and an outward responsibility to continuously stay open and attentive towards the investigated phenomenon. The last section recapitulates and evaluates the work done in the book.

Felicia Hemans and the Affections

2019 ◽  
pp. 166-191
Author(s):  
Seth T. Reno
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Felicia Hemans ◽  
Poetic Tradition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Romantic Era ◽  
Christian Love

Chapter four analyzes Hemans’s emphasis on love, gender, and ‘the affections’ throughout her career. The chapter begins by outlining the discourses of ‘the affections’ in eighteenth-century moral philosophy, showing how Hemans engages those discourses through her concurrent embrace and critique of the Romantic models of affect and emotion developed by Wordsworth and Shelley. Hemans moves from a hesitant embrace and celebration of earthly, domestic, and Christian love in her early poetry to a more radical, Romantic acknowledgement of an otherworldly, idealizing love in her later work. Yet unlike the poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley, and Clare, Hemans’s treatment of intellectual love is dominated by loss and melancholy. Her particular treatment of love and the affections sheds new light on the importance of gender in Romantic-era theories of affect. In contrast to her male counterparts, Hemans remains deeply skeptical about the social and political potentials of intellectual love. As she carries on the Romantic poetic tradition throughout the 1820s, Hemans serves as a catalyst for Victorian responses to intellectual love, to which I turn in the final chapter of the book.

Reinterpreting the Proofs of The Existence of God

1980 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. J. M. Bench-Capon
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Argument ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Cognitive Theories ◽  
Moral Arguments

In this century the major insight in the field of moral philosophy has been that moral arguments need not proceed by way of the deduction of moral conclusions from non-moral premises. This realisation sprang from a recognition that the purpose of moral argument was not just to get one party to a moral disagreement to assent to a proposition that at the outset of the discussion he denied. If a moral argument was to be able to be considered successful it was insufficient for someone to recognise that an action he had previously considered right was wrong; it was essential that this recognition have an influence on his subsequent conduct. The change in belief was important only in so far as it led to a change in action. And although this insight led people to over diminish the importance of belief and propose various types of non-cognitive theories of ethics, it is none the less true that the acceptance of a proposition of the form ‘action X is wrong’ must have an impact of some kind on the behaviour of those who accept it.

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