Moral Philosophy and Moral Life

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Moral Subject ◽  
Moral Position ◽  
Moral Theories ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Alternative Understanding

This is a work in moral philosophy and its ambition is to contribute to a renewed understanding of moral philosophy, the role of moral theory, and the relation between moral philosophy and moral life. It is motivated by the belief that the lack of a coherent answer to the question of the role and status of moral philosophy and the theories it develops, is one of the most important obstacles for doing work in moral philosophy today. The first part of the book untangles various criticisms of the dominant view of moral theories that challenges the explanatory, foundational, authoritative, and action-guiding role of these theories. It also offers an alternative understanding of moral theory as descriptions of moral grammar. The second part investigates the nature of the particularities relevant for an understanding of moral life, both particularities tied to the moral subject, her character, commitments, and moral position, and particularities tied to the context of the subject, her moral community and language. The final part marks a return to moral philosophy and addresses the wider question of what the revised conception of moral theories and the affirmation of the value of the particular mean for moral philosophy by developing a descriptive, pluralistic, and elucidatory conception of moral philosophy. The scope of the book is wide, but its pretensions are more moderate, to present an understanding of descriptive moral philosophy which may spur a debate about the status and role of moral philosophy in relation to our moral lives.

Needs, Moral Demands and Moral Theory

Utilitas ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
SORAN READER ◽  
GILLIAN BROCK
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Moral Practice ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Moral Theories ◽  
Moral Demandingness ◽  
Moral Demands

In this article we argue that the concept of need is as vital for moral theory as it is for moral life. In II we analyse need and its normativity in public and private moral practice. In III we describe simple cases which exemplify the moral demandingness of needs, and argue that the significance of simple cases for moral theory is obscured by the emphasis in moral philosophy on unusual cases. In IV we argue that moral theories are inadequate if they cannot describe simple needs-meeting cases. We argue that the elimination or reduction of need to other concepts such as value, duty, virtue or care is unsatisfactory, in which case moral theories that make those concepts fundamental will have to be revised. In conclusion, we suggest that if moral theories cannot be revised to accommodate needs, they may have to be replaced with a fully needs-based theory.

Particularities of Moral Lives

2020 ◽  
pp. 103-131
Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Moral Formation ◽  
Moral Self ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Self Discovery

The chapter presents a critique of the idea that morality is impersonal and an investigation of how and to what extent personal features of our lives may be morally relevant and shape us as moral agents. In doing so, the chapter explains why moral life resists theorisation of the form criticised in Chapter 2, and it provides a better understanding of the challenges involved in developing a form of moral philosophy that can take the particularities of moral life into consideration. The chapter opens with a clarification of the approach and the central concepts of chapters 5 and 6, before turning to two suggestions of how to account for the personal dimension of moral life in terms of agent-relativity and strong moral self-definition. As these suggestions are shown to be inadequate, this leads to an investigation of the role of personal particularities in the moral formation and the moral positions of individuals. The centrality of the personal in moral life furthermore creates a demand on the subject to engage in justification in relation to others and self-understanding in relation to oneself, where self-understanding in many cases is to be understood as a process of both self-discovery and self-determination; of striving to settle both who one is and who one wants to be.

Generality and Particularity in Moral Thought

2020 ◽  
pp. 75-102
Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Moral Development ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Dual Task ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Moral Theories

This chapter explores the role of particularities in moral thought and moral life and the forms of understanding of these particularities necessary in moral philosophy in order to substantiate the idea, developed in Chapter 3, that moral philosophy is a descriptive activity facing a dual task, both general and particular. The chapter falls into two parts. The first part is an investigation of the role of general principles in moral thought that aids an understanding of how far general descriptions (for example in the form of moral theories) may be of help to us in philosophy. The second part provides an understanding of the role of the particular in moral thought that serves to substantiate the claim that moral philosophy has to provide a substantial understanding of moral development, imagination, and discernment. This part also investigates whether the qualification of the role of general principles in moral thought can be reconciled with the idea that moral considerations are objective, universal, and absolute. The chapter concludes that moral philosophy should rediscover itself as one practice among others that aim to assist and improve moral life, while taking into account the most comprehensive understanding of human life.

Literature and Moral Philosophy

2020 ◽  
pp. 165-184
Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Moral Change ◽  
Moral Cultivation ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
Moral Theories ◽  
Knowledge By Acquaintance

The chapter contributes to the development of a pluralistic conception of moral philosophy consisting of a diversity of descriptive activities by exploring one example of how to combine an understanding of the particulars of moral life with the more general and abstract insights traditionally developed in moral philosophy, namely via moral philosophy’s engagement with literature. The chapter is motivated by the argument that the irreducible role of the particular in moral life raises a demand for moral philosophy to interact with other disciplines which may serve as sources of knowledge about the particularities of moral life. It is argued that engagement with literature offers us knowledge by acquaintance and possibilities of moral cultivation, and that literature can be a suitable partner for moral philosophy in three activities that differ from the development of moral theories: namely in the exploration, the critique, and the development of moral life. The last type of activity, where literature is a partner for moral philosophy in initiating forms of moral change, is given special attention, and it is shown that this is an integrated part of moral philosophy, even if it is currently underexplored.

Self and Selves

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph C.S. Walker
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Synthetic A Priori

Kant is committed to the reality of a subject self, outside time but active in forming experience. Timeless activity is problematic, but that can be dealt with. But he holds that the subject of experience is not an object of experience, so nothing can be known about it; this raises a problem about the status of his own theory. But he ought to allow that we can know of its existence and activity, as preconditions of experience: the Critique allows that synthetic a priori truths can be known in this way. However, its identity conditions remain unknowable. Kant’s unity of apperception shares much with Locke’s continuity of consciousness, but does not determine the identity of a thing. Personal identity is bodily identity. Only Kant’s moral philosophy justifies recognizing other selves; it could warrant ascribing a similar status to animals.

Descriptive Moral Theories

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-72
Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Ludwig Wittgenstein ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Problem ◽  
Moral Language ◽  
Moral Theories ◽  
Moral Problems ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Moral Philosophers

This chapter develops an alternative, descriptive understanding of moral theory in order to reconcile two apparently conflicting insights; the insight of the critics of moral theory into the problems of the dominant conception of moral theory and the insight into the relevance that we still attribute to the positions traditionally conceived as theories such as Kantianism and utilitarianism. Building on the work of theory-critics, but without giving up the notion of moral theory, the chapter presents a view according to which theories are descriptive rather than prescriptive and serve heuristic and elucidatory purposes. Inspired by the notion of grammar found in the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, it is furthermore claimed that theories are descriptions which provide overviews of various normative structures of concerns—or moral grammars—and which may serve two different purposes, providing either general descriptions of the logic of our moral language or descriptions that elucidate a specific moral problem. According to this view, moral philosophers must accept the co-existence of a plurality of moral theories that describe a plurality of moral grammars, and they must give up the idea that moral theories are mutually exclusive. Moreover, the development of the second purpose reveals that theories cannot be the sole tool of moral philosophy, they need to be supplemented with grammatical investigations of the particularities involved in moral problems. Moral theories can be helpful, but they are never sufficient when addressing a problem in moral philosophy.

scholarly journals Granice literatury, granice poetyki, granice granic dzisiaj. Jedno pytanie

2021 ◽  
pp. 51-62
Author(s):  
Anna Tenczyńska
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject

The subject of reflection in the article Boundaries of Literature, Boundaries of Poetics, Boundaries of Boundaries Today. One Question is the place and role of poetics in contemporary Polish humanistic research. The author makes a short recapitulation of stages and themes of the ongoing discussion on the status of poetics (especially) in the last three decades, which, in her opinion, are particularly important. The widening of its boundaries, seen and significant for contemporary culture, prompts the author to ask about the extent to which the categories and tools of poetics are used in the contempor

scholarly journals Pedagogic Dilemma for History Education: Voices of Student Teachers in Lesotho

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 182
Author(s):  
Raymond N. Fru
Keyword(s):  
High Schools ◽  
Student Teachers ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
History Education ◽  
Educational Systems ◽  
History Teachers ◽  
History Teaching ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject

<p><em>It is no secret that history education in many parts of the world is</em><em> </em><em>facing immense challenges. This academic discipline has never been under more pressure to justify its place in the curriculum of many educational systems. While some systems such as South Africa have overtly downplayed the importance of the discipline through unfavorable curriculum implementations over the years since the dawn of democracy, other systems like Lesotho have adopted more covert strategies to systematically out-phasing history education in the secondary and high schools. The result in the case of Lesotho is that the subject is very unpopular in secondary and high schools as the number of schools teaching the subject has dwindled drastically over the years. The situation is exacerbated by poor Junior Certificate (JC) examination results for the few schools that teach the subject. </em></p><p><em>Against this backdrop, this article engages the discourses around the status of history education in the context of Lesotho from a student teacher’s perspective. While many studies have focused on the role of students, government departments and school administrations in explaining the negative position of history education, the stance in this article is that the role of the history teacher is as vital and cannot be undermined. Teachers’ understanding of the objectives of history teaching and their attitudes towards the discipline has important implications for the way the discipline is perceived by students and the public. As a result, this article presents findings ofa study conducted with some novice history teachers in Lesotho on their understandings of the objectives of history teaching especially in a Lesotho context. Such understandings are then used as a basis to theorise the status of the discipline, but also to reflect on the future of history education in Lesotho.</em></p>

Moral particularism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Crisp
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Sensitivity ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Moral Particularism ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Moral Theories

Moral particularism is a broad set of views which play down the role of general moral principles in moral philosophy and practice. Particularists stress the role of examples in moral education and of moral sensitivity or judgment in moral decision-making, as well as criticizing moral theories which advocate or rest upon general principles. It has not yet been demonstrated that particularism constitutes an importantly controversial position in moral philosophy.

The Difficulty of Being Dead: Aleksandr Veledinskii’s Alive (2006)

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vlad Strukov
Keyword(s):  
Political Agency ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Spectral Effect ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Spectator

The dis/appearances of the characters in Veledinskii’s Alive denotes ruptures in continuity (including the continuity of the gaze). The role of the phantom is to overcome the complete break between the living and the dead as well as to overcome the ruptures in discourse. The persistent revenant is an epitome of the return: they become by coming back and in doing so they create a repetitive experience—teleological aporia, a certain inheritance. The phantom is a trace and also a differance (in Derridean terms) in that their spectral effect is in the ideological tendency and the promise of emancipation. In Alive, the phantom resists the totality of representation and so emerges as a method of paralogy: legitimacy of the subject is determined by a denial of the possibility of legitimation. The spectre as a mediation of discourse which lies in between, and in Alive—not between life and death but between death and death. In Alive political agency is the phantom’s expediency whereby the gaze onto the spectator—the pervasiveness of the ghostly experience problematizes the status of the spectator who—in the presence of the posthumous narrator—emerges as a posthumous spectator.

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