The Question of Moral Philosophy

Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen

This chapter provides the motivation for the book by arguing for a need to address the question of the role and status of moral philosophy in light of the criticisms directed against the theory-based understanding of moral philosophy of the twentieth century. The chapter also presents the three main aims of the book, to discuss what form of moral theory—if any—can be a fruitful part of moral philosophy; to investigate the moral importance of the particular; and to offer an alternative descriptive, pluralistic, and elucidatory conception of moral philosophy. In addition, it identifies the context of the discussion which is that of contemporary analytical moral philosophy, broadly conceived, and it determines the central categories of the book, moral philosophy, moral theory, and moral life; all chosen to avoid the ambiguity of ‘ethics’ which covers both moral philosophy and what is investigated in moral philosophy, the moral. Finally, the chapter clarifies the philosophical approach adopted in the book which is modelled on an understanding of the dialogical structure and the conception of philosophy found in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later writings. The final section of the chapter offers a short summary of the remaining chapters and an overview of the overall argument of the book.

Utilitas ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
SORAN READER ◽  
GILLIAN BROCK

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.


Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen

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.


Author(s):  
Jeff McMahan

This chapter offers a systematic analysis of the notion of proportionality in both moral philosophy and law, particularly the law of armed conflict. Proportionality is a constraint on different forms of justification for harming people. There are thus different forms of proportionality corresponding to different types of justification. The proportionality constraint should not be conflated with a different constraint—the necessity constraint—which in turn must be carefully distinguished from necessity as a form of justification. The chapter explains how the proportionality constraint and the necessity constraint are distinguished by the different comparisons they require. It further explains the relations between the requirement of proportionality in jus ad bellum and the requirement of proportionality in jus in bello and argues that the criterion of proportionality in the law of jus in bello is actually incoherent. The final section elucidates the various matters of moral theory that are relevant to understanding how the requirement of proportionality applies in practice to the action of combatants who fight in just wars.


Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen

This chapter surveys criticisms raised against moral theory from positions such as virtue ethics, particularism, anti-theory, and Wittgensteinian moral philosophy in order to identify the most central and damaging objections. It locates the origin of theory critique in two classic papers by Iris Murdoch and Elizabeth Anscombe and proceeds to give an overview of the most influential points of criticism from the second half of the twentieth century. This overview is contrasted with an explication of the dominant understanding of moral theory presented in the work of Martha Nussbaum, which allows for an identification of the crucial objections to moral theory, here presented in the form they take in the work of Bernard Williams. The objections are that theories cannot provide a foundation for moral practice, and that they do not possess the authority necessary to serve as action-guiding in any substantial sense. The conclusion of the chapter is that proponents of the dominant understanding of moral theory cannot offer convincing answers to these objections, and that this points to a need to re-evaluate our understanding of both the role and the form of moral theories.


Paragraph ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 314-329
Author(s):  
Sarah Cooper

Experimental filmmaker Rose Lowder is an intricate explorer of perception. Many of her exquisite silent short films feature flowers that are scrutinized frame by frame in shots that appear to have layers, as well as volume, and to quiver between simultaneity and succession. Yet these perceptual palimpsests that present almost too much for the eye to take in also reveal an as yet unexplored relation to imagination. Informed by ecological principles and foregrounding floral beauty, Lowder's Bouquets create a striking bond between perceptual and imaginative space. This article draws upon twentieth-century phenomenological accounts of perception before delving into earlier historical discussions of beauty in nature and in art, and bringing out connections to moral philosophy and feminist ecophilosophy, in order to understand how the beautiful entwines with ecological concern in the perceptual-imaginative space of her films.


2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Jens Bonnemann

In ethics, when discussing problems of justice and a just social existence one question arises obviously: What is the normal case of the relation between I and you we start from? In moral philosophy, each position includes basic socio-anthropological convictions in that we understand the other, for example, primarily as competitor in the fight for essential resources or as a partner in communication. Thus, it is not the human being as isolated individual, or as specimen of the human species or socialised member of a historical society what needs to be understood. Instead, the individual in its relation to the other or others has been studied in phenomenology and the philosophy of dialogue of the twentieth century. In the following essay I focus on Martin Buber’s and Jean-Paul Sartre’s theories of intersubjectivity which I use in order to explore the meaning of recognition and disrespect for an individual. They offer a valuable contribution to questions of practical philosophy and the socio-philosophical diagnosis of our time.


Author(s):  
PATRICK FRIERSON

Abstract This paper lays out the moral theory of philosopher and educator Maria Montessori (1870–1952). Based on a moral epistemology wherein moral concepts are grounded in a well-cultivated moral sense, Montessori develops a threefold account of moral life. She starts with an account of character as an ideal of individual self-perfection through concentrated attention on effortful work. She shows how respect for others grows from and supplements individual character, and she further develops a notion of social solidarity that goes beyond cooperation toward shared agency. Partly because she attends to children's ethical lives, Montessori highlights how character, respect, and solidarity all appear first as prereflective, embodied orientations of agency. Full moral virtue takes up prereflective orientations reflectively and extends them through moral concepts. Overall, Montessori's ethic improves on features similar to some in Nietzschean, Kantian, Hegelian, or Aristotelian ethical theories while situating these within a developmental and perfectionist ethics.


2018 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 175-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
N.E. Shasore

AbstractThis article provides the first account of key texts and concepts in the theory and criticism of Arthur Trystan Edwards. Edwards's notion of ‘civic design’, which emanated from the Liverpool School of Architecture in the second decade of the twentieth century, was part of a broader international trend (particularly in the US and Europe) towards formal, axial and monumental planning. Edwards imbued civic design with a philosophical and political sophistication that set him apart from many of his non-Modernist contemporaries. The article discusses the underlying precepts — such as ‘subject’, ‘form’, ‘urbanity’ and ‘manners’ — in some of Edwards's critical texts, including Good and Bad Manners in Architecture (1924). The final section traces his pioneering interest in high-density, low-rise housing, which culminated with the establishment of the Hundred New Towns Association in 1933–34.


Philosophy ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. W. Moore

The author begins with an outline of Bernard William's moral philosophy, within which he locates William's notorious doctrine that reflection can destroy ethical knowledge. He then gives a partial defence of this doctrine, exploiting an analogy between ethical judgements and tensed judgements. The basic idea is that what the passage of time does for the latter, reflection can do for the former: namely, prevent the re-adoption of an abandoned point of view (an ethical point of view in the one case, a temporal point of view in the other). In the final section the author says a little about how reflection might do this.


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