Descriptive Moral Theories

Abstract

Abstract 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.