Feeling and Freedom: The Medical Model from a Moral Standpoint

Abstract

In 1958, G. E. M. Anscombe began her paper on modern moral philosophy by stating that moral philosophy had become impossible, and should be laid aside at present “until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking.” In 1979, S. Cavell asserts that the difficulty with moral philosophy is that the “facts” upon which it operates are our relationships with one another, which are markedly different in kind from the facts of the physical sciences. Is there anything left, then, for modern moral philosophy to do, or have its issues been reduced to questions for psychology, or perhaps anthropology and sociology? Or shall we just study Aristotle? We are reminded of the criticism which Husserl leveled against the naturalistic sciences at the time when psychology and psychoanalysis (and sociology) were just earnestly beginning, namely that they have inherited a problem which enlightenment philosophy had tried, and failed, to solve. It is the problem of freedom, with its implications for rationality, moral agency, and intersubjectivity. This brief essay seeks to draw out the “antinomy” that continues in the conflict between scientific and humanistic approaches, despite the efforts of phenomenology and existentialism. The suggestion is that moral philosophy does have a province of its own, which contributions from both the transcendental tradition and the psychological studies equip it to address.