Kant in Oxford

Abstract

Abstract The early twentieth-century Oxford “intuitionists” Harold Prichard and David Ross accepted what they took to be Kant’s “deontological” rather than “teleological” approach to moral philosophy (using terminology originally introduced by Jeremy Bentham and revived by the Cambridge Philosopher C. D. Broad). But while Kant had held that there could never be such a thing as a conflict of duties, only conflicting “grounds of obligation,” they rejected his single categorical imperative (even if it had multiple formulations) in favor of a non-reducible plurality of “prima facie” or “pro tanto” duties, conflict among which cannot be resolved by any higher-order principle. We know what we should do only by “intuition.” (Broad developed a similar view in Cambridge.) Later Elizabeth Anscombe advocated a similar view, while Bernard Williams went further, in conscious opposition to Kant, in arguing that ethical duties do not automatically outweigh personal “projects.” All of these philosophers rejected what they saw as Kantian universalism in favor of some form of what has come to be known as particularism.