Moral philosophy and political problems.

Abstract

LAR WORSE THAN CALLING a political philosopher's conclusions wrong is accusing his method of being misconceived. Since this accusation is intended to undercut the very enterprise in which a philosopher is engaged, it precludes consideration of the substance of his particular arguments. In this brief article, I want to pursue several such undercutting criticisms directed against the method of contemporary Anglo-American political and moral philosophy. I shall begin by considering those made by Philip Abbott in Philosophers and the Abortion Question.' I shall then turn to a series of criticisms that suggest that acontextualist accounts of our moral principles given by analytic philosophy provide no support for further moral or political argument. Abbott identified philosophic method too narrowly by its reliance upon hypothetical microexamples employed to test the moral validity of our intuitions or to aid us in justifying our moral preferences and principles. A broader and more accurate characterization of analytic moral philosophy would focus not on the use of microexamples, but rather, on the attempt to resolve by moral reasoning particular contemporary political and moral controversies. The attempt to bring moral reasons to bear upon political problems separates moral philosophy from philosophical analysis that stops at the clarification of concepts and from analyses of the political reasons for preferring one resolution to a moral conflict over another. Clarification of concepts is often a necessary prelude to the task of resolving a moral argument, and finding a politically prudential solution need not be unprincipled. But the emphasis of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy is upon the resolution of contemporary moral problems by applying, refining, and rendering consistent our moral intuitions.