Abstract
“Morality’s Distinctiveness” begins with Anscombe’s and Sidgwick’s characterization of the difference between ancient ethics and “modern moral philosophy” and argues that what is distinctive about morality as it is conceived in modern ethical thought is the conceptual centrality of irreducibly second-personal notions, such as obligation and accountability. The argument proceeds by considering David Hume’s famous claim that the distinction between “moral virtues” and estimable nonmoral “natural abilities,” is purely verbal. Hume makes this claim, it is argued, because he fails to appreciate the conceptual difference between third-personal evaluative attitudes, like disesteem and contempt, and second-personal Strawsonian “reactive attitudes” like moral blame. Hume’s failure to see more than a verbal difference between the moral and the non-moral is thus evidence that what is distinctive about morality is its second-personal aspect.
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