Principled Ethics

Abstract

AbstractMoral philosophy has long treated principles as indispensable for understanding its subject matter. However, the underlying assumption that this is the best approach has received almost no defence, and has been attacked by particularists who argue that the traditional link between morality and principles is little more than an unwarranted prejudice. This book meets this particularist challenge head on and defends a distinctive view called ‘generalism as a regulative ideal’. After cataloguing the wide array of views that have gone under the heading ‘particularism’, the reasons why the main particularist arguments fail to establish their conclusions are explained. Generalism as a regulative ideal incorporates what is most insightful in particularism (e.g., the possibility that reasons are context sensitive - ‘holism about reasons’) while rejecting every major particularist doctrine. The book resists the excesses of hyper-generalist views according to which moral thought is constituted by allegiance to a particular principle or set of principles. It argues that in so far as moral knowledge and wisdom are possible, all of morality can and should be codified in a manageable set of principles, even if we are not yet in possession of those principles. Such principles are not objects of mere curiosity, but play an important role in guiding the virtuous agent.