Contemporary Moral Philosophy Research Articles

Emersonian Moral Perfectionism

Stanley Cavell’s Emersonian moral perfectionism is not a compete theory of moral philosophy alongside utilitarianism or deontology; it seeks to get a grip of a dimension in any moral thinking, less of a hierarchy of what to value most in life and more a sketch on how we come to value anything in the first place. Emersonian perfectionism tries to understand what it means to be a moral subject, an authentic self, and to do this it cannot stay solely within the conventional sub-disciplinary boundaries of philosophy. First and foremost, Cavell intends his outlook as a way of discovering the philosophical uniqueness of Emersonian thought; he asks us to take very seriously what Emerson has to say on the self and its coming to itself. But such themes are never confined within the narrow framework of a particular author, essayist or a poet, and Cavell traces related topics in works of art as diverse as Ibsen’s Doll House and the poetry of Whitman, philosophers as seemingly distant as Wittgenstein and Heidegger. While Cavell is oftentimes suggestive rather than elaborate on the relevance of Wittgenstein and Heidegger for his version of moral perfectionism, a critical reader ought to spell out the senses in which the two thinkers are essential to the perfectionist project. In brief, neither one of them had much to say on ethics by way of explicit commentary, yet both of them have given rise to a host of reasonable studies in ethics, following them. Thus philosophers like Cora Diamond and Iris Murdoch have made their name drafting a new kind of ethics, sometimes bluntly dubbed Wittgensteinian moral philosophy, and authors such as Emmanuel Levinas and Jean Luc-Nancy have done the same in the Heideggerian footsteps, drawing attention to his “originary ethics.” The key issue regarding the aforementioned exemplars in moral philosophy, and arguably Emersonian ethics, is that they speak to ethical issues without explicitly addressing ethics; they touch on something crucial to our ethical conduct without laying out ethical norms. They are not so much interested in the normativity of ethics in the first place. They seem to grasp that ethics has to do with something more fundamental, perhaps something like an original encounter with the being of the world, a genuine attentiveness to the particularity of our experience, rendering ethics possible in the first place. Such an outlook on morality may not be unambiguously called ethics, at least not as something separate from epistemology and ontology, yet its affinities with contemporary moral philosophy are wide-ranging, in particular, with the work of Iris Murdoch.

States of Nature

Philosophers who find the concept of a state of nature to be useful for thinking about moral and political issues have generally assumed that such a state can be understood in either a Hobbesian or a Lockean way, but not both. Hobbesian and Lockean states of nature are thought to be mutually incompatible in the sense that the empirical generalizations and normative claims associated with the constructs differ, and cannot simultaneously be true. This belief about mutual incompatibility is mistaken, if not as a matter of textual exegesis, then as an interpretation of the normative concepts philosophers have inherited from the works of Hobbes and Locke. We do not need to reach any new insights about what either Hobbes or Locke really meant to see the mistake. However Hobbes or Locke understood the meaning and significance of a state of nature within their more comprehensive accounts, the broadly Lockean and Hobbesian concepts of a state of nature continue to be enormously influential on contemporary moral and political philosophy. Recognizing the mutual compatibility of these two concepts has important normative implications for both subjects. If the states of nature are not mutually exclusive, then some persons could be in a Hobbesian state of nature while other persons are in a Lockean state of nature. Furthermore, a person could be in a Hobbesian state of nature in relation to some

Suffering and theory: Max Horkheimer’s early essays and contemporary moral philosophy

Max Horkheimer does not generally receive the scholarly attention given to other ‘Frankfurt School’ figures. This is in part because his early work seems contradictory, or unphilosophical. For example, Horkheimer seems, at various points (to use contemporary metaethical terms), like a constructivist, a moral realist, or a moral skeptic, and it is not clear how these views cohere. The goal of this article is to show that the contradictions regarding moral theory exist largely on the surface, and that one can go below the surface to reconstruct a coherent position. Part I will examine Horkheimer’s skeptical critique of morality, and show that it leads to the realist position discussed in part II. Part III then shows that such realism can only be understood within a larger constructivist project, which elaborates on a minimal normativity present in human experience. This reconstruction should make sense of Horkheimer’s work, and show its contemporary relevance.

Ethics and Intuitions: A Reply to Singer

In a recent paper, Peter Singer suggests that some interesting new findings in experimental moral psychology support what he has contended all along—namely that intuitions should play little or no role in adequate justifications of normative ethical positions. Not only this but, according to Singer, these findings point to a central flaw in the method (or epistemological theory) of reflective equilibrium used by many contemporary moral philosophers. In this paper, we try to defend reflective equilibrium from Singer’s attack and, in part, we do this by discussing Singer’s own favoured moral methodology as outlined in his Practical Ethics. Although basing ethics solely on (certain kinds of) intuitions certainly is problematic, we argue, basing it solely on ‘reason’ gives rise to similar problems. The best solution would arguably be one which could strike a balance between the two—but, we suggest, this is precisely what reflective equilibrium is all about.

The Second-Person Standpoint and the Law

One of the most exciting and potentially fecund developments in contemporary moral philosophy is due to a recent line of thought developed by Stephen Darwall. In The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect and Accountability, Darwall has defined a novel and interrelated set of concepts – which include those of the “second-person standpoint” and “second-personal reasons” – and has argued that these concepts shed new light on both the nature of moral obligation and the appropriate methods for justifying moral judgments. Because most traditional views of practical reason (including both Kantian and consequentialist views) are rooted in the first and third-person standpoints, Darwall’s work provides a fundamental challenge to a broad range of views in the literature. This article argues that – despite a number of important controversies surrounding Darwall’s underlying account of morality – there are special reasons to think that three of his core claims should have more powerful, more robust, and more uncontroversial applications to the law. Building on these three core claims, this article also develops a novel and highly integrated account of both legal authority and legal legitimacy, which helps to illuminate a number of the law’s otherwise puzzling features. The article also explains why, in light of these facts, there there are special reasons to apply contractualist (as opposed to consequentialist) standards to test for the legitimacy not only of public but also of private law. For those who are unfamiliar with these contemporary developments in moral philosophy, Section I introduces the concepts of the “second-person standpoint” and “second-personal reasons,” and locates them within the larger intellectual landscape in normative theory. Section II presents three core claims that Darwall makes about second-personal reasons, which are – in my view – most relevant to legal theory. Section III then develops a novel set of reasons for extending these core claims to the law, regardless of whether they apply to morality. Section III also develops a novel, and highly integrated, account of legal authority and legal legitimacy, and describes some of the potentially far-reaching applications that this account may have for legal theory. Section IV, finally, discusses some of the primary objections to Darwall’s views on morality – which arise from Korsgaard, James, Wallace, and Watson – as well as from the so-called “philosophical utilitarians.” It argues that these objections ultimately depend on special features of morality, which the law does not share, and that a close examination of these objections can therefore help explain just why these contemporary developments may have more powerful applications to law than to morality. Indeed, there are – in my view – special reasons for both Kantians and philosophical utilitarians (one branch of which includes many members of the law and economics movement) to think that the law is distinctive in ways that invite a fundamentally contractualist (rather than a fundamentally consequentialist) test for its its legitimacy, on distinctive grounds.

Murdoch the Explorer

One of Iris Murdoch’s most characteristic philosophical ideas is that any way of understanding what moral philosophy is and how it may be practised will be shaped by deep-going conceptual attitudes, of which moral philosophers themselves may be unaware. In her own philosophical writings she tried to bring out the role played by these attitudes, and to unsettle accepted ideas about the subject. I examine some of the elements in her thought which open up different ways of understanding the subject, and I discuss the relevance of these ideas to contemporary moral philosophy.

Rules, Responsibility and Commitment to Children: The New Language of Morality in Family Law

Part One of this Article explores the meaning of morality by briefly reviewing a variety of attempts to explore the meaning of moral conduct. This Section draws on a variety of contemporary moral philosophers who have built on the classical tradition to develop a broader definition of moral behavior. This discussion provides a context for the current debate about the meaning of morality in family law and moral discourse in the no-fault era. Part One also reviews the historical debate about how law should strike a balance between promoting communitarian values and respecting autonomy and individual rights. The Article argues that the conflict underlying this debate may be overstated. All laws have moral implications, and decisions about law, made by citizens, legislators and policymakers, necessarily involve choices that privilege some values over others. Regulating family members is a particularly value-laden task. A tension will always exist between protecting individual freedom and privacy of family members and state intervention to further the common good. However, this tension does not require a retreat from the concept of rights within the family; rather, rights can be conceived in a way that furthers the moral vision of family law by using rights as a tool to ensure the protection of vulnerable members of the family. Part One concludes by noting that the hierarchy of values embodied in the moral vision of family law has changed over time. Sexual morality has become less important over time while protecting children has become central to the moral framework of family law. Part Two of the Article examines the traditional, fault-based moral discourse in the law governing grounds for divorce, alimony and child custody that prevailed in this country until the 1970's. It concludes that this approach has several significant drawbacks. First, the fault-era's emphasis on sexual practices and traditional gendered family roles reinforced patriarchy and tended to hurt custodial parents-primarily women-and children. Additionally, the fault-era's reliance on broad discretionary standards resulted in inadequate financial awards and dual standards for men and women. Further, because moral discourse in family law has been primarily focused on issues of sexual conduct in marriage, the fault-era moral vision excluded families created outside of marriage. Litigating issues of fault also exacted significant financial and emotional costs on families. Finally, the emphasis on regulating sexual conduct in the fault-era did little to promote the evolving moral goal of family law-protecting children. Part Three of the Article explores the ways in which some laws that developed in the no-fault era express morality in family law. Examining current laws governing divorce, marital property, child support and custody, the Article identifies ways in which both the language surrounding the debates about such laws and the laws themselves express values of equality, commitment and responsibility for family members, particularly dependent members. The Article notes that for the first time, the language of morality has expanded into two areas that were largely unregulated in the “fault” era-access to marriage and family violence. The Article concludes that these developments over the last thirty years represent a healthy trend toward an overall family policy that strengthens families and protects each family's weakest members. Nevertheless, more needs to be done to achieve a family policy that protects children. Finally, the Article identifies additional measures, both in traditional domestic law and in the broader policy arena, that must be accomplished to truly strengthen families, and most importantly, to protect children.

A Paradox of Virtue: The Daodejing on Virtue and Moral Philosophy

Based on a reading of chapter 38 of the Daodejing , this article examines the relationship between the virtues and moral motivation. Laozi puts forward a view which might be termed a "paradox of virtue"—the phenomenon that a conscious pursuit of virtue can lead to a diminishing of virtue. It aims to show that Laozi's criticisms on the focus on the virtues and characters of agents, and his overall view on morality, pose challenges to a way of moral thinking that is common in modern moral philosophy, including virtue ethics.

Argumentacja we współczesnych debatach bioetycznych

Bioethics is understood in this article as one of the areas of applied ethics, i.e. as a philosophical discipline. From its very beginning, bioethics has been an area of controversy among ethicists representing different standpoints. The philosophical character of bioethics does not unambiguously determine the contents of the accepted norms. The reason for this is the fact that contemporary moral philosophy comprises many ethical theories which are the basis not only for bioethics, but also for other areas of applied ethics. Due to their diversity, the theories give diverging moral appraisals and norms. This divergence results from differences in methods of justification and in the anthropological premises accepted at the starting point of each of these theories. In this article two methods for justifying moral norms are examined, teleological and deontological. While these methods are also employed outside of bioethics, the following three arguments, (1) the playing God argument (2) the slippery slope argument and (3) the obligation for future generations argument, are typical of this discipline. The arguments consist in applying the general methods of justification to determine the moral permissibility of practical advancements in contemporary biomedicine.

Imperatyw kategoryczny i intuicjonistyczne dziedzictwo Sidgwicka

Artykuł przedstawia interpretację imperatywu kategorycznego podaną przez H. Sidgwicka w The Methods of Ethics i wpływ tej interpretacji na kolejne pokolenia filozofów anglosaskich. Interpretacja ta jest Kantowi całkowicie obca, ponieważ w swojej lekturze Kanta Sidgwick korzystał z zespołu idei, które od dawna były obecne w brytyjskiej filozofii moralnej i znacznie różniły się od idei Kantowskich. Autorytet Sidgwicka spowodował, że jego błędne opinie o imperatywie kategorycznym bezkrytycznie powtarzano bez solidnych badań nad tekstami Kanta. Sidgwickowska interpretacja imperatywu kategorycznego żyje własnym życiem w wielu podręcznikach historii etyki i pośrednio kształtuje myślenie moralne części dzisiejszych etyków.

Contemporary Moral Theory, Personal Commitments, and the Importance of Institutions

In this paper Graham Rhys Griffiths discusses Catherine Wilson’s assertion that many contemporary moral philosophers, their professed aims notwithstanding, ultimately provide justifications for the affluent lifestyles of citizens of developed nations. Though Wilson believes that these theorists, of whom she cites Susan Wolf and Thomas Nagel as examples, raise important points regarding the value of our personal commitments and their role in enabling us to live good lives, she suggests that they diminish the real requirements of a more impartial morality. Griffiths argues that this claim, as Wilson applies it to Nagel, is unfair. First, Griffiths shows how Nagel’s relaxation of an impartial morality’s requirements constitutes not a justification of our current lifestyles, but a dispensation due to our weaknesses. Second, he argues that Nagel does not go as far as Wilson herself in accepting the centrality of personal commitments to our lives. Finally, Griffiths argues that Nagel’s emphasis on institutions that alleviate gross inequalities gives a practical approach to creating a world in which we can all live up to the demands morality makes on us.

Personal Autonomy: New Essays on Personal Autonomy and its Role in Contemporary Moral Philosophy

Personal Autonomy: New Essays on Personal Autonomy and its Role in Contemporary Moral Philosophy

Personal Autonomy: New Essays on Personal Autonomy and Its role in Contemporary Moral Philosophy - Edited by James Stacey Taylor

Personal Autonomy: New Essays on Personal Autonomy and Its role in Contemporary Moral Philosophy - Edited by James Stacey Taylor

Todorov, Levinas and anti-totalitarian humanism: A perspective on contemporary utopian thought

This article explores the significance of anti-totalitarian humanism for contemporary moral and social philosophy, with special reference to the thinking of Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995). Special use is made of Tzvetan Todorov’s (1939) work “Hope and memory” to clarify the framework within which anti-totalitarian humanism takes shape, and also to shed light on the relation, similarities and disagreements between the totalitarian utopianism that characterized twentieth century fascist regimes, and other versions and residues of the utopian tradition, such as we encounter in Levinas and the early generation of Neo-Marxist philosophers. Levinas’ attempt in his early works to develop a humanism that is founded in both everyday material existence and interpersonal relationships is then examined in closer detail. Interpretations of the utopian significance of his phenomenological notions such as death, time and sociality, Messianic hope, despair and moral repair are offered. It is emphasized that Levinas’ early notion of innerworldly bliss constitutes a utopian core in his thought that is to be separate from the notion of innerworldly bliss that characterizes totalitarian utopianism, and also undermines the philosophical foundations of totalitarian utopianism.

The difficult good: a Thomistic approach to moral conflict and human happiness

The claim that human agents are vulnerable to tragic conflict, situations in which one cannot help but do wrong, is a commonplace in contemporary moral philosophy. This book draws on Thomas Aquinas's moral thought in order to delineate an alternative view. While affirming that the human good can be attained only through difficulty, including the difficulty of moral conflict, it argues that Aquinas's understanding of a natural, hierarchical ordering of human goods allows for the rational resolution of moral conflict in a way that avoids tragic necessity.

From Domestic to Global Solidarity: The Dialectic of the Particular and Universal in the Building of Social Solidarity

Contemporary moral and political philosophers who analyze the concept of solidarity tend to be divided between (philosophical) pragmatic communitarians and neo-Kantian universalists. The pragmatic communitarians contend that the bonds of mutual care that characterize a solidaristic community are constituted within particular societies where members share a strong common identity. 1 To construct a “we,” these theorists argue, particular groups define themselves against an “other.” In contrast, those writing in the Rawlsian or neo-Kantian tradition claim that human cooperative endeavors can only be sustained over time if carried out under just conditions of mutual respect. Thus, Charles Beitz and Thomas Pogge contend that today’s interdependent global society morally necessitates us to extend Rawls’s “difference principle” across borders. 2 The communitarian position emphasizes the exclusionary side of democratic sovereignty. The demos is self-defined, and, in the absence of a global state, must exclude others. But an overly pragmatic defense of particularism denies the universal impulse of democracy’s commitment to the equal moral worth of persons. A conception of community membership as static and given negates the historical reality that social movements of the excluded resort to universalist arguments when demanding to be included in the democratic polity. The egalitarian logic of democratic solidarity involves the equitable sharing of the risks, burdens, and opportunities of an interdependent society across lines of race, gender, and class. Thus, particular movements for democratic inclusion inevitably press their potential fellow citizens toward a more capacious and universal conception of equality. But, thus far, the sharing of social risk has only been achieved at the level of the state (with some social and human rights being institutionalized on a regional level within the European Union [EU]). Transnational movements for environmental, labor, and human rights have had modest successes and, upon occasion, the international community responds generously to natural disasters (but more unevenly to massive violations of human rights, as in Rwanda, the former Zaire, or Darfur). The neo-Kantian position underestimates the difficulty of transforming a transnational “ought” into a regional, let alone international “is” of effective human, labor, and environmental rights. The road to greater international solidar

Biologie, Genese und Geltung der Moral

In contemporary moral philosophy, philosophers turn to biological research of primatology. Their interest in this biological discipline is based on the assumption that insights from primatology may help explaining morality. This paper goes further into the question of how an explanation of the genesis of our morality may rest on considerations about a psychological altruism among primates. For that, in addition to the recent considerations of Philip Kitcher (1), it proves to be fruitful to refer to David Hume's explication of the genesis of morality (2). In the last section of this paper (3), we can then turn to the question of whether, and if so how, these considerations about the genesis of our morality might bear insights into the validity of moral judgements.

Introduction

In a number of debates in contemporary moral and political philosophy and philosophy of economics, philosophers hold the conviction that preferences have normative significance. A central assumption that underlies this conviction is that a cogent account of preference-formation can be developed. This is particularly evident in debates about well-being. Those who defend subjective accounts of well-being, on which a person’s life goes better for her to the extent that her preferences are satisfied, often qualify that account so that it does not include malformed or adaptive preferences (that is, preferences formed in non-autonomous ways, or humble preferences tailored to stifling circumstances), the satisfaction of which does not seem to contribute to well-being. This assumes that there is a normative standard of preference-formation with which to identify those preference that are malformed or adaptive in the relevant sense. An account of preference-formation is also important for philosophers who uphold an objective theory of well-being, on which well-being consists of the pursuit of objectively valuable goals, but who also believe in the value of freedom and thus emphasise the importance of respecting individuals’ choices among various goals. For they, too, in extolling the importance of respect for choices, assume that these choices are not distorted by inauthentically formed preferences, and thus also need an account of preference-formation to help distinguish those cases in which we ought to respect people’s choices from those in which we do not. In the vast literature on preferences, however, relatively little attention has been devoted to the

Christian Bioethics, Secular Bioethics, and the Claim to Cultural Authority

Though the papers in this volume for the most part address the question, “What is Christian about Christian Bioethics”, this paper addresses instead a closely related question, “How would a Christian approach to bioethics differ from the kind of secular academic bioethics that has emerged as such an important field in the contemporary university?” While it is generally assumed that a secular bioethics rooted in moral philosophy will be more culturally authoritative than an approach to bioethics grounded in the contingent particularities of a religious tradition, I will give reasons for rejecting this assumption. By examining the history of the recent revival of academic bioethics as well as the state of the contemporary moral philosophy on which it is based I will suggest that secular bioethics suffers from many of the same liabilities as a carefully articulated Christian bioethics. At the end of the paper I will turn briefly to examine the question of how, in light of this discussion, a Christian bioethics might best be pursued.

Isaiah Berlin: Liberty, Pluralism, and Liberalism

Isaiah Berlin: Liberty, Pluralism, and Liberalism. By George Crowder. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004. 256p. 24.95 paper.The conventional recent history of Anglophone normative political philosophy, which credits John Rawls's publication of A Theory of Justice (1971) with its rebirth, is unfair to those important figures who came before Rawls—chiefly Karl Popper, Michael Oakeshott, F.A. Hayek, and—the subject of this critical introduction—Isaiah Berlin. There is a further irony in that what can be clearly identified as the major theme of Berlin's lifework—moral pluralism—also dominates the late writings of John Rawls and those influenced by him. Indeed, it is arguable that the intense interest displayed in Berlin's account of pluralism owes much to the importance of this topic in contemporary moral and political philosophy. To some extent, even the Berlin of the classic and influential lecture “Two Concepts of Liberty”—which has for long constituted the inescapable starting point for any serious analysis of this ideal—is overshadowed by the Berlin who insists that the goods human beings pursue are inescapably plural, conflicting, and incommensurable.