History Of Moral Philosophy Research Articles

Justice as Non-maleficence

The principle of non-maleficence, primum non nocere, has deep roots in the history of moral philosophy, being endorsed by John Stuart Mill, W. D. Ross, H. L. A. Hart, Karl Popper and Bernard Gert. And yet, this principle is virtually absent from current debates on social justice. This article suggests that non-maleficence is more than a moral principle; it is also a principle of social justice. Part I looks at the origins of non-maleficence as a principle of ethics, and medical ethics in particular. Part II introduces the idea of non-maleficence as a principle of social justice. Parts III and IV define the principle of justice as non-maleficence in terms of its scope and coherence, while Part V argues that the motivation of not doing harm makes this principle an alternative to two well-established paradigms in the literature on social justice: justice as mutual advantage (David Gauthier) and justice as impartiality (Brian Barry).

Universality and Autonomy in Kant’s Moral Philosophy

The paper is devoted to the analysis of Kant’s approach to the ideas of universality and autonomy as the constitutive features of morality. The paper shows that Kant’s findings concerning these ideas were anticipated by the previous history of moral philosophy, mainly by the modern moral philosophers, who focused specifically on the elaboration of the philosophical concept of morality. Kant’s peculiar role was that, firstly, he conceptualized the ideas of universality and autonomy and formulated corresponding principles; secondly, Kant integrated both principles into the concept of moral law (a key concept in his moral philosophy) and revealed the way by which the formula of universality and the formula of autonomy together with formula of humanity constitute the supreme principle of morality and essentially express the sense of morality itself. Kant believed that the reason for the failure of the previous attempts to explicate the supreme principle of morality was inability to understand that the moral agent is subject not only to universal but at the same time his own legislation. Thirdly, Kant, unlike his predecessors, in his examination of universality didn’t appeal to the human nature or nature of things. Fourthly, he underlined that the principle of universality and the principle of autonomy were not only interconnected but also shaped each other: the determination of will may be identified as a universal principle only if it is given through a moral agent’s rational will. And a moral agent may be identified as autonomous only if in his decisions and actions he is guided by principles that are universalizable.

Response to commentaries on Disorientation and Moral Life

In Disorientation and Moral Life, I consider disorientations as experiences of not knowing how to go on following serious life events and experiences like those involved in traumas, grief, illness, education, consciousness raising, and migration. I challenge a history of moral philosophy that I claim has been preoccupied by a focus on the best moral agents as those who are most decisive, wholehearted, and clear about how they ought to act. In this piece, I respond to three commentaries on Disorientation and Moral Life. In particular, I offer reflections on how disorientations might be useful in contexts of disability studies, prison abolitionism, professional philosophy, anti-racist action, and political organizing.

Essays on the History of Moral Philosophy, by J. B. Schneewind

Essays on the History of Moral Philosophy, by J. B. Schneewind

The Concept of Natural Law and its Development in the History of Moral Philosophy

The article deals with the logical structure and the development history of the concept "natural law" (jus naturale) within the framework of the paradigm that preceded the New Europe history of European moral philosophy: Greek- and Latin-speaking periods. The author identifies practical-legal and theoretical-philosophical aspects of the concept of natural law. The author insists on the necessity to study the second aspect with a view to clarifying the general theoretical foundations of jurisprudence and ethics, as well as enhancing their interdisciplinary communication. The paper substantiates an approach to the analysis of the concept «natural law" in the light of methodology of the discipline "History of Concepts." The author briefly outlines the paradigm on which the study has been built. The article provides an analysis of contradiction of the concept «natural law" that was fixed in the so-called "discussion physis-nomos" (nature vs. an establishment) in ancient Greek philosophy. The author demonstrates the role of this contradiction in the development of the theory of natural law. He differentiates two lines of the development of the theory of natural law in accordance with two sides of this controversy: the theory of human nature (reasonable and social), on the one hand, and the theory of natural normativity (subject and object as the requirement of natural law), on the other hand. The author demonstrates the role of Greek philosophy and Christian theology in the development of these theories. He explicates the link of «natural law" with key concepts, provides its theoretical context: human nature, reasonable nature (natdra rationalis) is a natural "society" (societas) of a human, moral action (actus moralis, actio moralis), natural law (lex naturalis), divine law (lex divïna), and conscience (conscientia). A historical and philosophical context of the development of the theory of natural law is illustrated with a number of paradigmatic wordings borrowed from the works of the most significant thinkers that developed different sides of the theory -- from Aristotle to Hugo Grotius. The paper notes terminology and conceptual gap between antique, medieval and early New European moral philosophy, on the one hand, and modern humanities and social sciences, on the other. The author highlights the necessity to overcome it by means of analyzing philosophical foundations of ethical and legal thoughts defined in the philosophical tradition of natural law.

Law, Ethics, and the Needs of History: Mendelssohn, Krochmal, and Moral Philosophy

AbstractAlthough the role of ethics in modern Jewish thought has been widely explored, major works by foundational philosophers remain largely absent from such discussions. This essay contributes to the recovery of these voices, focusing on the Hebrew writings of Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) and Nachman Krochmal (1785–1840). I argue that these texts reveal the existence of a shared ethical project animating these founding philosophical voices of Jewish modernity, and that reconstructing their claims contributes to broader conversations about the relationship between ethics and law. Mendelssohn and Krochmal present Jewish law as addressing needs emerging from the history of moral philosophy—from the modern histories of Platonic and Aristotelian ethics. Moreover, my reading highlights these thinkers’ ongoing relevance, suggesting that their work illuminates the role of law in ethical cultivation.

Aristotelian Naturalism and the History of Ethics

Aristotelian Naturalism and the History of Ethics David O. Brink (bio) terence irwin’s monumental three-volume The Development of Ethics is a masterful reconstruction and assessment of figures, traditions, and ideas in the history of ethics in the Western tradition from Socrates through John Rawls.1, 2 The three volumes weigh in at over 11 pounds and span 96 substantial chapters and over 2,700 densely formatted pages (large pages, small margins, and small font). The Development of Ethics covers not only familiar figures, such as Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Hutcheson, Butler, Hume, Smith, Reid, Kant, Hegel, Mill, Green, and Sidgwick, but also a rich variety of ancient sources (including the Cynics, Cyrenaics, Skeptics, and Church Fathers, including Augustine), medieval, renaissance, and reformation sources (including Scotus, Ockham, and Machiavelli), sources for natural law (including Hooker, Vasquez, Suárez, Grotius, Pufendorf, and Barbeyrac), continental rationalists (including Spinoza and Leibniz), British moralists (including Cumberland, Cudworth, Shaftesbury, Clarke, Balguy, and Price), post-Kantians (including Marx, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Heidegger) and twentieth-century English-language sources (including Moore, Ross, Stevenson, Ayer, Lewis, and Hare). This is just a sampling of the more familiar historical sources that Irwin [End Page 813] discusses. He also discusses a wealth of less familiar philosophical and theological figures. For the most part, the chapters are organized chronologically, rather than thematically. Most chapters are devoted to individual figures, and several figures get multiple chapters (Aristotle gets four, Aquinas nine, Scotus two, Suárez two, Hobbes three, Hutcheson two, Balguy two, Butler four, Hume five, Reid two, Kant seven, Hegel two, Mill two, Sidgwick three, and Rawls two). A few chapters discuss traditions and themes. The combination of scope and depth in The Development of Ethics is, as far as I know, without precedent. Existing comprehensive histories of ethics, such as Henry Sidgwick’s Outline of the History of Ethics and Alasdair Macintyre’s A Short History of Ethics, as their titles suggest, are, however valuable, both less comprehensive and less thorough. Even important recent studies that deal with the history of modern ethics in significant detail, such as John Rawls’s Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, Stephen Darwall’s The British Moralists and the Internal ‘Ought’: 1640–1740, and Jerome Schneewind’s The Invention of Autonomy, concern only modern philosophy and, even there, have less comprehensive ambitions. The broad scope of Irwin’s inquiry pays various dividends, not the least of which is that he is able to show that some ideas and themes often taken to be distinctive of modern ethics have their origins and antecedents in antiquity. Fortunately, Irwin has the skills necessary to make good on the ambitions of his study. Indeed, it is hard to think of anyone else as well qualified historically, philologically, and philosophically to undertake such an ambitious interpretive and philosophical task and carry it out with such authority. Any reader (or reviewer) of Irwin’s three volumes should find the process humbling. Though Irwin has a keen sense of the context of the figures and ideas he discusses, he is focused on and relentless about understanding and assessing the philosophical content and implications of the texts. Though he provides self-contained reconstructions and assessments of various figures and traditions that make good sense of those figures and traditions on their own terms, two general principles emerge from and guide his discussion. The first principle is a methodological commitment to Socratic dialectic, as refined and practiced by Aristotle (DE §2). As a rough first approximation (but see §1 below), this makes Irwin’s approach to the history of ethics essentially comparative. In understanding and assessing the philosophical claims of a particular figure or tradition, he finds it fruitful to compare the philosophical commitments and resources of that figure or tradition with the commitments and resources of other figures and traditions. This is valuable, Irwin maintains, whether those different figures and traditions were in actual and conscious conversation or not. The second principle is a substantive set of commitments that are perhaps clearest in Aristotle and Aquinas but that Irwin thinks influence, in various ways, much of the history of ethics. This principle Irwin calls Aristotelian naturalism...

Late Hospitality: Kant, Radcliffe, and the Assassin at the Gate

In order to exemplify the terms that govern his interdiction against lying, Immanuel Kant has recourse to a familiar scenario from the history of moral philosophy: the assassin at the gate. Can one lie in order to redirect a murderer who pursues one's guest? This essay considers how Kant's commitment to truth-telling supersedes his commitment to hospitable practices, and suggests how the peculiarly inhospitable worlds of the gothic novel might depend upon a similar ethical exigency. But great crimes are paroxysms, the sight of which makes one whose soul is healthy shudder. (Immanuel Kant, Metaphysics of Morals 1797)

Mark Coeckelbergh: Growing moral relations: critique of moral status ascription

In the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn (1962) famously distinguished between what he called ‘‘normal science’’ and those rare but necessary instances of paradigm shift, when there is a fundamental transformation in the very rules of the game. I do not think it is hyperbole to say that Mark Coeckelbergh’s Growing Moral Relations: Critique of Moral Status Ascription is a book that is situated at, and contributes to what can only be described as, a significant paradigm shift in moral thinking. It is, in other words, a real game changer. The subject of Coeckelbergh’s book is moral status ascription, or more precisely the problem of deciding who is morally significant and what is not. These two small, seemingly simple words, as Jacques Derrida (2005, p. 80) has reminded us, are not unimportant. They make all the difference, for they distinguish between persons who have moral standing and what are considered to be mere things. This decision (quite literally a cut that is made within the very fabric of existence) is typically enacted and justified on the basis of the intrinsic properties of the entity in question. Coeckelbergh calls this transaction ‘‘the properties approach to moral status ascription,’’ and the book begins with a penetrating analysis and critique of this ‘‘normal science.’’ The properties approach is rather straight forward and intuitive: ‘‘identify one or more morally relevant properties and then find out if the entity in question has them’’ (p. 14). But as Coeckelbergh insightfully points out, there are at least two persistent problems with this undertaking. First, how does one ascertain which properties are sufficient for moral status? In other words, which one, or ones, count? The history of moral philosophy can, in fact, be read as something of an on-going debate and competition over this matter with different properties—rationality, speech, consciousness, sentience, suffering, etc.—vying for attention at different times. Second, once the morally significant property has been identified, how can one be certain that a particular entity possesses it, and actually possesses it instead of merely simulating it? This is tricky business, especially because most of the properties that are considered morally relevant are internal mental states that are not immediately accessible or directly observable from the outside. In other words, even if it were possible to decide, once and for all, on the right property or mix of properties for moral standing, we would still be confronted and need to contend with a variant of the ‘‘other minds problem.’’ The history of moral philosophy can be interpreted as an ongoing (and perhaps even an inconclusive) struggle to respond to and resolve these two problems. And significant developments in the field are often the result of identifying some new criteria of inclusion. This is evident, for example, in animal rights philosophy, which, following the suggestions of Jeremy Bentham (2005), shifted attention from an active ability, like speech or conscious thought, to the passive capability of ‘‘Can they suffer?’’ (p. 283). Similarly recent efforts to address the moral status of machines, like artificial intelligence systems and robots, often propose clever reconfigurations of the Turing Test (see Allen et al. 2000; Sparrow 2004) to help ascertain whether an artificial entity actually possesses a particular property or not. Coeckelbergh, although recognizing the importance of these issues and debates, does not engage the question of moral status at this level. He realizes that this endeavor, although having the weight of tradition behind it, can only produce what G. W. F. Hegel called schlechte Unendlichkeit, a bad or spurious infinity that simply turns D. J. Gunkel (&) Dekalb, IL, USA e-mail: dgunkel@niu.edu

O INTUICIONISMO MORAL E OS DILEMAS MORAIS

Na história da filosofia moral, por um lado, de Platão, passando por Aristoteles, I. Kant, J. S. Mill, e mais recentemente incluindo racionalistas como J. Habermas, J. Rawls, R. M. Hare e C. Korsgaard, várias tentativas foram feitas para mostrar que a razão é o melhor guia para nossas ações e julgamentos. Por outro lado, outros filósofos como D. Hume, A. Smith, A. J. Ayer, P. F. Strawson and S. Blackburn ensinaram que a moralidade deve ser uma tarefa para nossos sentimentos. Eu penso que é mais plausível aceitar que nossas duas capacidades devem ser consideradas na decisão moral, porque há novos importantes dados da psicologia, ciências cognitivas e neurociências que evidenciam a importância dos sentimentos nas nossas decisões, e não apenas a da racionalidade. Leis, valores e sentimentos morais podem todos nos dar boas razões para agirmos moralmente. Esta é a razão pela qual eu defendo aqui a visão que as abordagens da filosofia moral falham em oferecer uma boa maneira de tratar questões morais quando elas não abordam também o papel das emoções. Deste ponto de vista, eu pretendo mostrar aqui que uma forma de intuicionismo pode ajudar-nos a responder a questão sobre o conhecimento moral e aprender o modo como nós decidimos. Eu argumento que esta forma de intuicionismo pode nos ajudar a lidar com os dilemas morais. Na primeira parte do artigo eu considero as definições de dilemas morais, na segunda, na terceira e quarta partes eu explico três formas de intuicionismo – a racionista (D. Ross), a empirista (R. Audi) e a reflexiva (C. Gowans) – e finalmente na última secção eu indico uma forma de pensar as intuições. Eu chamo este tipo de intuicionismo naturalista. O naturalismo moral é a posição que nossas decisões e julgamentos são parcialmente determinados por um processo natural e propriedades naturais do mundo. Neste sentido, eu assumo que algumas de nossas capacidades emotivas (como a de sentir nojo, revolta por desaprovação, indignação, arrependimento, vergonha, etc.) ou capacidades cognitivas (e.g. racionalidade, cognição) estão gravadas e integradas na nossa psicologia. Isto significa que as normas morais sociais são aprendidas deste a infância, embora dadas pela evolução. Logo, elas podem ser tomadas como naturais no sentido que elas são produtos tanto do mundo social como da constituição biológica do ser humano.

Hegel’s Revival of Socratic Ignorance

G. W. F. Hegel is stuck between a rock and a hard place in the history of moral philosophy. On one hand, he is frequently regarded as an infamous critic of Kantian moral individualism. From the standpoint of Kierkegaard's Socratic revival, Hegel is seen as ignoring or even suppressing the individual in favor of a 'systematic' form of philosophy. This paper addresses both criticisms by reconstructing Hegel's unique contribution to the history of moral philosophy. Refusing to reduce Hegel to a foil for either Kant or Kierkegaard reveals his own inheritance of a Socratic ethic. I argue that Hegel revives a long-suppressed form of moral and practical philosophy: the Bildung of one's self-understanding that involves both self-knowledge and self-transformation. Understanding the way in which Hegel resurrects and reinterprets this conception of moral philosophy requires that one pay attention to the close connection between his systematic method and his unique version of skepticism.

Rawls on Kant

This article will investigate Rawls's claim that his theory is Kantian in origin. In drawing on the Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, I will show that Rawls's claim to be Kantian cannot be conclusively explained and assessed without the Lectures. An investigation of the Lectures shows that Rawls forces onto Kant's theory a Rawlsian interpretation which crucially alters Kant's theory. So far the secondary literature has neglected to subject Rawls's Lectures to detailed philosophical scrutiny. This article aims to fill this gap in the literature on Rawls's Kantianism. I will identify three points in Rawls's interpretation of Kant (need for CI-procedure, willing condition, true human needs) which are questionable. I argue that the similarities of Rawls's theory to Kant are due to these (mis)interpretations, which makes Rawls's claim to be Kantian ultimately not legitimate.

Antonio Genovesi's Diceosina: Source of the Neapolitan enlightenment

Antonio Genovesi (1713–1769) is known as the thinker who raised a whole generation of Southern Italian intellectuals, among them Francesco Pagano and Gaetano Filangieri. One of the most influential of his works was the notoriously difficult Diceosina, o sia della filosofia del giusto e dell’ onesto (1766), a textbook destined for use in the universities. The Diceosina was a powerful, if controversial, attempt to mediate between the history of moral philosophy on the one hand, and the specific problems encountered by eighteenth-century commercial society on the other. In fact, it contained the greater part of Genovesi's political, philosophical, and economic thought; a synthetic guidebook for Neapolitan economic and social development. This essay explores the work's context, rich intellectual origins, and ultimate significance through its long and complicated reception. The cultural and political connotations of Genovesi's Diceosina become particularly evident through an engagement with the works of Ermenegildo Personè, one of the book's most arduous critics.

Rawls' Linguistic Analogy: A Study of the 'Generative Grammar' Model of Moral Theory Described by John Rawls in 'A Theory of Justice.' (Phd Dissertation, Cornell University, 2000)

The aim of the dissertation is to formulate a research program in moral cognition modeled on aspects of Universal Grammar and organized around three classic problems in moral epistemology: (1) What constitutes moral knowledge? (2) How is moral knowledge acquired? (3) How is moral knowledge put to use? Drawing on the work of Rawls and Chomsky, a framework for investigating (1)-(3) is proposed. The framework is defended against a range of philosophical objections and contrasted with the approach of developmental psychologists like Piaget and Kohlberg.One chapter consists of an interpretation of the analogy Rawls draws in A Theory of Justice between moral theory and generative linguistics. A second chapter clarifies the empirical significance of Rawls' linguistic analogy by formulating a solution to the problem of descriptive adequacy with respect to a class of commonsense moral intuitions, including those discussed in the trolley problem literature originating in the work of Foot and Thomson. Three remaining chapters defend Rawls' linguistic analogy against its critics. In response to Hare's objection that Rawls' conception of moral theory is too empirical and insufficiently normative, it is argued that Hare fails to acknowledge both the centrality of the problem of empirical adequacy in the history of moral philosophy and the complexity of Rawls' approach to the problem of normative adequacy. In response to Nagel's claim that the analogy between moral theory and linguistics is false because whatever native speakers agree on is English, but whatever ordinary individuals agree in condemning is not necessarily wrong, it is argued that the criticism ignores both Rawls' use of the competence-performance distinction and the theory-dependence of the corresponding distinction in linguistics. In response to Dworkin's claim that Rawls' conception of moral theory is incompatible with naturalism and presupposes constructivism, it is argued that Dworkin's distinction between naturalism and constructivism represents a false antithesis; neither is an accurate interpretation of the model of moral theory Rawls describes in 'A Theory of Justice.' The thesis concludes by situating Rawls' linguistic analogy within the context of broader debates in moral philosophy, metaethics, natural law theory, the theory of moral development, and the cognitive and brain sciences.

Comments on the Commentaries

Adams's suggestion that there must be one really right way of presenting the history of moral philosophy seems implausible to me, so I reject – with additional reasons – his charges against the structure of Invention of Autonomy. Skorupski's way of stating the ‘equal moral abilities’ thesis is not, I argue, very Kantian; a more Kantian version is not open to his objections. I am unconvinced by Schultz's claim that Sidgwick did not really hold that thesis. Deigh raises questions I cannot reply to here, but I do offer some texts that seem to show that Sidgwick is not guilty of the confusion about ‘ought’ with which Deigh charges him.

Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy

Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy

Human Rights: Universalism and Cultural Relativism

Much mainstream legal comment on human rights law presents an unhelpfully crude picture of disagreement concerning the significance that should be attached to human rights in particular cultural co...

History Between Biblical Religion and Modernity. Reflections on Rawls' Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy

(2002). History Between Biblical Religion and Modernity. Reflections on Rawls' Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. The European Legacy: Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 445-451.

Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy

Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy

Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy

Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy