Sidgwick is usually considered to be a utilitarian, and with good reason. In an autobiographical fragment he tells us that his “first adhesion to a definite Ethical system was to the Utilitarianism of Mill”, and that after a variety of intellectual changes he became “a Utilitarian again, but on an Intuitional basis.” He refers to himself in other works and in letters as a utilitarian, and he was so viewed by his contemporaries. Hence it is understandable that (...) Albee should view The Methods of Ethics as “an independent contribution to the literature of Utilitarianism”, labelling it “the last authoritative utterance of traditional Utilitarianism”, and that almost everyone who discusses the book should agree with this classification of it. Yet Sidgwick did not himself say that the Methods is a defense or a restatement of utilitarianism. On the contrary: he was from the first at pains to disavow any intention of proving a system of morality and to insist that he is presenting only an examination of “the different methods of obtaining reasoned convictions as to what ought to be done which are to be found … in the moral consciousness of mankind generally.” In the “Preface” to the second edition he bemoans the misunderstanding which led critics to suppose that he was “writing as an assailant of two of the methods” he examines. One critic, he complains, thought he was giving “mere hostile criticism” of intuitionism, another “has constructed an article on the supposition that my principal object is ‘the suppression of Egoism’”. Yet a third critic, he remarks dryly, referring to a savage attack by F. H. Bradley, “has gone to the length of a pamphlet under the impression that the ‘main argument’ of my treatise is a demonstration of Universalistic Hedonism. I am concerned”, he comments, “to have caused so much misdirection of criticism”; and he goes on to reiterate his position about the two forms, egoistic and universalistic, of hedonism: “I do not hold the reasonableness of aiming at happiness generally with any stronger conviction than I do that of aiming at one’s own.”. (shrink)

Not only does a shared expertise in classical philosophy and literature inform the works of Martha Nussbaum and Bernard Williams, each has also written and spoken on contemporary social and political issues. Given such ranges of reference, it is not surprising that their two recent books, Frontiers of Justice, a treatise, and In the Beginning Was the Deed, selected essays, confidently take up fundamental political questions. Yet these books differ in their intentions, organising structures, and discursive strategies, and they have (...) little overlap in topics. What then may be hoped from their juxtaposition? That their moral-political perspectives are strongly anti-utilitarian, somewhat anti-Kantian, and self-professedly liberal are unpromising commonplaces. Their juxtaposition can point, I think, toward an alternative to liberalism that is not anti-liberal. Williams considered himself a ‘critical liberal’. But among his contributions to ‘processes of extension’ of liberalism is enlargement of the category of moral agency to some groups in political contexts. And Nussbaum wants to ‘extend the Rawlsian approach’ to liberalism so as to remain a ‘type of political liberal’. But one of her most important conclusions is that it is ‘easy to extend’ justice as political entitlements to nonhumans. Williams 's move toward nonperson moral agents and Nussbaum's toward nonhuman moral patients do not merely ‘extend’ liberalism but, if taken together, leverage a departure beyond it into postliberalism. (shrink)

Because of the way that the problem was originally framed, it is easy to misinterpret the response. In particular, it might look as though it amounts to a moral advocacy of a sort of consequentialist libertarianism to replace deontological libertarianism. It does not. And such an interpretation would be to miss the crucial main point in a typical way. For the response is not really about libertarian morals. It is about what interpersonal liberty is (in abstract theory) and what applying (...) it objectively entails (in normal practice). Most self-identified libertarians unwittingly have a moral muddle without a central factual theory of liberty. They cannot yet see that they first need to sort out what liberty is, and therefore entails if instantiated, and only after that can moral questions about it be coherently raised and tackled. An analogical error would be utilitarians who could not even give an account of utility. (shrink)

John Maynard Keynes, in a biographical essay that is as remarkable for the insight it provides into his own thinking as for what it says about its subject, described the trajectory of Malthus's intellectual career as follows: ‘from being a caterpillar of a moral scientist and chrysalis of an historian, he could at last spread the wings of his thought and survey the world as an economist’. Malthus himself had resisted this conclusion in the introduction to his Principles of Political (...) Economy — meant as a riposte to David Ricardo's way of proceeding — when he stated that ‘the science of political economy bears a nearer resemblance to the science of morals and politics than to that of mathematics’. For understandable reasons, however, some modern economists find Keynes's characterization more attractive, particularly when it also allows them to regret the fact that the free flight of the positive economist in Malthus was often impeded by historical and moral residues left over from earlier existences. By adopting this position they are able to discount awkward problems relating to the historical origins and professional identity of their discipline — those problems connected with Malthus's religious beliefs and theological standpoint that have to be confronted when his explicit claims as a Christian moral scientist are taken seriously. Lack of sympathy on the part of economists when faced with the moral and theological dimensions of Malthus's writings has a long history that goes back to Ricardo, who criticized his friend's confusion, as he saw it, of moral and economic considerations. James Mill, as always, was more outspoken in regretting the intellectual fetters that inevitably went with Malthus's clerical status. Some economic demographers, in modern times, have also criticized Malthus for intermingling ‘moralistic and scientific aims almost inextricably’, thereby imparting what they regard as an untestable or tautological air to his exposition of the population principle. (shrink)

A brief, radical defense of human uniqueness from acclaimed philosopher Roger Scruton In this short book, acclaimed writer and philosopher Roger Scruton presents an original and radical defense of human uniqueness. Confronting the views of evolutionary psychologists, utilitarian moralists, and philosophical materialists such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, Scruton argues that human beings cannot be understood simply as biological objects. We are not only human animals; we are also persons, in essential relation with other persons, and bound (...) to them by obligations and rights. Our world is a shared world, exhibiting freedom, value, and accountability, and to understand it we must address other people face to face and I to I. Scruton develops and defends his account of human nature by ranging widely across intellectual history, from Plato and Averroës to Darwin and Wittgenstein. The book begins with Kant's suggestion that we are distinguished by our ability to say "I"—by our sense of ourselves as the centers of self-conscious reflection. This fact is manifested in our emotions, interests, and relations. It is the foundation of the moral sense, as well as of the aesthetic and religious conceptions through which we shape the human world and endow it with meaning. And it lies outside the scope of modern materialist philosophy, even though it is a natural and not a supernatural fact. Ultimately, Scruton offers a new way of understanding how self-consciousness affects the question of how we should live. The result is a rich view of human nature that challenges some of today's most fashionable ideas about our species. (shrink)

Bioethics as a philosophical discipline deals with matters of life and death. How it deals with them, however, depends on the kind of life particular bioethicists focus on and the kind of value they assign to it. Natural-law ethicists and conservative Kantians emphasize biological human life regardless of its developmental stage. Integrative bioethicists also embrace nonhuman life if it can be protected without harming humans. Liberal and utilitarian moralists concentrate on life that is sentient and aware of itself, (...) to the exclusion of biological existence devoid of these. Extinctionist and antinatalist philosophers believe that life’s value is negative and that its misery should be alleviated and terminated by not bringing new individuals into existence. As the last-mentioned approach reverses the idea of life’s positive value, it could be called oibethics. (shrink)

Justice, equality, and righteousness—these are some of our greatest moral convictions. Yet in times of social conflict, morals can become rigid, making religious war, ethnic cleansing, and political purges possible. Morality, therefore, can be viewed as pathology-a rhetorical, psychological, and social tool that is used and abused as a weapon. An expert on Eastern philosophies and social systems theory, Hans-Georg Moeller questions the perceived goodness of morality and those who claim morality is inherently positive. Critiquing the ethical "fanaticism" of Western (...) moralists, such as Immanuel Kant, Lawrence Kohlberg, John Rawls, and the utilitarians, Moeller points to the absurd fundamentalisms and impracticable prescriptions arising from definitions of good. Instead he advances a theory of "moral foolishness," or moral asceticism, extracted from the "amoral" philosophers of East Asia and such thinkers as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Niklas Luhmann. The moral fool doesn't understand why ethics are necessarily good, and he isn't convinced that the moral perspective is always positive. In this way he is like most people, and Moeller defends this foolishness against ethical pathologies that support the death penalty, just wars, and even Jerry Springer's crude moral theater. Comparing and contrasting the religious philosophies of Christianity, Daoism, and Zen Buddhism, Moeller presents a persuasive argument in favor of amorality. (shrink)

Surveying the historical development and the present condition of utilitarian ethics, Geoffrey Scarre examines the major philosophers from Lao Tzu in the fifth century BC to Richard Hare in the twentieth. Utilitarianism traces the 'doctrine of utility' from the moralists of the ancient world, through the Enlightenment and Victorian utilitarianism up to the lively debate of the present day. Utilitarianism today faces challenges on several fronts: it cannot warrant the drawing of adequate protective boundaries around the essential interests (...) of individuals, and it does not allow them the space to pursue the personal concerns which give meaning to their lives. Geoffrey Scarre considers these and other charges, and concludes that whilst utilitarianism may not be a faultless moral doctrine, its positions are relevant, and significant today. Written with undergraduates in mind, this is an ideal course book for those studying and those teaching moral philosophy. (shrink)

The book defines and critically discusses the following five principles: the harm principle, legal paternalism, the offense principle, legal moralism and the dignity principle of criminalization. The book argues that all five principles raise important problems that point to rejections (or at least a rethink) of standard principles of criminalization. The book shows that one of the reasons why we should reject or revise standard principles of criminalization is that even the most plausible versions of the harm principle and legal (...) paternalism that have been offered so far are rendered redundant by general moral theories. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the other three principles (or versions thereof), the offense principle, legal moralism and the dignity principle of criminalization, can either be covered by the harm principle, thus making these principles also redundant, or be seen to have what look like other unacceptable implications (e.g. that versions of legal moralism are based on speculative and incorrect empirical assumptions or violate what is called the criminological levelling-down challenge). As such, there is reason to move beyond traditional principles of criminalization, and instead to investigate alternative principles the state should be guided by when attempting to justify which kinds of conduct should be criminalized. Moreover, this book presents and defends such a principle – the utilitarian principle of criminalization. (shrink)

Can there be such a thing as moral science, or a science of morality? And if so, what sense has the word science in such a connection? In the middle of the last century such a question would probably have seemed superfluous. Utilitarians, Comtists, and not a few “evolutionists” would all have claimed to be moralists, with this advantage over the metaphysical or theological moralists of an earlier day that their own moral doctrines were “scientific”.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 569-570 [Access article in PDF] Ross Harrison, editor. Henry Sidgwick. New York: Published for The British Academy by Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. v + 122. Cloth, $24.95. Henry Sidgwick consists of papers by Stefan Collini, John Skorupski, and Ross Harrison, with replies by Jonathan Rée, Onora O'Neill, and Roger Crisp.Collini's rich and witty paper considers two pictures of Victorian intellectuals—the (...) "public moralist," such as John Stuart Mill, and the academic specialist. Sidgwick in the 1880s and 1890s does not fit comfortably into either camp. He champions the academic philosopher over Leslie Stephen or Mathew Arnold; he contributes to Mind rather than writing to newspapers or standing for parliament; he refuses to take a public stand on the Boer war despite opposing it. He would not have been a teledon. But he also exerts influence on university policies (founding Newnham College for women, opposing the Latin and Greek requirement for admission), through Royal Commissions, and through his personal connections to those in power. (He had as brothers-in-law the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury.) He represents one solution to the new problem of combining academic specialization with practical concerns. [End Page 569]One quibble: Collini argues that Sidgwick wields his analytic method in order to end public debate; disagreements rest on conceptual confusions. But Sidgwick's late essays do not close with "a thin, dry question to which... the answer is more or less obvious," but with controversial proposals (44): to prevent war, individual cultivation of impartiality is more important than external arbitration; there are no significant differences between moral requirements on states and individuals; the unequal distribution of luxuries is morally defensible if and only if necessary for "aesthetic progress"; sociology is suspect and must be kept distinct from ethics. A second paper on clerical veracity is needed given controversy about the first.Harrison's slightly diffuse paper places Sidgwick in the utilitarian tradition of discussing sanctions for morality. (Crisp argues neatly that Bentham and Mill are closer to Sidgwick than Harrison allows.) Harrison closes by arguing that Sidgwick should not have been bothered by the dualism of practical reason—the view that utilitarianism and egoism conflict and that there are no decisive arguments for choosing between them. He should have ended the Methods with utilitarianism. The conflict between egoism and utilitarianism "should not matter" because "these are truths of practical rather than speculative reason." Conflict shows only that "we are not in the best of all possible worlds" (114). This helps if, with Harrison, Sidgwick's worry is the "theoretical" one that rival properties claim to be right-making (110). But Sidgwick sees the problem as practical: when egoism and utilitarianism conflict, I must decide which to follow.Skorupski also rejects the dualism. There are many true underived claims about reasons for action. Each can be seen as an instance of the "Feeling/Disposition Principle" (F): "If there's a reason to feel f there's reason to do what feeling f characteristically disposes one to do" (74). For example, if there is a reason to feel gratitude, there is a reason to express this gratitude. Egoistic reasons are the products of F when desire is the feeling. Any impartial theory, because it goes beyond the feelings of a particular individual in a particular situation, cannot be a case of F and so counts as a principle of practical reason. True claims about reasons for action are either many or, if restricted to practical reason, one. (Skorupski adds that an impartial theory, since indefeasible, trumps egoism. For example, my reason to express gratitude is defeated by noting that general good is not served by expressing gratitude, but need not be defeated by noting that my own good is not served. This, however, seems mere assertion. I suspect it, and F, are best pursued in Skorupski's Ethical Explorations [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999].)Showing that an impartial theory is not a case of F does not, by itself, show that it is a principle of practical reason... (shrink)

ABSTRACT The paper addresses the fundamental issue of the morality of terrorism. It distinguishes four types of terrorism—‘predatory,’‘retaliatory,’‘political’and ‘moralistic’—and argues that in all of them terrorism (in a ‘descriptive,’value‐neutral sense of the word) is always wrong. After a short introductory section the paper considers in some detail the conceptual problem of defining ‘terrorism’. Next it considers the possible application to terrorism, with the necessary modifications, of two main conditions of a ‘just war’; viz. the Principles of Discrimination and of Proportion. (...) It argues that these conditions support the paper's central contention. Additional support is then found in the concept and principles of human rights. In the final section the paper evaluates utilitarian arguments brought forth by Kai Nielsen in Violence and Terrorism: its uses and abuses, in support of so‐called ‘revolutionary terrorism’. Throughout the discussion is illustrated by some actual examples from the recent past. (shrink)

The essay deals with moral problems in Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu. The novel has been viewed by many as a survey of the ruling customs, as an outstanding psychological novel, as a study of human characters, and as a story of the decline of aristocracy. The description of facts has been noted in this way, but not the underlying idea. This essay shows Proust not only as an etologist, but also as a moralist. The essay consists of (...) three parts. The first one deals with Proust’s views connected with the theory of knowledge to be found in the novel. Special emphasis is put on the influence both of the atmosphere of his home and that of his time on the formation of Proust’s views, as his point of departure was the positivistic method as well as scientific and naturalistic approach to all events. Further, it should be stressed – and this has escaped many readers for a long time – that having applied his method Proust arrived at general conclusions which have proved to be in a sheer contradiction with this method. No writer of fiction before him has pointed out the importance of subjective factors in cognition better than he did. In defiance of positivism, Proust denies neither the existence of the essence of things nor of qualitative differences. Considerations relating to Proust’s analysis of the phenomenon of remembering and of different kinds of memory show how important they were for fixing his views on the insufficiency and inadequacy of intellectual cognition as well as on discovering its falsifications, simplifications and utilitarian character. Both the world of common experience and common sense and that of science are worlds of delusion. These conceptions show a striking coincidence with those of Bergson. (shrink)

Jacques Lacan was constantly and consistently motivated by the aims of carrying out, improving, and critically understanding psychoanalytic practice and theory. In his work and teaching, he examined and (re)incorporated a number of key experiences, conceptions, and insights from moral life and moral theories into psychoanalysis. -/- One particularly interesting aspect of Lacan’s work, particularly in terms of moral theory, is that while problematizing them, and reconceiving how we must understand them, his approach remains anchored by key themes, concepts, and (...) experiences of older moral theories and perspectives, such as the truth of the human subject, the nature of the good, and the processes and pitfalls of moral development. -/- Three main sets of issues are analysed and discussed in this chapter. First, we examine Lacan’s criticisms of modes and schools of psychoanalysis that converted it into a simplistically moralistic discipline such as ego-psychology. Second, we run over Lacan’s main discussions and partial appropriations of Aristotelian, Kantian, Utilitarian, Sadean, and Judeo-Christian moral perspectives. Third and finally, we go deeper into discussing the implications Lacan’s reinterpretation of selected Freudian concepts bear for ethics, particularly in terms of ethics of subjectivity. Put very briefly, we might say that Lacan is situating a process of becoming-subject within a never-complete field of ethical discourses. (shrink)

This book tells the story of modern ethics, namely the story of a discourse that, after the Renaissance, went through a methodological revolution giving birth to Grotius’s and Pufendorf’s new science of natural law, leaving room for two centuries of explorations of the possible developments and implications of this new paradigm, up to the crisis of the Eighties of the eighteenth century, a crisis that carried a kind of mitosis, the act of birth of both basic paradigms of the two (...) following centuries: Kantian ethics and utilitarianism. The new science of natural law carried a fresh start for ethics, resulting from a mixture of the Old and the New. It was, as suggested by Schneewind, an attempt at rescuing the content of Scholastic and Stoic doctrines on a new methodological basis. The former was the claim of existence of objective and universal moral laws; the latter was the self-aware attempt at justifying a minimal kernel of such laws facing skeptical doubt. What Bentham and Kant did was precisely carrying this strategy further on, even if restructuring it each of them around one out of two alternative basic claims. The nineteenth- and twentieth-century critics of the Enlightenment attacked both not on their alleged failure in carrying out their own projects, but precisely on having adopted Grotius’s and Pufendorf’s project. What counter-enlightenment has been unable to spell out is which alternative project could be carried out facing the modern condition of pluralism, while on the contrary, if we takes a closer look at developments in twentieth-century ethics or at on-going discussions on practical issues, we might feel inclined to believe that Grotius’s and Pufendorf’s project is as up-to-date as ever. -/- Table of Contents -/- Preface I. Fathers of the Reformation and Schoolmen 1.1. Luther: passive justice and the good deeds; 1.2. Calvin: voluntarism and predestination; 1.3. Baroque Scholasticism; 1.4. Casuistry and Institutiones morales -/- II Neo-Platonists, neo-Stoics, neo-Sceptics 2.1. Aristotelian, neo-Platonic, neo-Epicurean and neo-Cynic Humanists; 2.2. Oeconomica and the art of living; 2.3. Neo-Stoics; 2.4. Neo-Sceptics; 2.5. Moralistic literature -/- III Neo-Augustinians 3.l. The Jansenists on natura lapsa, sufficient grace, pure love; 3.2. Nicole on the impossibility of self-knowledge; 3.3. Nicole on self-love and charity; 3.4. Nicole against civic virtue, for Christian civility; 3.5. Malebranche on general laws and necessary evil; 3.6. Malebranche on Neo-Augustinianism and Platonism. -/- IV Grotius, Pufendorf and the new moral science 4.1. Grotius against Aristotle and the sceptics; 4.2. Mersenne and Gassendi; 4.3. Descartes on ethics as the last branch of philosophy’s tree; 4.4. Hobbes on scepticism and the new moral science; 4.5. Spinoza on the new moral science as a descriptive science;4.6. Locke on voluntarism and probabilism; 4.7. Pufendorf on natural law as an exact science; 4.8. Pufendorf on physical and moral entities; 10. Pufendorf on self-preservation -/- V The empiricist version of the new moral science: from Cumberland to Paley 5.1. Cumberland against Hobbesian voluntarism; 5.2. Cumberland and theological consequentialism; 5.3. Cumberland on universal benevolence and self-love; 5.4. Shaftesbury on the moral sense; 5.5. Hutcheson on natural law and moral faculties; 5.6. Gay, Brown, Paley and theological consequentialism. -/- VI The rationalist version of the new moral science: from Cudworth to Price 6.1. The Cambridge Platonists; 6.2. Shaftesbury on the moral sense; 6.3. Butler and a third way between voluntarism and scepticism; 6.4. Price and the rational character of moral truths; -/- VII Leibniz’s compromise between the new moral science and Aristotelianism 1.Leibniz against voluntarism; 2.Leibniz against the division between the physical and the moral good; 3.Leibniz on la place d’autrui and theological consequentialism; 4.Thomasius, Wolff, Crusius -/- VIII French eighteenth-century philosophers without the new moral science 8.1. The genealogy of our ideas of virtue and vice; 8.2. Maupertuis and moral arithmetic 8.3. The philosophes and the harmony of interests; 8.4. Rousseau on corruption, self-love, and virtue; 8.5. Sade on the merits of vice -/- IX Experimental moral science: Hume and Adam Smith 9.1. Mandeville’s paradox; 9.2. Hutcheson on the law of nature and moral faculties; 9.3. Hume on experimental moral philosophy and the intermediate principles; 9.4. Hume’s Law; 9.5. Hume on the fellow-feeling; 9.6. Hume on natural and artificial virtues and disinterested pleasure for utility; 9.7. Adam Smith’s anti-realist metaethics; 9.8. Adam Smith on self-deception and the paradox of happiness; 9.9. Adam Smith on sympathy and the impartial spectator; 9.10. Adam Smith on the twofold criterion for moral judgement and its paradox; 9.11. Reid on the refutation of scepticism and the self-evidence of duty -/- X Kantian ethics 10.1. Kantian metaethics: moral epistemology; 10.2. Kantian metaethics: moral ontology; 10.3. Kantian metaethics: moral psychology; 10.4. Kantian normative ethics; 10.5. Kant on the impracticability of applied ethics; 10.6. Kantian moral anthropology; 10.7. Civilisation and moralisation; 10.8. Theology on a moral basis and the origins of evil; 10.9. Fichte and the transformation of theoretical philosophy into practical philosophy XI Bentham and utilitarianism 11.1. Bentham’s linguistic theory; 11.2. Bentham’s moral ontology, psychology, and theory of action; 11.3. The principle of greatest happiness; 11.4. The critique of religious ethics; 11.5. The new morality; 11.6. Interest and duty; 11.7. Virtues; 11.8. Private ethics and legislation -/- XII Followers of the Enlightenment: liberal Judaism and Liberal Theology 12.1. Mendelssohn; 12.2. Salomon Maimon; 12.3. Haskalā and liberal Judaism; 12.4. Liberal Theology. -/- XIII Counter-Enlighteners 13.1.Romanticism and the fulfilment of individuality as the Summum Bonum; 13.2. Hegel on history as the making of liberty; 13.3. Hegel on the unhappy consciousness and the beautiful soul; 13.4. Hegel on Morality and Sittlichkeit; 13.5. Marx on ideology, alienation, and praxis; 13.6. Schopenhauer on compassion; 13.7. Kierkegaard on faith beyond ethics. -/- XIV Followers of the Enlightenment: intuitionists and utilitarian 14.1 Whewell‘s criticism of utilitarianism; 14.2 Whewell on morality and the philosophy of morality; 14.3 Whewell on the Supreme Norm; 14.4 Whewell on the conflict between duties; 14.5 Mill and the proof of the principle of utility; 14.6 Mill’s eudemonistic utilitarianism; 14.7 Mill on rules -/- XV Followers of the Enlightenment: neo-Kantians and positivists 15.1. French spiritualism; 15.2. Neo-Kantians: the Marburg school; 15.3. Neo-Kantians: the Marburg school; 15.4. Comte’s positivism and the invention of altruism; 15.5. Social Darwinism; 15.6. Wundt and an ethic of humankind -/- XVI Post-enlighteners: Sidgwick 16.1. Criticism of intuitionism; 16.2. On ethical egoism; 16.3. Criticism of utilitarianism -/- XVII Post-enlighteners: Durkheim 17.1. Sociology as physics of customs; 17.2. Morality as physics of customs and as practical science; 17.3. On Kantian ethics and utilitarianism; 17.4. The variability of moralities;17.5. Social solidarity as end and justification of morality; 17.6. Secular morality as “sociodicy”; XVIII Post-enlighteners: Nietzsche 18.1. On the Dionysian; 18.2. On the deconstruction of the world of values 18.3 On the twofold genealogy of moralities; 18.4. On ascetics and nihilism; 18.5. Normative ethics of self-fulfilment -/- Bibliography / Index of names / Index of concepts -/- . (shrink)

Several important discussions of Bradley’s ethical theory have recently appeared, among which is Professor Don MacNiven’s interesting paper on Bradley’s critical analyses of Utilitarian and Kantian ethics. In addition to directing us to central features in, and problems with, Bradley’s understanding of these doctrines, MacNiven correctly emphasizes the role of psychological discussions in Ethical Studies and remarks the distinction Bradley made between the moralist and the moral philosopher. Bradley is trying to understand moral experience, “the world of the thinking, (...) feeling moral agent, living his or her life out in the concrete context of family, society, and state,” and theories or systems of ethics are being judged according to their ability to illuminate that experience. MacNiven’s main concern is with Bradley’s arguments that neither utilitarianism and the empirical psychology on which it is grounded nor the Kantian ethics and the rational psychology that grounds it can satisfactorily explain moral experience. I do not wish to discuss these here. Rather, I want to offer some remarks about a topic that is introduced in MacNiven’s article but not discussed there because it is outside the scope of that paper. The topic arises when MacNiven mentions consistency and contradiction. He notes Bradley’s rejection of pure formalism in ethics, a purely formal theory being characterized as advocating the practical maxim, “realize non-contradiction”. One would be surprised to discover that Bradley thought such a view totally wrongheaded, and MacNiven rightly remarks that it “would be odd for Bradley to deny consistency a role in moral thought. After all, the principle of noncontradiction is fundamental for Bradley’s metaphysics and his coherence theory of truth.” However, as MacNiven would recognize, we need not be directed forward to Appearance and Reality to be assured of this, for noncontradiction has a central place in Ethical Studies. What is perhaps surprising is that there we are presented with the notion of a felt contradiction. In fact, there is considerable mention of feelings in Ethical Studies, and the notions of harmony and felt unity as well as that of a felt contradiction appear to be especially important. (shrink)

The claim that animals, as well as people, ‘have rights’ may often mean only that their interests ought to be given some moral weight: they should not be treated ‘cruelly’ or ‘inconsiderately’. The more demanding claim may also be made that animals should not be subjected to simple-mindedly utilitarian calculation: their choices, their liberty, should sometimes be respected even if this prevents the realization of some notionally ‘greater good’. Finally, talk of rights may have a clearly political context: if, (...) and only if, animals have rights, governments are entitled to legislate on how they should be treated. If they do not, then any laws on the subject are merely moralistic, and such as to be regretted by any sincere liberal. It is this last doctrine that I shall be investigating in this paper, with particular attention to the writings of Regan and McCloskey. Only in this context, so it seems to me, does much hang upon the question of whether animals ‘really’ have rights: for those outside the liberal, or libertarian, tradition it is enough to know that we ought not to disregard the suffering of our fellow-creatures, nor treat it merely ‘aggregatively’. (shrink)

Utilitarianism tells us that actions are morally right and good if and to the extent that they add to human happiness or diminish human unhappiness. And—or, perhaps, therefore—it also tells us that the best action a person can perform is that which of all the possible actions open to him is the one which makes the greatest positive difference to human happiness. Moreover, as everyone will also remember, utilitarianism further tries to tell us, perhaps intending it as a corollary of (...) that first, main claim, that the motive for an action has nothing to do with its moral rightness or goodness. But even if, as utilitarians, we accepted the dubious corollary, it would not follow, as many have thought, that utilitarians have no moral interest in motives. For unless, absurdly, a utilitarian believed either that there was never more than a fortuitous connection between on the one hand what we intended to do and on the other what we did and the consequences of what we did, or that, if there were such connections, we could not know of them, he must believe, as a moralist, that the best motive a person can have for performing an action is likely to be the desire to produce the happiest result. Indeed, utilitarians ought to be morally committed, it would seem, to trying to find out as much as they can about the consequences of our actions, e.g. what connections exist, if any, between how we raise children and what sort of adults they grow up to be. (shrink)

The Bishop of Questoriana has recently asked for a pontifical document ‘furnishing a doctrinal foundation of love and respect for life existing on the earth’. Mainstream moralists have urged, since the Axial Era, that it is human life that most demands love and respect. We realize and perfect our own humanity by recognizing humanity in every other, of whatever creed or race. Realizing that biological species are not natural kinds, more recent moralists have hoped to found moral decency (...) either on a respect for ‘rationality’ which excludes many of our conspecifics, or on simple loyalty to our immediate kin. Neither option is without its costs, and Catholic moralists in particular have often been suspicious of a morality that seems to lead to contempt for ordinary human life. Neither advocacy of ‘animal rights’ nor utilitarian calculation of animal pains and pleasures sit well with a traditional Catholic morality. Conversely, many of those who defend traditional practices such as hunting, farming or goading animals to fight, themselves suppose that ‘human’ and ‘animals’ may sometimes inhabit the same moral universe, that there are virtues that both may display in ‘noble action’. Developing this thought, it is possible to locate decency elsewhere than in an over-intellectual respect for ‘reason’. Decent treatment of animals (as of others) is that form of life which lets us live together ‘humanely’, in appreciation of the actual beings they are. Virtue, as Aristotle argued, lies less in acting nobly than in appreciating nobility. Those who claim to appreciate such nobility in beasts must learn to live humanely. (shrink)

Bentham and Mill and probably most utilitarians have a good deal in common with Hobbes and Spinoza as moral thinkers. For they share a commitment to deriving ethics from the actual and normal motivitations of human beings as creatures of the natural world rather than, like Kant and many religious moralists, from some transcendent realm to the requirements of which natural man has a duty to submit without expecting any help therefrom in the satisfaction of his natural inclinations. In (...) the present context I shall call all such thinkers ethical naturalists, though I do not mean this expression in any very precise technical sense, only to indicate a commitment to somehow deriving morality from natural fact. (shrink)

Wellek is surely right in arguing that the New Critics did not intend to behave as formalists, but I think he needs to explain why they came so close to doing so in spite of themselves. One explanation may lie in a sphere Wellek mentions but might have probed even more fully, the long-standing Romantic and modernist revolt against the culture of science, positivism, and utilitarianism. In Culture and Society, 1780-1950 , Raymond Williams argues that the Romantic reaction against industrial- (...) class='Hi'>utilitarian society led to a specialization of literature that attenuated literature's claims in a self-defeating way. Instead of contesting the realm of objective knowledge, the defenders of literature conceded this territory to science and commerce, either celebrating literature for its very freedom from such knowledge or claiming for it some alternate form of knowledge that could not be made rationally respectable. One could argue that the same pattern of misplaced reaction is seen in the New Criticism, that its revolt against the utilitarian, "Platonic" drives of science and positivism took the form of an attempt to divest literature of objective "truth of correspondence." Having equated this kind of truth with the most reductive forms of scientism, moralism, and propagandizing, the New Critics made it difficult to justify their own ambitious claims for the humanistic knowledge embodied in literature. Their way of reacting against the depravities of technological culture continues to be a common one today and can even be found in such adversaries of the New Critics as the cultural revolutionaries, the phenomenologists, and the deconstructionists—all of whom express the paradigms of our modern "adversary culture." It is an understandable and even perhaps an admirable reaction, but it has led to distortions in our conception of the humanities—one of which is the aggravation of that very dissociation of sensibility into scientific and poetic components that we all say we want to have done with. Gerald Graff, chairman of the English department at Northwestern University, is the author of Poetic Statement and Critical Dogma and, most recently, Literature against Itself: Literary Ideas in Modern Society. He responds in this article to René Wellek's "The New Criticism: Pro and Contra," published in Summer 1978 in Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

F. Skarbek's creative output and activity are most often an object of analyses performed by literature specialists, economists, penitentiarists, etc. This article is an attempt to show the entire social thought of Skarbek contained in publications, economic and non-economic works and having its origins in the Enlightenment reformatory tradition and creative reception of the greatest achievements in the field of the classical political economy. It proves that in Skarbek's creative output, there are consistently outlined the ideas of: the safe, organic (...) agricultural-industrial society; the free competitive economy, remaining within the sphere of influence of the protective state, which provides an appropriate socio-economic cover for the weakest participants of the economic community; an economical man restraining his aspirations, hardworking, industrious and, simultaneously, "kind-hearted". They correspond with a moderate criticism of the industrial society, with the liberal- utilitarian social ideology, with an attitude of a moralist and a social activist in the Kingdom of Poland. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:REDISCOVERING VIRTUE* SERVAIS PINCK.AERS, 0.P. L!universite de Fribourg Fribourg, Switzerland INTRODUCTION: THE DEBATE ABOUT VIRTUE VIRTUE is back. Especially in the United States, a widespread discussion about its role in moral theology has been initiated, a discussion modeled on Aristotle's Ethics, particularly as Aristotle's thought was developed in the Middle Ages by Thomas Aquinas. Accompanying this rediscovery of virtue is a criticism of modern ethical theories. These theories, having (...) broken with Aristotelian tradition, have led to a burgeoning of contradictory systems: a morality of obligation on the Kantian model; utilitarian morality; and a radical critique of morality by Nietzsche. Because of such divergences any discussion between moralists, especially where the foundations and principles of morality are involved, has up to the present seemed doomed to failure.1 •Translated by Sr. Mary Thomas Noble, O.P. 1 The author who has contributed most to this discussion of virtue is undoubtedly Alasdair Macintyre in his three principal books: After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981; second edition, 1984); Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame, 1988); Three Versions of Moral Inquiry: Encyclopedia, Genealogy, and 1radition (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame, 1990). The Italian edition of the last book, Enciclopedia, Genealogia e 1radizione (Milan, 1993), includes a special introduction on Macintyre and a biography. I should also like to mention the article by Martha Nussbaum, "Virtue Revived," Times Literary Supplement 4657 Ouly 3, 1992): 9-11. See also a recent book by Andre Comte-Sponville, Petit traite des grands vertus (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995). This work is very interesting because it proposes to a wide readership a moral system drawn from Aristotle that is at the same time based entirely on modern philosophy. In my opinion the author unintentionally confirms the thesis of the incompatibility of modern ethical systems of obligation and the 361 362 SERVAIS PINCKAERS, O.P. In view of this ethical pluralism, certain philosophers have undertaken to set up ethical norms through reflection on justice, using the methods of discussion and decision prevalent in our democratic societies. The initiative has been designated as procedural ethics.2 In this rather chaotic situation, other writers have thought a return to Aristotelian ethics opportune-a move that would enable us to reconnect with the long tradition of virtue-based morality represented therein, while bringing it up to date. In fact, the introduction of the concept of virtue offers many opportunities for the shaping of a morality that takes the human person into account. Virtue is a dynamic human quality acquired through education and personal effort. It forms character and assures continuity in action. Furthermore, it is set within the framework of community and a strong tradition, to whose development it contributes. Teaching on virtue would seem to be a good corrective for excessive individualism. This is what the socalled "communitarian" trend has emphasized.3 The debate on virtue has also surfaced within traditional Catholic teaching. Since the first half of this century, under the inspiration of St. Thomas, several authors of moral theology textbooks have undertaken to reorganize special morality on the basis of the virtues rather than the ten commandments, as had been done since the seventeenth century.4 Admittedly, the change Aristotelian construct of the virtues held by Macintyre. With the moderns he rejects a natural foundation for morality, within man, and thus robs the virtues he treats of their deep roots. Virtue is not spontaneous; it remains voluntaristic. 2 To mention a few titles: K. 0. Apel, Transformation der Philosophie, 2 vols. (Frankfurt, 1981); Apel, Ethique de la discussion (Paris, 1994); J.M. Ferry, Philosophie de la communication (Paris, 1994); Jiirgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handeln, 2 vols. (Frankfurt, 1981); Habermas, Moralbewusstsein und kommunikativer Handeln (Frankfurt, 1983); John Rawls, A Theory ofJustice (Harvard, 1971). 3 See, for example: J. H. Joder, Jesus et le politique: La radicalite ethique de la croix (Lausanne, 1984); S. Hauerwas, The Peacable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, 1983); W. Reese-Schafer, Was ist Kommunitarismus? (Frankfurt, 1994); Charles Taylor, The Sources ofthe Self: The Making ofthe Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass., 1989... (shrink)

The question of punishment is one which has always interested and usually puzzled moralists, and which forms a crucial example for the testing of moral theories. A utilitarian theory, whether of the hedonistic or of the ‘ ideal ’ kind, if it justifies punishment at all, is bound to justify it solely on the ground of the effects it produces. The suffering of pain by the person who is punished is thought to be in itself a bad thing, (...) and the bringing of this bad thing into the world is held to need justification, and to receive it only from the fact that the effects are likely to be so much better than those that would follow from his non-punishment as to outweigh the evil of the pain. (shrink)

An examination of the place and importance accorded to love in the systems representative of the Platonic-Christian, the utilitarian, and humanist world views. By a formal, literary analysis of parts of a major work of each of nine moralists, the author brings out their views on man and love. Despite a rather weak conclusion, and a few somewhat strained interpretations, her argument is clear and her analyses penetrating.--F. E. B.

What is it that one fundamentally rejects when one criticizes a way of thinking as moralistic? Taking my cue from the principal leveller of this charge in philosophy, I argue that the root problem of moralism is the dualism that underlies it. I begin by distinguishing the rejection of moralism from the rejection of the moral/nonmoral distinction: far from being something one should jettison along with moralism, that distinction is something that any human society is bound to develop. But this (...) valuable distinction is transformed into a problematic dualism when it casts the two sides of the distinction as contrasting sharply in nature, value, and structure. In ethics, the resulting dichotomy takes the form of a dualism of morality and prudence. In politics, it takes the form of a dualism of principle and interest. I explain the enduring appeal of such dualisms before laying out the costs of moralism thus conceived: moralism erodes our sensibility to the moral and political costs of value conflicts; it projects an unrealistic conception of agency that sets up scepticism about responsibility; and it limits our ability to appreciate and realize the wider variety of nonmoral values that sustain us, our achievements, and morality itself. (shrink)

:This article examines the moralistic language and arguments used in relation to genetics. The focus is on three practices: the claims that there is a duty to know about one’s own genetic makeup, assertions that genetic information should be used to inform reproductive decisions, and the proposition that there are moral reasons to participate in biobank research. With these three, the author contends that there are equally good, if not better, arguments to challenge them from a Millian perspective. Furthermore, especially (...) in the current political climate, there is a need to respect people’s privacy concerns. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy: the moralistic fallacy. The moralistic fallacy occurs when one concludes that something is a particular way because it should or ought to be that way. Alternatively, this fallacy occurs when one concludes that something cannot be a particular way because it should not or ought not be that way. The moralistic fallacy is often described as the reverse of the is/ought fallacy, wherein one reasons fallaciously that because things (...) are a particular way, they ought to be that way. Variations of the moralistic fallacy occur whenever any normative claim is used to justify a factual claim about the world, and so the pattern of fallacious reason central to the moralistic fallacy can also be found in legal reasoning, prudential reasoning, or reasoning regarding proper etiquette, aesthetics, humor, or appropriate emotional responses. (shrink)

This book examines the contributions of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French women philosophers and intellectuals to moralist writing. Moralist writing, a distinctively French genre, draws on philosophical and literary traditions extending back to classical antiquity. Closely connected to salon culture and influenced by Augustinianism, it engages social and political questions, epistemology, moral psychology, and virtue ethics. The first half of the book analyzes women’s use of moralist forms such as the essay, maxim, and “character” or portrait to explore classical topics: self-knowledge (...) and knowledge of the self, the ethics and obligations of friendship, the relation of the passions to happiness. The second half focuses on topics that relate directly to women’s lifeworld: the critique of the institution of marriage, the status of older women, and the question of women’s nature and capabilities. Each chapter traces the evolution of women’s moralist thought from the late seventeenth century to the Enlightenment and the decades immediately following the French Revolution, a period of tremendous change in the horizon of possibilities for women as public figures and intellectuals. (shrink)

Moralism involves the distortion of moral thought, the distortion of reflection and judgement. It is a vice, and one to which many - from the philosopher to the media pundit to the politician - are highly susceptible. This book examines the nature of moralism in specific moral judgements and the ways in which moral philosophy and theories about morality can themselves become skewed by this vice. This book ranges across a wide range of topics: the problem of the demandingness of (...) morality; the conflict between moral and other values; the contrast between the practice of moral philosophy and other modes of moral thought or reflection; moralism in the media; and, moralism in the public discussion of literature and art. This highly original and provocative book will be of interest to students of philosophy, psychology, theology and media, and to anyone who takes a serious interest in contemporary morality. (shrink)

In the Realm of Criminal Law, Antony Duff seeks to defend the view that we should criminalize conduct only if it is wrongful. Skeptics of legal moralism argue that this occurs all the time in supposedly overinclusive offenses whose definitions capture not only the kind of conduct that constitutes the target wrong, but also a wider class of conduct that is not wrongful prior to prohibition. An example is statutory rape. Duff, in response, contends that such offenses need not violate (...) the requirements of legal moralism. Having exploitative sex with juveniles is obviously wrong even prior to its legal regulation. But having non-exploitative sex with juveniles is also potentially wrong, inasmuch as it involves a violation of a prohibition that society has decided is justified for instrumental reasons. While Duff’s analysis offers an ingenious explanation for why offenses like statutory rape need not violate the bare minimum requirements of legal moralism, it simultaneously exposes separate, largely unacknowledged, problems of fair labeling and proportionality. By combining in a single offense wrongs that are primarily malum in se with ones that are primarily malum prohibitum—a process referred to as “wrongfulness conflation”—we risk treating unlike wrongs alike, imposing disproportionate punishments, and blurring offense labels. And such problems occur not just in the context of statutory rape, but also with respect to a host of other supposedly overinclusive offenses, including various forms of sexual assault. (shrink)

Legal moralists hold that the immorality of an action is a sufficient reason for the state to prevent it. Liberals in the tradition of Mill generally reject legal moralism. However, Larry Alexander has recently developed an argument that suggests that a class of legal restrictions on freedom that most liberals endorse is, and perhaps can only be, justified on moralistic grounds. According to Alexander, environmental restrictions designed to preserve nature or beauty are forms of legal moralism. In this paper, (...) I explore two liberal lines of response to Alexander’s argument. The first argues that an aesthetic interest is among our basic legally protectable interests. This argument claims that environmental and other regulations designed to protect beauty and nature are justified in order to prevent setbacks to this aesthetic interest. The second focuses on a democratic conception of the public interest. It holds that democratic communities are entitled, through their institutions, to shape the community and environment they live in. On this view, the community need not appeal to moralism to justify its adoption of environmental regulations, since in adopting such regulations it is simply enacting its collective preferences. On these grounds, I claim that Alexander’s case for the claim that aesthetic regulations can only be justified on moralistic grounds is much weaker than he takes it to be. (shrink)

In section i, I sketch the main arguments to date for legal moralism, And show the ways in which they are unpersuasive. In sections ii and iii, I sketch and evaluate a seemingly compelling argument, Dependent on the concept of wrongful conduct, For the weak thesis that the immorality of conduct is a reason, But not a sufficient reason for making it illegal. Despite the apparent persuasiveness of this argument, The particular conclusions of the legal moralist, That various non-Harmful immoralities (...) ought on balance to be criminal, Do not obviously follow. Finally, Once the argument for the weak thesis is understood, Even its initial persuasiveness is undermined by considerations of legal philosophy. (shrink)

The theology of John Calvin has deeply affected the American mentality through two streams of thought, Puritanism and Jansenism. These traditions formulate moral problems in terms of absolute, clear principles and avoid casuistic analysis of moral problems. This approach is designated American moralism. This article suggests that the bioethics movement in the United States was stimulated by the moralistic mentality but that the work of the bioethics has departed from this viewpoint. Keywords: bioethics, Calvinism, casuistry, Jansenism, moralism, moral principle, Puritanism (...) CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Williams’s well-known critique of the ‘moralism’ of liberal political philosophy—its disconnect from political reality—holds special significance for the theory and practice of constitutional adjudication, where calls for ‘realism’ increasingly resound. Is constitutional discourse also guilty of moralism—as Williams himself thought—or might it succeed where political philosophy has failed? This paper reconstructs Williams’s critique of political moralism as one that decries the empty idealism of the philosophical project of abstraction: the quest for general, timeless, and universal principles drains theory of its (...) prescriptive force. It then argues that legal-constitutional reasoning, even in its most ambitious ‘forum of principle’ conception, is not a flight to abstraction but precisely a pragmatist negotiation of the concreteness-abstraction tension through acts of justification. But constitutional discourse in its current form remains moralistic in another distinct sense: it idealizes the political, thereby failing to account for the social and political pressures on courts and the proper normative significance of institutional considerations. Constitutional discourse could only offer a solution to the ailments of political philosophy if it cures its own chronic idealization. (shrink)

According to immoralists, some artworks are better aesthetically in virtue of their immorality. A. W. Eaton recently offered a novel defence of this view, seeking to overcome shortcomings in previous accounts, thereby occasioning a reconsideration of immoralism. Yet, as I argue in this paper, Eaton’s attempt is unsuccessful, insofar as it consists partly of inadequately supported claims, and partly—and more interestingly, albeit paradoxically––of covert moralist assumptions that are, eo ipso, incompatible with immoralism. I then turn to a parallel debate in (...) ethics concerning the possibility of admirable immorality, suggesting that a consideration of the state of that debate further supports my argument against immoralism. I close by suggesting some strategies by which immoralists may offer a rejoinder, although I note that their prospects are rather dim, not least because available defences of immoralism and similar positions all seem to share the same flawed pattern. (shrink)

Philosophers often call emotions appropriate or inappropriate. What is meant by such talk? In one sense, explicated in this paper, to call an emotion appropriate is to say that the emotion is fitting: it accurately presents its object as having certain evaluative features. For instance, envy might be thought appropriate when one’s rival has something good which one lacks. But someone might grant that a circumstance has these features, yet deny that envy is appropriate, on the grounds that it is (...) wrong to be envious. These two senses of ‘appropriate’ have much less in common than philosophers have supposed. Indeed, the distinction between propriety and correctness is crucial to understanding the distinctive role of the emotions in ethics. We argue here that an emotion can be fitting despite being wrong to feel, and that various philosophical arguments are guilty of a systematic error which we term the moralistic fallacy. (shrink)

This imaginative and unusual book explores the moral sensibilities and cultural assumptions that were at the heart of political debate in Victorian and early twentieth-century Britain. It focuses on the role of intellectuals as public moralists and suggests ways in which their more formal political theory rested upon habits of response and evaluation that were deeply embedded in wider social attitudes and aesthetic judgments. Collini examines the characteristic idioms and strategies of argument employed in periodical and polemical writing, and (...) reconstructs the sense of identity and of relation to an audience exhibited by social critics from John Stuart Mill and Matthew Arnold to J.M. Keynes and F.R. Leavis. (shrink)

abstract The term ‘moralism’ is often used to pick out a set of vices in judgment, such as hypocrisy, officiousness, arrogance, presumption, and sanctimony. I relate these vices to notions of standing and office and the roles they play in proper moral judgment. Behind these notions, I suggest, lie broad moral injunctions to think generously of our fellows and sternly of ourselves. These injunctions are manifested in both serious discourse and popular opinion. Finally, I explore the possibility that the distinction (...) I urge between moralism and morality can't ultimately be sustained, and conclude that the distinction stands. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to reconcile the vulgar (normative) definition of punishment with the positivistic (purely descriptive) definition that separates the ethics of punishment from its definition—punishment positivism. I will argue that although the vulgar definition has critical issues, this does not mean that we should stop using normative concepts in the definition of punishment. I will attempt this reconciliation by considering one of the prime arguments in favour of punishment positivism—namely, definitional stop—and show why it doesn't work. I (...) will proceed by presenting a functional argument in favour of what I call punishment moralism: the idea that punishment should be considered as a response to perceived wrongdoing. This definition, while using normative concepts, still remains descriptive. In this way, I hope to be able to solve the problem of both views by combining their insights. (shrink)

In Morality and Socially Constructed Norms, Valentini searches for a unifying principle that underlies whatever genuine obligations we might have to obey the norms of any and all social practices, ranging from line queueing norms, through offsides rules in soccer, to obligations not to break the law. I argue that this search is driven, and distorted, by a commitment to what Bernard Williams labeled the ‘morality system’. Once we see this, we should question the value of the unifying project. Most (...) social norms can be considered on their own terms, as part of a rich and variegated ethical life, without subsuming them under the question of whether others’ moral rights are at stake. Similarly, political obligation needs to be understood in relation to the practical activity of politics, not as an abstract moral quandary. (shrink)

Early modern France boasts a rich tradition of acclaimed moralist writers: Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Pascal, Saint-Évremond. Women have rarely featured in this intellectual history,...

The ethicist's role in the clinical context is not presently well defined. Ethicists can be thought of as moralists, technicians, Sophists, or as teachers and learners. Each of these roles is examined in turn. An argument is made for the ethicist as a teacher who must also learn a great deal about the clinical setting in order to encourage an effective critical examination of basic values. Four specific tasks of this teaching role are discussed: describing moral experience, eliciting assumptions, (...) considering multiple alternatives and justifying choices. (shrink)

Moralism is often described as a vice. But what exactly is wrong with moralism that makes it aptly described as a character flaw? This paper will argue that the problem with moralism is that it downgrades the force of legitimate moral criticism. First, I will argue that moralism involves an inflated sense of the extent to which moral criticism is appropriate. Next, I will examine the value of legitimate moral criticism, arguing that its value stems from enabling us to take (...) a stand against immoral behavior. Finally, I will argue that unwarranted moral criticism downgrades the force of legitimate moral criticism and that this is why moralism should be seen as a vice. (shrink)

abstract In this paper I consider the nature of the purported vice of moralism by examining two examples that, I suggest, exemplify this vice: the first from Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter; the second from David Owen's account of his experience as European negotiator between the warring parties in the former Yugoslavia. I argue that in different ways both these examples show the kind of human weakness or failure that is involved in the most extreme version of moralism, a weakness (...) that involves an inability to see or acknowledge those one seeks to judge as real, morally accountable, human beings. (shrink)

This article sets out some of the key features of a realist critique of liberal moralism, identifying descriptive inadequacy and normative irrelevance as the two fundamental lines of criticism. It then sketches an outline of a political theory of modus vivendi as an alternative, realist approach to political theory. On this account a modus vivendi should be understood as any political settlement that involves the preservation of peace and security and is generally acceptable to those who are party to it. (...) In conclusion, some problems with this conception of modus vivendi and with a realist political theory more generally are discussed. In particular, the question is raised of whether a realist political theory should be understood as an alternative to liberal moralism or only a better way of doing basically the same kind of thing. (shrink)