Finding a Place for Moral Theory
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Nora Hämäläinen
Abstract
In this paper I discuss the contemporary philosophical attack against moral theory with Martha Nussbaum's article ‘Why Practice needs Ethical Theory’ (Oxford University Press, 2000) as a point of departure. The attack which Nussbaum discusses is related to an overly restrictive idea of moral theory, according to which the task of moral theory is to produce decision procedures for moral questions. Although the critique against decision procedures in ethics is motivated, there is a risk of loosing valuable insights if a generally anti-theoretical approach is adopted. If moral theory is understood as partial, pluralist and preliminary theoretical thinking and writing about ethical questions, there will be no need to abandon theory. I discuss two defenses of moral theory; first Nussbaum's idea of moral theory as a tool for driving out prejudice, and second, an idea of moral theory as a way of systematically exploring our disparate moral intuitions. Both of these build on a pluralist conception of ethical theory.
© Philosophia Press 2006
Articles in the same Issue
- Spiritual Objectivity. A systematic expansion of the body-mind-problem
- Finding a Place for Moral Theory
- Too Many Dispositional Properties
- The Problem of the Criterion, Skepticism, and the Cartesian Circle
- Limit-situation. Antinomies and Transcendence in Karl Jaspers' Philosophy
- Access to the Abstract: Intuition as Mental Modelling
- Entity Realism Meets the Pessimistic Meta-Induction Argument. The World is not Enough
- The Pessimistic Meta-Induction. A Response to Jacob Busch
- Casullo on the Nature and Existence of A Priori Justification
- Steen Ebbesen and Carl Henrik Koch, The Danish History of Philosophy, 5 volumes, Gyldendal 2002-2004
- Ole Fogh Kirkeby, Eventum tantum - begivenhedens ethos, 592 pages, Forlaget Samfundslitteratur, Copenhagen, 2005
- Alois Pichler and Simo Säätelä (eds.): Wittgenstein: The Philosopher and his Works. Working Papers from the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen no 17, Bergen 2005. 420 pages. ISBN 82-91071-20-9
Articles in the same Issue
- Spiritual Objectivity. A systematic expansion of the body-mind-problem
- Finding a Place for Moral Theory
- Too Many Dispositional Properties
- The Problem of the Criterion, Skepticism, and the Cartesian Circle
- Limit-situation. Antinomies and Transcendence in Karl Jaspers' Philosophy
- Access to the Abstract: Intuition as Mental Modelling
- Entity Realism Meets the Pessimistic Meta-Induction Argument. The World is not Enough
- The Pessimistic Meta-Induction. A Response to Jacob Busch
- Casullo on the Nature and Existence of A Priori Justification
- Steen Ebbesen and Carl Henrik Koch, The Danish History of Philosophy, 5 volumes, Gyldendal 2002-2004
- Ole Fogh Kirkeby, Eventum tantum - begivenhedens ethos, 592 pages, Forlaget Samfundslitteratur, Copenhagen, 2005
- Alois Pichler and Simo Säätelä (eds.): Wittgenstein: The Philosopher and his Works. Working Papers from the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen no 17, Bergen 2005. 420 pages. ISBN 82-91071-20-9
