Abstract
According to a widely held view, moral thought essentially involves the survey of an array of independently specifiable morally relevant facts, on the basis of which an agent is to reach a judgment about how anybody in that situation ought to act. I argue, drawing on Henry James’s What Maisie Knew, that one thing that such a view discounts is the role of imagination in moral thought, and specifically in contributing to what Iris Murdoch has called someone’s personal vision of life.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- “Among the omitted stuff, there are many good remarks of a general nature” – On the Making of von Wright and Wittgenstein’s Culture and Value
- Are the Aristotelian conversion rules easy for human thought?
- The Real Problem with Uniqueness
- What Maisie Knew: Moral Imagination and Two Conceptions of Moral Thought
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- “Among the omitted stuff, there are many good remarks of a general nature” – On the Making of von Wright and Wittgenstein’s Culture and Value
- Are the Aristotelian conversion rules easy for human thought?
- The Real Problem with Uniqueness
- What Maisie Knew: Moral Imagination and Two Conceptions of Moral Thought