Against Ethical Exceptionalism – Through Critical Reflection on the History of Use of the Terms ‘Ethics’ and ‘Morals’ in Philosophy
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Hans Fink
Abstract
In this paper, I aim to support contextual ethics as a broad and open understanding of ethics and the ethical by commenting on the origin of the words ‘ethics’ and ‘ethical’ in Greek philosophy and on the ambiguities built into them from the beginning. I further list some complexities that arose when the Latinate words ‘morals’ and ‘moral’ began to be used in Roman, medieval and modern philosophy, sometimes as synonyms of and sometimes in contrast to ‘ethics’ and ‘ethical’. Finally, I return to discuss the prospects of contextual ethics in the context of developments in moral philosophy in the twentieth century, adding some pragmatist arguments in its favour.
References
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© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- 10.1515/sats-2020-frontmatter2
- Editorial
- Contextual Ethics – Developing Conceptual and Theoretical Approaches
- Invited Paper
- Against Ethical Exceptionalism – Through Critical Reflection on the History of Use of the Terms ‘Ethics’ and ‘Morals’ in Philosophy
- Articles
- What Makes Life a Lie? Love, Truth and the Question of Context
- Ethical Concepts ‘in Search of a Meaning’: G.H. von Wright’s Broad Framework for (Contextual) Ethics
- Contextual Ethics: Taking the Lead from Wittgenstein and Løgstrup on Ethical Meaning and Normativity
- How to Work with Context in Moral Philosophy?
- Moral Context, Moral Complicity And Ethical Theory
- In Search of the Context of a Question
Artikel in diesem Heft
- 10.1515/sats-2020-frontmatter2
- Editorial
- Contextual Ethics – Developing Conceptual and Theoretical Approaches
- Invited Paper
- Against Ethical Exceptionalism – Through Critical Reflection on the History of Use of the Terms ‘Ethics’ and ‘Morals’ in Philosophy
- Articles
- What Makes Life a Lie? Love, Truth and the Question of Context
- Ethical Concepts ‘in Search of a Meaning’: G.H. von Wright’s Broad Framework for (Contextual) Ethics
- Contextual Ethics: Taking the Lead from Wittgenstein and Løgstrup on Ethical Meaning and Normativity
- How to Work with Context in Moral Philosophy?
- Moral Context, Moral Complicity And Ethical Theory
- In Search of the Context of a Question
