Week 1: Moral Theory and Its History

1.    Morality and Ethics

". . . the terms 'moral' and 'ethical' have slightly different resonances. 'Ethical' (derived from a Greek word for personal character) carries a broader conception, including a concern with the value of different kinds of life and activity; 'moral' (derived from a Latin word for social custom) tends to narrow its interest to rules and obligations, and to the experiences and considerations most closely related to those.  'Moral' is often used (though it does not have to be) in such a way that is supposed to make an important difference whether a given consideration or feeling is or is not of the moral kind: remorse, for instance, may be sharply contrasted with other forms of regret as being a properly moral reaction, and it can become a matter of anxiety which personal characteristics have strictly moral value, as contrasted with such qualities as wit or sexual attractiveness.  there is some basis for such distinctions in everyday experience, but they cannot be taken too far: intelligence, sensitivity, a sympathetic imagination, a certain toughness can all have their relevance to the moral life without being exclusively 'moral' qualities'."

Bernard Williams, "Ethics," in Philosophy: A Guide Through the Subject, ed. A. C. Grayling ( Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 546.

2.    Moral Theory: "The Dominant Conception" (quotation from and chart derived from Dale Jamison, Peter Singer (ed.), Blackwell's A Companion to Ethics [1991], p. 477):

"The job of moral theorists, on the dominant conception, is to make particular moral theories explicit, to describe their universality, and to make vivid their coercive power.  This is done through examining arguments, assessing evidence, and scrutinizing logical relationships."

NOTE: (1) derived from experience, (2) universal, (3) coercive,  and (4) rational.  CONTRAST with scientific theory, which is explanatory rather than action-guiding.

3.    Major Figures: pre-20^th century (READ J.B. Schneewind, "Modern Moral Philosophy," in Singer, pp. 147-57)

Socrates, Plato and Aristotle (virtue)

Montaigne (1533-92; sceptical)

Aquinas (natural law)

Grotius (1583-1645; secularized natural law)

Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan (1651): egoism and social contract

John Locke (1632-1704): inalienable rights

Pierre Bayle (1681): there could be an atheist decent society

Shaftsbury, Inquiry concerning Virtue (1711): moral sense

David Hume (1711-76): sceptic and virtue theorist

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): categorical imperative; deontology

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832): originator of utilitarianism (but was a hedonistic one)

John Stuart Mill (1806-73): eudaimonic utilitarian

Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (1874): intuitionistic and utilitarian

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900): challenged conventional morality

4.    Early 20^th Century

1903 - G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica

·        ideal utilitarian, but goodness is indefinable

·        moral facts are intuited

·        formulated naturalistic fallacy (open question argument)

1920s and 30s - emotivism

·        Vienna Circle: Rudolf Carnap, Moritz Schlick & Kurt Gödel

·        A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936)

·        Charles Stevenson, Ethics and Language (1944)

·        analysis of moral language

1930 - W.D. Ross, The Right and the Good - non-utilitarian intuitionism

1950s - R. M. Hare - universal prescriptivism

5.    Except for the pragmatists (James and Dewey) moral philosophy had become meta-ethics, talking about morality rather that recommending practices (normative ethics)

6.    Last half of the 20^th century

1958 - G. E. M. Anscombe, "Modern Moral Philosophy": revived virtue theory

1970s - The applied turn/feminist ethics: 1971- John Rawls, Theory of Justice

7.    Today ethics is much more pluralistic

 NOTE: Much of the foregoing (but not the first point) will be modified or challenged during the semester.  The dominant conception will come under attack and other theories will be considered than those presented in the chart.  The account of the latter half of the twentieth century will be augmented to some extent by attention to Continental thinkers.