essays on the history of ethics dec 2009

[...]... intentionally left blank introduction I am not a scholar of the history of philosophy or of the history of ethics; and anyone who reads the essays that follow will soon become aware of that fact if they aren’t already aware of it from reading things I have previously written Nonetheless, I think there is a significant place for a book like this one that seeks to use ideas from or interpretations of the history. .. number of areas outside of ethics The two terms or notions therefore offer us a very general method or prism for viewing large swaths of the history of philosophy, and in what follows I shall be taking up all these themes and relating them to particular issues and controversies both inside and outside the field of ethics 1.1 Elevation versus Reduction One of the main strengths or attractions of act-utilitarianism... true for Stoic elevationism These are theories, and they can be true in the way theories are true rather than definitionally or by virtue of some form of ethical mathematics In addition, the idea of reducing one kind of entity or property to another is often clarified by invoking the notion of certain distinctions being reducible to certain others For example, we naturally think of the mental as in some... seeks to offer an explanation of why these changes, and especially this last reversal of the Rossian order of explication, have historically occurred I found “Under the Influence: A Very Personal Brief History of LateTwentieth-Century Ethics, ” the ninth essay in this book, to be the most fun to think about and write of all the essays included here It charts the history of the period through the lens of my... terms of wholes and parts (rather than in terms of the higher and the lower), the choice among reduction, elevation, and dualism can also be seen to apply in the field of social philosophy Social atomism is the reductionistic option regarding the relation between individuals and the societies of which they are members, whereas an organicism that treats the individual as a mere aspect or reflection of society... about the content of virtue and refer only to how they connect virtue with well-being.) But the possibilities of elevationistic ethical monism are not yet exhausted, and if we take the proper lesson from the assumed failure of Aristotelian elevationism, we may yet learn how to construct a (more) plausible form of elevationistic virtue ethics and, in addition, how to recognize an inchoate version of such... as) the lower.4 Note, however, that such reduction(ism) isn’t the inevitable effect of any attempt to unify the concepts of ethics, a price we have to and should be willing to pay if we value theoretical systematization and unification highly and are willing to pay the price of rejecting many of our ethical intuitions.5 There is another mode of intra-ethical unification that involves just the opposite of. .. that the notion of teleological ethics is difficult to make coherent sense of, given the advances that have occurred in our understanding of ethical and ethics- historical issues in recent decades; and it says that we probably don’t need to make use of the teleological/ non-teleological distinction any more Perhaps the plausibility of the conclusion will help justify the shortness, and not just the title,... another matter But it might help that reader if, instead of just leaving the essays to themselves in the order in which they appear in this book, I said something by way of introducing them and perhaps in some instances also connecting them The order of the essays in this book follows a rough trajectory of earlier to later in the history of ethics But since I think it can be helpful to understand theories... better way of referring to it (and it would have been even more perplexing if I had used this new term in the title of the essay) The Opposite of Reductionism” goes on to show that the opposition between reductionism and elevationism has application outside of ethics to issues like the mind–body problem, the debate between rationalism and empiricism, and differing theories about the nature of social . OF ETHICS This page intentionally left blank 3 introduction I am not a scholar of the history of philosophy or of the history of ethics; and anyone who reads the essays that follow will soon. term in the title of the essay). The Opposite of Reductionism” goes on to show that the opposition between reductionism and elevationism has application outside of ethics to issues like the mind–body. probably don’t need to make use of the teleological/ non-teleological distinction any more. Perhaps the plausibility of the conclusion will help justify the shortness, and not just the title, of the