Descriptive Ethics (eBook)

What does Moral Philosophy Know about Morality?

Nora Hämäläinen (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2016
132 Seiten
Palgrave Macmillan US (Verlag)
978-1-137-58617-9 (ISBN)

Infos

This book is an investigation into the descriptive task of moral philosophy. Nora Hämäläinen explores the challenge of providing rich and accurate pictures of the moral conditions, values, virtues, and norms under which people live and have lived, along with relevant knowledge about the human animal and human nature. While modern moral philosophy has focused its energies on normative and metaethical theory, the task of describing, uncovering, and inquiring into moral frameworks and moral practices has mainly been left to social scientists and historians.  Nora Hämäläinen argues that this division of labour has detrimental consequences for moral philosophy and that a reorientation toward descriptive work is needed in moral philosophy. She traces resources for a descriptive philosophical ethics in the work of four prominent philosophers of the twentieth century: John Dewey, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault, and Charles Taylor, while also calling on thinkers inspired by them. 

Nora Hämäläinen is a docent (affiliated senior researcher) at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and a research fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala, Sweden, 2016-2017. She is the author of Literature and Moral Theory and has co-edited the volume Language, Ethics and Animal Life - Wittgenstein and Beyond (with Niklas Forsberg and Mikel Burley).

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This book is an investigation into the descriptive task of moral philosophy. Nora Hamalainen explores the challenge of providing rich and accurate pictures of the moral conditions, values, virtues, and norms under which people live and have lived, along with relevant knowledge about the human animal and human nature. While modern moral philosophy has focused its energies on normative and metaethical theory, the task of describing, uncovering, and inquiring into moral frameworks and moral practices has mainly been left to social scientists and historians.  Nora Hamalainen argues that this division of labour has detrimental consequences for moral philosophy and that a reorientation toward descriptive work is needed in moral philosophy. She traces resources for a descriptive philosophical ethics in the work of four prominent philosophers of the twentieth century: John Dewey, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault, and Charles Taylor, while also calling on thinkers inspired by them. 

Inhalt

Introduction – What Does Moral Philosophy Know About Morality?1.  Moral Philosophy Today2. Morality as Known by Moral Philosophers3. The Foundational Project of Ethics and a Different Way of going Below the Surface4. The Challenge from X-phi?5. Dewey’s Empirical Ethics6. Wittgensteinian Applications7. Foucault’s Archeology and Genealogy of the Self8. Charles Taylor’s Modern Self9. The Descriptive and the Empirical10. Descriptive Ethics and the Philosopher

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 20.10.2016
• Zusatzinfo: X, 132 p.
• Verlagsort: New York
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Ethik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Philosophie der Neuzeit
• Schlagworte: Analytic philosophy • anti-theory in ethics • Charles Taylor • Descriptive ethics • ethics • John Dewey • Ludwig Wittgenstein • Michel Foucault • Moral • Morality • Moral Philosophy • Philosophy
• ISBN-10: 1-137-58617-6 / 1137586176
• ISBN-13: 978-1-137-58617-9 / 9781137586179