Review of Craig Taylor's MORALISM (original) (raw)
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Craig Taylor, Moralism: A Study of a Vice (Durham: Acumen, 2012). xi + 187, price £11.99
Philosophical Investigations, 2013
Rupert Read, UEA This is an important book on an important subject.Taylor's charming and delicate prose guides the reader carefully and often delightfully through difficult waters: the "moral dilemmas," if that is the right phrase (Taylor suggests good reasons why in fact it isn't; this is one of many virtues of his book), facing foreign ministers, journalists, artists, reality-show participants, philosophers, Lord Jim, Dostoevsky's "Idiot," and in fact all of us, everyone. There has never, in this reviewer's opinion, been a better critique of "moralism" than this book. Taylor argues that moralism is a vice, and an important and dangerous vice. His argument is convincing, and by and large (though not alwayssee below), he himself manages beautifully to avoid moralising, in the process. (This might seem obvious/natural/easy; but in fact my experience is that those who are against moralism are quite often the worst-the most persistent-moralisers of all. How easy it is, how appealing, to self-righteously moralise. .. against moralism!) Having said that, there remain some areas that Moralism opens up for debate that are by no means settled by it, and from which, in my view, an alternative (or at least a complementary) track opens up, towards a stance rather different from Taylor's. I propose to spend most of this review focusing on those areas and on that alternative track. Before doing so, let me make a few other, specific, philosophical points that arise in relation to Taylor's book, and that will, I think, interest readers of Philosophical Investigations: (1) On p. 147, Taylor criticises an SUV-driver with a "No blood for oil" bumper-sticker. An easy criticism to make, but perhaps too easy.There seems a tacit danger at this of Taylor descending into moralism here towards individuals. For: It is a perfectly legitimate move for an individual to make under many circumstances to say that they would do
Morality in Spite of Interests - 10 August
The issue of the relationship between matter and mind (biology and freedom that makes morality possible) did not commence with Darwin’s (mis-titled) Origin of the Species (more accurate: Origin of Species from Other Species). In the 18th century alone, one only need recall the British/Scottish Rationalist/Moral Sense school, d’Holbach’s and Bonnet’s materialist reductionism, Leibniz’ pre-established harmony between consciousness and matter, or Lessing’s ugly ditch. Johann Nicolaus Tetens’ (1777) Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwicklung was on Kant’s desk as he wrote the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. The issues (not the technology, to be sure) of today‘s morality and neurobiological reductionism are at the core of Tetens’ debate with Charles Bonnet. Tetens’ project on the nature and development of humanity is a defense of the complementarity of “evolution” (preformation) and “epigenesis” (novelty), which is engaged by Kant in his discussion of teleology and morals later in the Critique of Judgment. At issue is causal explanation. Are causal explanations analytic (grounded merely in perception) or synthetic (requiring the mind to add imperceptible elements to perception)? This paper engages Kant’s a priori synthetic argument for understanding causal order in nature (physical necessity) as well as causal order in the novelty of creative freedom (self-legislated moral necessity) when it comes to humanity’s capacity to initiate a sequence of events that nature cannot accomplish on its own. The significance: Humans are moral beings because they can be, not because they must be – and this makes all the difference.
‘[W]e ought to aspire to provide the best theory so far as to what type of theory the best theory so far must be: no more, but no less.’ Does Alasdair MacIntyre tell us how to identify a rationally acceptable system of ethics? This thesis gives a reading of MacIntyre’s attempt to identify a rationally acceptable system of ethics, critically elucidating key concepts and focussing on certain tensions in the conclusion. Chapter One shows MacIntyre’s view of modern ethics as in its own terms irresolvable and interminable, hopelessly searching for atemporal justification, and in need of history to replace reification with justification. The second section introduces the concept of a tradition which owns its history, and recasts irresolvability and interminability as incommensurability. Section three introduces conflict between traditions and the possibility of communication through crisis. Chapter Two focusses the challenge of incommensurability as the key problem of the reinterpreted situation, and shows how MacIntyre addresses the problem, arguing that communication is possible. In the second section, MacIntyre’s contextualist epistemology and rationality within a tradition are elucidated along with preliminary challenges. Chapter Three hones in on narrative as the justifying factor in MacIntyre’s thesis, elucidating the concept and challenges to it. Section two explains the positive thesis that emerges to support narrative in response to these challenges. Chapter Four continues to elucidate MacIntyre’s positive thesis, and shows how he approaches the problems it creates. Having rejected Cartesian and Hegelian epistemology and brought forward historicism as his substantial position, MacIntyre becomes vulnerable to relativism and perspectivism. The second section concerns MacIntyre’s presentation of Thomism as a type of historicism that is neither relativist, perspecitivist nor Hegelian. Chapter Five elucidates MacIntyre’s understanding of truth, concluding that he finds no new position, but substantially depends upon realism. Section two introduces the two disquieting suggestions that the normativity of grammar and rational debate requires the objectivity of realism or theism, and that MacIntyre’s ultimate source of justification is myth. 3 The Conclusion emphasises that MacIntyre’s suggestions disquiet us, and that an important implicit issue is that of distinguishing between temporal success and rational victory, pointing to a pessimism which MacIntyre’s Thomism denies. Section two shows that in seeking to establish his tradition-based rationality, MacIntyre cannot ignore these problems -- his grounds for preferring his solution over the current situation may be reasonable but they have no ultimately rational justification. Thesis for PPE Final Honours School 1997 St. Anne’s College, Oxford University Benjamin Taylor
“What is the nature of morality? A response to Casebeer, Railton, and Ruse.”
It should be obvious that, within the confines of a short response, we cannot possibly answer the question that constitutes the title of our reply. Nonetheless, each of our commentators touched upon issues that bear directly on this question, so we've chosen it as a framework within which to reflect upon their many stimulating comments.
In his book What We Owe to Each Other, Thomas Scanlon proposes what he calls a ‘contractualist’ explanation of what he describes as ‘a central part of the territory called morality’, i.e. our duties to other rational creatures. If Scanlon is right, the fact that another creature is rational generates a particular kind of moral constraint on how we may act towards it: one should ‘treat rational creatures only in ways that would be allowed by principles that they could not reasonably reject insofar as they too were seeking principles of mutual governance which other rational creatures could not reasonably reject’. This is then used to explain what makes actions right, at least within his central moral area. Such actions will be right because they are permitted by principles that cannot reasonably be rejected. In this essay, I question both whether Scanlon succeeds in identifying a proper part of the moral terrain as a subject for his account and also what, if any, is the contractualist content of that account. I argue that he equivocates between two distinct and incompatible conceptions of the justifiability of principles. According to the first, justifiability is a relation between principles and people, whilst according to the second, for a principle to be justifiable is for it to be justified. For his explanation of morality to have any contractualist force, justifiability needs to be understood as a relation, but for that explanation to have any plausibility, justifiability must be understood non-relationally. Because of this, the account is unstable and fails to describe any part of the moral landscape.
AN EVALUATION OF WILLIAM LANE CRAIG'S NOTIONOF MORALITY (1)
Morality, 2024
William Lane Craig’s moral philosophy, is based on the argument that theism provides the best explanation for objective moral values and duties. Consequently, it delves into Craig’s argument for objective moral values and duties grounded in God’s nature and commands. It also analyses Craig’s version of the Divine Command Theory (DCT) and his perspective on moral objectivism in contrast to moral relativism. Furthermore, it explores Craig’s response to the Euthyphro dilemma and his stance on moral absolutism, moral rules and duty. The essay concludes by assessing the strengths and weaknesses of Craig’s concept of morality and its relevance to contemporary moral debates.