Between Universalism and Skepticism: Ethics as Social Artifact PDF
Preview Between Universalism and Skepticism: Ethics as Social Artifact
Between Universalism and Skepticism This page intentionally left blank Between Universalism and Skepticism Ethics as Social Artifact MICHAEL PHILIPS New York Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1994 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland Madrid and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1994 by Michael Philips Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Philips, Michael, 1942- Between universalism and skepticism: ethics as social artifact / [Michael Philips], p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-508646-5 1. Ethics. I. Title. BJ10I2.P455 1994 171'7-dc20 93-24722 246897531 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For my wife, Marion, whose amazed criticisms of my earlier moralistic tendencies forced me to rethink basic questions of ethics and whose deep appreciation of innocence, kindness, and humor helped me to understand the relation between the good and the right. This page intentionally left blank Preface During the many years I worked on this book, I taught in three philosophy departments and was a visiting scholar at another. I am indebted to students and colleagues at all of these institutions for their comments, criticisms, and encouragement. I am especially grateful to Ramon Lemos, with whom I talked philosophy nearly every working day while we were colleagues at the University of Miami. Although our approaches to ethics are very different, I learned much from his good-natured but penetrating questions, comments, and arguments, and was buoyed by his friendship. I also benefited considerably from frequent conversations with Dick Sikora, Sam Coval, and Earl Winkler during my two years as a visiting professor at the University of British Columbia. The tenacity and intelligence with which each of them criticized my views and with which Dick argued for his own distinctive version of rule utilitarianism forced me to rethink and clarify many ideas. Neil Thomason was my main philosophical companion in Portland during his years at Reed College. His unusually high standards of rigor and argument helped constrain my tendencies to leap from peak to peak, and his tough-minded but good-natured (and often very funny) questions about my views of responsibility and blame (and many other issues) helped to improve them. Gerald Doppelt and I have been friends since graduate school and have had many memorable discussions about ethics and political philosophy over the years. His wildly comic and often deadly accurate portraits of our common philosophical opponents and of professional philosophy in general have helped me to see things more clearly and keep them in perspective. I am also indebted to Mark Okrent and viii Between Univeisalism and Skepticism Charlotte Witt, with whom I exchanged work regularly while we were visiting scholars at U.C. Berkeley, and I am extremely grateful to the readers for Oxford University Press for their many careful and useful criticisms of the text. But I owe the most to my wife, Marion. Before we met I had no interest in writing academic philosophy. She helped convince me that it is a respectable activity and that I would find it rewarding. Our (well, yes) arguments about practical ethical issues helped to awaken me from my dogmatic Kantian slumbers. And I learned much about life and ethics from her courage to face what is real and see the good in it. Portland, Oregon M.P. June 1993 Contents Introduction, 3 1. Intuitionism and Wide Reflective Equilibrium, 20 2. Reasons, Persons, and Contracts, 46 3. The Formal Conception of the Good, 68 4. Ethics as Social Artifact, 89 5. Evaluating Standards, 128 6. Goods and Evils, 152 7. Ethics and Agents, 182 Index, 202
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