Ethics after Anscombe: Post “Modern Moral Philosophy”

183 Pages·2000·18.9 MB·English

by  Duncan Richter (auth.)

ETHICS AFTER ANSCOMBE
LIBRARY OF ETHICS AND APPLIED PHILOSOPHY
VOLUMES
Managing Editor:
Govert A. den Hartogh, University ofA msterdam, The Netherlands
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
ETHICS AFTER
ANSCOMBE
Post "Modern Moral Philosophy"
by
DUNCAN RICHTER
Virginia Military Institute,
Lexington, VA, U.S.A.
.....
' '
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-90-481-5371-8 ISBN 978-94-017-1478-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-1478-5
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
© 2000 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2000
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
For Stephanie and Isabel
vii
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Acknowledgements
Xl
Chapter I - The Incoherence of the Moral 'Ought'
Part I - Anscombe's Intelligibility Thesis 2
Part 2 -Baier's Objection 5
Part 3-Winch's Objection 6
Part 4-Johnston's Objection 9
Part 5-Diamond's Defense 10
Part 6 - Conclusion 13
Chapter 2 - Is Moral Philosophy Possible?: Wittgenstein and Anscombe 19
Part I - Problems 20
Part 2-Continuity in Wittgenstein's Remarks on Ethics 21
Part 3 - Wittgenstein' s Philosophy and the Disappearance of Ethics 23
Part 4 -Purpose and Method 26
Part 5-Anscombe's Advice 29
Part 6 - Conclusion 31
Chapter 3 -How to do Moral Philosophy. Part I: Lovibond and Bambrough 35
Part 1-Sabina Lovibond's Realism 35
Part 2 - Diamond on Lovibond 43
Part 3 - Renford Bambrough and Dialectic 46
Part 4 - Conclusion 52
Chapter 4-How to do Moral Philosophy. Part 2: Virtue and Anti-Theory 57
Part 1 - Anscombe, Hursthouse and Virtue Theory 57
Part 2 -Iris Murdoch and Attention 60
V111
Chapter 4
Part 3-Charles Taylor and Articulation 62
Part 4 - Cora Diamond and the Moral Imagination 64
Part 5 - Conclusion 71
Chapter 5 - The Ethics of Suicide 76
Part 1 -The Variety of Suicide 77
Part 2 -Brandt on Morality and Rationality 81
Part 3 - Chesterton and the Elementary Sin 87
Part 4 - Conclusion 91
Chapter 6 -Persons, Babies and Martians: The Philosophy of Abortion 97
Part 1 - The Liberal Rationalist View 98
Part 2 - The Catholic View 107
Part 3 - A Middle Way? 112
Chapter 7 - Does Meat Mean Murder? 125
Part 1 -For Liberation 125
Part 2 -Against Liberation 131
Part 3-Diamond's Wittgensteinian Argument for Vegetarianism 138
Chapter 8 - Conclusion 146
Part 1 - Sense and Nonsense in Moral Philosophy 146
Part 2 - Reason, Rights and Persons 152
Part 3 - Conservatism 155
Part 4 - The Middle Ground 157
Part 5 - Conclusion 158
Bibliography 163
Index 171
lX
PREFACE
How, if at all, can we do moral philosophy in the light of the radical critique made by Elizabeth
Anscombe in "Modem Moral Philosophy"? Among the principal theses of this essay is that
ethical thinking (that of philosophers and others) suffers from a widespread appeal to
incoherent uses of terms such as 'obligation,' 'ought,' 'right' and 'wrong.' In this book I first
explain and evaluate her thesis and the argument for it, and I then confront the challenge it
poses: what ways are there of doing moral philosophy that avoid the kind of incoherence to
which she has drawn our attention? The best way to show how it is possible for us to think
about ethics is to demonstrate how to do so, using actual cases. This book therefore combines
the critical study of central theoretical issues about ethics, in the first half, with concrete
examination of serious practical issues, in the second.
Following Dostoyevsky's Ivan Karamazov, it is often said that if God does not exist
then everything is permitted. This is not literally the case, since God cannot permit anything
if He does not exist, and those of us who do exist do not permit everything, or at least our
parents, employers, and governments do not. It is true, though, that if God does not exist then
nothing is forbidden in the traditional sense of 'forbidden'. Secular work on ethics, however,
is riddled with questions about whether suicide is absolutely wrong, whether abortion is
morally permissible, whether animals have moral rights, and so on. If we do not wish to
presuppose God's existence in our speaking, writing and thinking about ethics, for whatever
reason, we should think about the implications of concepts such as 'absolute wrong' and
'moral rights'. Not all such talk is meaningless without God, but Dostoevsk1' and Anscombe
give us reason to question its meaning. Anscombe in particular has shown what might be
meant by such language, and what cannot be meant by it. It is my aim to go further in this
direction, and to do so in connection with specific, practical ethical questions.
The idea that nothing is forbidden, or that the notions of moral obligation or the moral
sense of 'ought' are incoherent, sounds to many ears like a complete rejection of ethics. I hope
to show that this is not the case. The first chapter deals directly with Anscombe's paper. In
the next three, I examine the approaches to ethics recommended by other philosophers in the
Wittgensteinian tradition to which Anscombe belongs, including Wittgenstein himself, Sabina
Lovibond, Renford Bambrough and Cora Diamond. Drawing on their views, I suggest that
moral philosophy should at least begin with an attempt to understand the facts relevant to
central moral debates and issues.
Chapter 5 focuses on the disagreement between the religious view of suicide as
perhaps the ultimate sin and the non-religious view that suicide is often justified. I look at R.F.
Holland's work as a good example of an attempt to understand the strengths and weaknesses
X
of both sides of the divide. In a somewhat parallel way, chapter 6 is concerned with the
abortion debate. Here I look sympathetically at attempts by Ronald Dworkin and Warren
Quinn to fmd some ground away from the two familiar poles of the debate. I do not claim that
such attempts are always successful, but the effort to understand that they involve is at least
worthwhile. Finally in chapter 7 I consider the debate over the moral status of animals. After
an examination of Peter Singer's well known argument for animal liberation and Michael
Leahy's purportedly Wittgensteinian argument against it, I conclude that in fact there is less
disagreement between these antagonists than might appear. A more realistic approach to
animals and a better defense of vegetarianism are offered by Cora Diamond.
With this discussion of Leahy and Diamond, the book returns to the philosophy of
Wittgenstein and its application in practical ethics and thus to the themes of its first part.
These themes, as well as those of chapters 5, 6 and 7, are fmally summarized and reviewed in
chapter 8. My aim is not to reject all or most current moral philosophy, but to see what
approach to ethics is best supported by the work of Wittgenstein and Anscom be, and to see
how this kind of approach fares in connection with practical moral concerns.
XI
ACKNO~EDGE~NTS
Various people are mentioned in various footnotes throughout the tex1 for having helped with
this project in one way or another. But none of those people deserves to be relegated to a
footnote, so I would like to thank them all in a more prominent place, namely here. First of all
I want to thank Cora Diamond, who showed enormous patience and kindness to me while I
worked under her supervision on the dissertation out of which this book has grown, as well as
giving me very helpful advice and criticism. The influence of her work on mine will be
obvious to the reader. I believe and hope that she has influenced me by example, both as a
philosopher and as a human being, in less obvious ways, too. Secondly, I want to thank my
wife Stephanie Wilkinson not only for some very helpful discussions, of G. K. Chesterton in
particular, but also for her constant support and encouragement. I want also to thank John
Marshall for a number of useful criticisms of an earlier draft of chapter I.
It has been possible for me to make numerous improvements on the original
dissertation thanks to the careful reading and constructive criticism of Daniel T. Devereux,
James F. Childress, George Thomas and Jorge Secada. Margaret G. Holland, Nancy Schauber
and Christopher Dustin also made helpful comments on a paper that I have partially
incorporated into chapter 4. I have received helpful comments also from two anonymous
reviewers. None of these people is responsible in any way for the remaining imperfections.
\ Chapter I is based on "The Incoherence of the Moral 'Ought'," which originally
appeared in Philosophy, Vol. 70, No. 27I (1995). It is reprinted with the permission of
Cambridge University Press. Parts of chapter 2 were originally published as "Nothing to be
Said: Wittgenstein and Wittgensteinian Ethics," in The Southern Journal ofP hilosophy, Vol.
XXXIV, No. 2 (1996). I am very grateful to the editor, Nancy Simco, for her permission to
reprint material from that paper here. I am grateful also for advice and encouragement from
Thomas Magnell, editor of The Joumal of Value Jnqu i1y, in whose pages first appeared parts
of chapters 4 and 6. These were published as "Virtue Without Theory," in Vol. 33, No. 4
(1999) and "Is Abortion Vicious?," in Vol. 32, No. 3 (1998).
Philosophy takes money. The dissertation which I submitted to the Graduate Faculty
ofthe University of Virginia in candidacy for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy would not
have been possible were it not for the generosity of the University of Virginia, its Graduate
School of Arts and Sciences and its Department of Philosophy. While writing the dissertation
I was helped especially by the awards of teaching assistantships, graduate instructorships, a
President's Fellowship, a DuPont Fellowship and, above all, a Graduate School of Arts and
Sciences Dissertation Year Fellowship. Finally, the completion of this book was greatly
helped by a generous grant from the Virginia Military Institute's Grants in Aid of Research
Committee. I am very grateful to all the people who made these awards available to me.