"Modern Moral Philosophy" is an article on moral philosophy by G. E. M. Anscombe, originally published in the journal Philosophy, vol. 33, no. 124 (January 1958).[1]

The article has influenced the emergence of contemporary virtue ethics,[2][3][4] especially through the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. Notably, the term "consequentialism" was first coined in this paper.

Theses

The beginning of the paper summarizes its main points:

I will begin by stating three theses which I present in this paper. The first is that it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking. The second is that the concepts of obligation, and duty — moral obligation and moral duty, that is to say — and of what is morally right and wrong, and of the moral sense of ‘ought’, ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible; because they are survivals, or derivatives from survivals, from an earlier conception of ethics which no longer generally survives, and are only harmful without it. My third thesis is that the differences between the well-known English writers on moral philosophy from Sidgwick to the present day are of little importance.[1][4]

Onora O'Neill said that "the connections between these three thoughts are not immediately obvious, but their influence is not in doubt", and that "many exponents of virtue ethics take Anscombe's essay as a founding text and have endorsed all three thoughts", whereas "many contemporary consequentialists and theorists of justice, who may reasonably be thought the heirs of the 'modern moral philosophy' that Anscombe criticized, have disputed or disregarded all three".[4]

Reception

According to M.J. Richter, "Kurt Baier describes the paper as 'widely discussed and much admired' and Peter Winch has called one of its three theses 'enormously influential' within moral philosophy."[5]

John Wardle argued that Anscombe misrepresented Henry Sidgwick's understanding of the concept of humility when she concludes that it is "a species of untruthfulness".[6]

Michael Thompson said that a theory of "natural normativity", or "natural goodness", was "sketched in the concluding paragraphs of" Anscombe's essay, and later "developed in the last part of" Rosalind Hursthouse's book On Virtue Ethics, and then in Philippa Foot's book Natural Goodness.[4]

Roger Crisp argued that "historical and philosophical analysis throw some doubt" on Anscombe's "main thesis, which concerns the moral concepts", but that her "strategy of examining the moral concepts before using them in moral theory is helpful", and that "the application of that strategy to the very notion of morality itself supports something closer to the 'consequentialist' position she attacks in her paper than to her own."[4]

Sabina Lovibond said that "Elizabeth Anscombe's 'Modern Moral Philosophy' is read and remembered principally as a critique of the state of ethical theory at the time when she was writing—an account of certain faulty assumptions underlying that theory in its different variants, and rendering trivial the points on which they ostensibly disagree."[4]

Thomas Pink criticized Anscombe's idea that the concept of a distinctively moral obligation only makes sense in the context of belief in a divine law-giver.[4]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 G. E. M. Anscombe (January 1958). "Modern Moral Philosophy". Philosophy. 33 (124): 1–19. doi:10.1017/s0031819100037943. JSTOR 3749051. S2CID 197875941.
  2. ↑ Roger Crisp; Michael Slote, eds. (2001). Virtue ethics. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. pp. 1–5. ISBN 978-0-19-875188-5.
  3. ↑ Haldane, John (June 2000). "In Memoriam: G. E. M. Anscombe (1919-2001)". The Review of Metaphysics. 53 (4): 1019–1021. JSTOR 20131480.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 O'Hear, Anthony, ed. (2004). Modern moral philosophy. Royal Institute of Philosophy supplement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 58, 75, 141, 164, 301. ISBN 978-0-521-60326-3.
  5. ↑ Richter, Duncan J. (2013). Ethics after Anscombe: Post “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1 ed.). Dordrecht: Springer Dordrecht. ISBN 978-0-7923-6093-3.
  6. ↑ Wardle, John (July 1983). "Miss Anscombe on Sidgwick's View of Humility". Philosophy. 58 (225): 389–391. doi:10.1017/s0031819100068467. JSTOR 3750774. S2CID 170725570.

Sources

Further reading

  • Virtue Ethics, edited by Roger Crisp and Michael Slote, Oxford, 1997. ISBN 0-19-875189-3
  • Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, London, 1985 (2nd ed.). ISBN 0-268-00611-3.


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