How Modern Morality has Lost its Way: Discerning the Neglect of Utopia in Meta-Ethics and Applied Ethics Pubblico
Terrell, Leah Christine (2010)
Abstract
Abstract
How Modern Morality has Lost its Way:
Discerning the Neglect of Utopia in Meta-Ethics and Applied
Ethics
By Leah Christine Terrell
The field of ethics has undergone several drastic changes in the past century. The field was long dominated by the work of meta-ethicists whose goal was to examine a broad range of questions centering around the epistemological presuppositions of moral thought. In the 1960's, however, America confronted the issues of civil rights, war, and the rise of feminism. In the face of such issues, the discipline of philosophy, where such issues would be thought to reside, was somehow lacking in significant opinion. Upon realizing that the search for wisdom simply could not ignore these issues, there was a shift within the discipline to the world of applied ethics. These ethicists were concerned with examining the particular issues experienced in public and private life and spawned such fields as biomedical ethics, business ethics, feminist ethics, and environmental ethics.
The shift into applied ethics, however, did not solve all
of the problems it indented to. In fact, we will see that the
problems of applied ethics run just as deep as those of meta-ethics
and that another Copernican revolution might be exactly what the
world of philosophy needs. I will make the effort to posit the need
for another shift in thinking, a shift upward to the philosophical
heavens, to utopia. It is here, in the discussion of utopia, that I
believe we might be able to discern what the physical arena of
ethics truly is: a "fabric of ethics" per se, which is warped and
curved by the weight of the theories within it. By starting with
the meta-ethicists H.L.A. Hart and Ronald Dworkin, moving to the
field of applied ethics through Robert Nozick and John Rawls,
examining the problems within applied ethics via Martha Nussbaum
and Rawls, we begin to see the "fabric" working within ethics.
Finally, we must look for ways to build upon this new foundation,
and so examine the fields of moral psychology, aesthetics, and
ultimately ancient Greek morality for a renewed
purpose.
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………...
1
SECTION
1………………………………………………………………………………………….
8
THE MODERN DISCUSSION OF LAW: A META-ETHICAL EXERCISE BETWEEN HART
AND
DWORKIN
SECTION
2…………………………………………………………………………………………
33
HYPOTHETICAL EXPERIMENTS IN JUSTICE: THE NECESSARY MOVE TO
THE
PRACTICALLY ETHICAL
SECTION
3………………………………………………………………………………………...
60
OBJECTIONS WITHIN APPLIED ETHICS: THE NEED FOR STRING THOERY
SECTION
4…………………………………………………………………………………………
74
CONCLUSIONS, SOLUTIONS, AND POSSIBLE PROGRESS
WORKS
CITED……………………………………………………………………………………
90
APPENDIX………………………………………………………………………………………….
92
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