What Can Philosophy Contribute to Ethics

James Griffin's What Can Philosophy Contribute to Ethics? poses a bold question in its title that goes to the heart of moral philosophy's aspirations. Perhaps surprisingly, however, the answer defended in this short, lucid text overwhelmingly concerns what philosophy cannot contribute to ethics. The bulk of the book is devoted to criticizing the ‘Cartesian ambitions’ of moral philosophers, above all, the drive to ‘organize the good into a systematic moral theory’ (p. 1). Only in the final pages does Griffin gesture at what philosophy might add to ethics. It thus should be read as a recent contribution to the theory/anti-theory debate in moral philosophy. Chapter 1 opens with a reminder of the various forms ethics has assumed in history. Jumping from the age of Greek heroes immortalized by Homer and the Athenian nobleman valorized in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics to the divinely commanded law of the Jewish people and the monastic ethics of medieval Christendom, Griffin's survey underscores that plurality of shapes ethics can take. Special attention is paid to a shift in moral thinking that took place in the Enlightenment under the influence of natural science, most notably the discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton. It is the founder of modern physics, according to Griffin, that is responsible for moral philosophy's wayward turn, as moral philosophers have attempted to copy the systematic organization of science. Much of the book seeks to undo this influence.

Enlightenment · Epistemology · Eudaimonia · Griffin · Moral philosophy · Natural Philosophy · Normative ethics · Classics · Ethics in medical practice · History · Philosophy

• Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy

  Bernard Williams, Adrian Moore•Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy•2006

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