Virtues and Reasons: Philippa Foot and Moral Theory: Essays in Honour of Philippa Foot

by Rosalind Hursthouse (editor), Gavin Lawrence (Editor), the late Warren Quinn (Editor)

Philippa Foot is one of the most original and widely respected philosophers of our time; her work has exerted a lasting influence on the development of moral philosophy. In tribute to her, twelve leading philosophers from both sides of the Atlantic have contributed essays exploring the various
topics in moral philosophy to which she has made a distinctive contribution--virtue ethics, naturalism, non-cognitivism, relativism, categorical requirements, and the role of rationality in morality.

Genres: Philosophy

362 pages, Hardcover

First published August 31, 1995

Reviews

[Larry · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read the “representation of life” essay by Thompson after having heard about it during a Hegel seminar. Found it side-splittingly cretinous. The first assumption is that concepts require definitions. Life is exclusively interpreted from without, hence its specificity is precluded from being thematized from the start. The idea of good or bad life is barely touched upon. The reference to judgement of concept in Hegel’s logic leaves a giant hole: an account of reflexive judgement (Kant), and therefore of the experience of the transcendentally necessary inadequacy of our conceptual apparatus as such, through which our finitude is (not) grasped. Therefore the whole connection between life and experience is missed. I would add even Hegel’s theory fails to account both for Kant’s reflexive judgement *and* an even simpler kind of judgement: tautology (where the particular and the universal exchange places, and the sense in which the particular lives up to his own standard is not necessarily, well, there). Anyway all of this just confirms the very little regard in which I hold the devilishly idiotic combination of analytic philosophy and “ethics”. I feel like the naturalistic accounts of stuff always present themselves like: see, after all is said and done, our account is not devastatingly stupid! —But since it is still very stupid, in an embarrassingly significant extent, why do you rejoice over this insignificant diminution of the range of its idiocy? It’s like they were sentenced by Zeus to clean the Augean stables with only one toothbrush and start singing and dancing with delight because they just found a second one and they’re like: Holy Molly, we are so lucky, things are going to be so different and incomparably easier for us now that we have two toothbrushes instead of one! Our having two toothbrushes is definitely a case of us owning the situation, Zeus has no idea how we are so screwing his ass!