Anti-Theory

Edited by Nick Smyth (Fordham University, Fordham University)
About this topic
Summary "Anti-theory" is a label often applied to a group of ethical philosophers who, despite substantial disagreements in other areas, possess a shared skepticism towards the aspirations of moral theory.  They share a sense that moral theories--in virtue of trying to reduce all moral considerations to a very small set of general values or principles--cannot do justice to the complexity, particularity or "messiness" of ordinary life.  Insofar as moral theories aim to produce sets of reasons for action which aspire to rational authority over the lives of individual decision-makers, the anti-theorist claims that the moral theory must fail, and they will often (though, not always) point to some absurd or counterintuitive implication of a moral theory in support of that claim.
Key works The anti-theory movement is usually traced to Elizabeth Anscombe's seminal critique of modern moral philosophy in Anscombe 1958.  Following her, Foot 1958 and Winch 1965 offered arguments against the idea of a moral theory as it was then concieved.  Bernard Williams was by far the most influential and dedicated anti-theorist, see Williams 1981, Williams 1985, Smart & Williams 1973, and Williams & Nagel 1976.  Other important contributions to the genre include Wolf 1982, Stocker 1976 and Chapter 1 of MacIntyre 2007.
Introductions Clarke 1987
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  1. Love, Reason, and Irreplaceability (Draft).Christopher Grau - manuscript
    This is a draft of a talk I have given at several venues. At one point I planned to revise it for inclusion in the Oxford Handbook I co-edited, but for various reasons I decided against that. Since I still think it contains some useful material, I have uploaded it here. Feedback welcome.
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  2. Against Theory and Method in Ethics and Philosophy of Science.Klodian Coko - 2025 - In Uri D. Leibowitz, Klodian Coko & Isaac Nevo, Philosophical Theorizing and Its Limits: Anti-Theory in Ethics and Philosophy of Science. Springer. pp. 81-104.
    This chapter provides a comparative assessment of anti-theory discussions in ethics and philosophy of science. Despite the differences between moral and scientific practices, normative theorizing in ethics and philosophy of science faces a common underlying problem. Namely the conflict between the features of a universal normative philosophical theory for guiding moral or scientific practices, on the one hand, with the complexity, variability, and historicity of these practices, as shown in descriptive and historical accounts, on the other. Anti-theory movements in ethics (...)
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  3. The Dangers of ‘Best Practices’: Against Supposedly Revolutionary Theories of Evidence in Medicine.Charles M. Djordjevic - 2025 - In Uri D. Leibowitz, Klodian Coko & Isaac Nevo, Philosophical Theorizing and Its Limits: Anti-Theory in Ethics and Philosophy of Science. Springer.
    Pain is a refractory problem in healthcare. One proposed solution is to promulgate best practices derived from the highest quality evidence stipulating how to assess pain and which treatment interventions are the most efficacious. Such a solution seamlessly integrates into evidence-based medicine, the dominant ‘revolutionary paradigm’ in healthcare. This paper argues that such a ‘revolutionary’ approach is theoretically untenable and ethically abhorrent. Section 1 adumbrates the evidence-based medicine framework, how best practices are often formulated under its auspices, and which methods (...)
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  4. Moral Philosophy Is Not What It Used To Be: Reflections on Three Decades of Anti-theory.Nora Hämäläinen - 2025 - In Uri D. Leibowitz, Klodian Coko & Isaac Nevo, Philosophical Theorizing and Its Limits: Anti-Theory in Ethics and Philosophy of Science. Springer. pp. 15-34.
    This chapter discusses the nature and continuing relevance of the late-twentieth century anti-theory debate in anglophone, broadly analytic moral philosophy. It is argued that the strands of ethics that were labeled anti-theoretical were reactions not so much to theoretical work in ethics in general, but to a distinctive conception of theory as the production of action guiding hierarchical systems of moral principles. The philosophers labeled as anti-theorists were interested in the complexities of moral life—virtues, experience, emotions, historicity, context-dependency—that in this (...)
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  5. The Scientific Method and the Moral Method.Uri D. Leibowitz - 2025 - In Uri D. Leibowitz, Klodian Coko & Isaac Nevo, Philosophical Theorizing and Its Limits: Anti-Theory in Ethics and Philosophy of Science. Springer. pp. 53-80.
    Aristotle’s interest in ethics was first and foremost practical—studying ethics should help us to become good. Two millennia later, Francis Bacon’s interest in the philosophy of science was also motivated by practical aspirations—to guide scientists in their quest for empirical knowledge. To this end, he sought to formulate The Scientific Method. The apparent success of science suggests that moral philosophy might do well to take a page from the philosophy of science and to seek a “moral method” to guide the (...)
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  6. Introduction to Philosophical Theorizing and Its Limits: Anti-theory in Ethics and Philosophy of Science.Uri D. Leibowitz, Klodian Coko & Nevo Isaac - 2025 - In Uri D. Leibowitz, Klodian Coko & Isaac Nevo, Philosophical Theorizing and Its Limits: Anti-Theory in Ethics and Philosophy of Science. Springer. pp. 1-13.
    In this introductory chapter we present the central motivations and rationales for this volume. We begin by identifying two radical anti-theory movements that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, one in philosophy of science and the other in ethics. Each of these movements was domain-specific—that is, each criticized the aspirations of philosophical theories within its own domain and advanced arguments aimed at philosophers within their own specific subfield. The guiding thought of this volume is that insights gleaned from the anti-theory (...)
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  7. Philosophical Theorizing and Its Limits: Anti-Theory in Ethics and Philosophy of Science.Uri D. Leibowitz, Klodian Coko & Isaac Nevo (eds.) - 2025 - Springer.
    This book brings together scholars from ethics and philosophy of science in order to identify ways in which insights gleaned from one subfield can shed light on the other. The book focuses on two radical Anti-Theory movements that emerged in the 1970’s and 1980’s, one in philosophy of science and the other in ethics. Both movements challenged attempts to supply general, systematized philosophical theories within their domains and thus invited the reconsideration of what philosophical theorizing can and should offer. Each (...)
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  8. What Is It Like to See an Animal? Self-Examination and the Moral Relevance of Ordinary Descriptions of Animals.Erich Linder - 2025 - In Uri D. Leibowitz, Klodian Coko & Isaac Nevo, Philosophical Theorizing and Its Limits: Anti-Theory in Ethics and Philosophy of Science. Springer. pp. 141-157.
    In this chapter, I argue that by eliminating the subjective dimension from moral deliberation, orthodox, theory-oriented approaches to animal ethics overlook the importance of self-examination in navigating the complexity of our moral life. This is accomplished by depicting agents as rational beings, other animals as abstract beings bearing morally relevant properties and moral thinking as limited to rational argumentation. Instead, by following David J. Velleman and authors influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein and Iris Murdoch, I discuss the importance of the subjective (...)
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  9. Overcoming Metaethics: Interpretation, Objectivity, and Realism.Michiel Meijer - 2025 - In Uri D. Leibowitz, Klodian Coko & Isaac Nevo, Philosophical Theorizing and Its Limits: Anti-Theory in Ethics and Philosophy of Science. Springer.
    What is the place of interpretation in ethical theory? What are the implications of interpretive understanding for moral understanding? Developing the notion of “Interpretive Realism,” I explore two central ideas: (1) that moral judgments are best understood as interpretations of meaning, and (2) that a hermeneutic approach to ethics supports, rather than undermines, moral realism. To counter the idea that moral language aims to describe independent moral facts, it is argued that moral interpretation shapes ethical intelligibility itself. The resulting view (...)
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  10. Anti-theory in Philosophy: A Case for Pragmatism.Isaac Nevo - 2025 - In Uri D. Leibowitz, Klodian Coko & Isaac Nevo, Philosophical Theorizing and Its Limits: Anti-Theory in Ethics and Philosophy of Science. Springer. pp. 159-181.
    In this paper, I discuss the tendency in philosophy to become an excessively theoretical enterprise, an enterprise aspiring to such highly generalized viewpoints on reality, mind, language, or ethics that its “findings” lose touch with lived experience and with broader intellectual concerns and become highly “scholastic,” wedded to abstractions, ideals, dichotomies, and principles that do not find any clear application in everyday life and discourse. I distinguish two types of reaction to this philosophical tendency, a quietist versus a pragmatist reaction, (...)
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  11. Ethical Description as a Form of Anti-theory.Duncan Richter - 2025 - In Uri D. Leibowitz, Klodian Coko & Isaac Nevo, Philosophical Theorizing and Its Limits: Anti-Theory in Ethics and Philosophy of Science. Springer.
    Ludwig Wittgenstein suggested that in philosophy explanation should be replaced by description. I want to explore what this might mean in ethics. I first consider Wittgenstein and reasons to doubt that he supported a fact/value distinction as strongly or straightforwardly as is sometimes believed. Next I look at Iris Murdoch’s work as an example of what I take to be a good approach to ethics, and one that is consistent with Wittgenstein’s thought, as well as turning to recent work by (...)
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  12. Feyerabend’s Asymmetry Argument for Epistemological Anarchism.Jamie Shaw - 2025 - In Uri D. Leibowitz, Klodian Coko & Isaac Nevo, Philosophical Theorizing and Its Limits: Anti-Theory in Ethics and Philosophy of Science. Springer.
    Feyerabend’s arguments for epistemological anarchism in Against Method have attracted continued attention from philosophers of science. The complexity of the history of scientific practice and an unrelenting fallibilism, Feyerabend argues, provide crucial motivations for an open-ended theoretical and methodological pluralism. The purpose of this paper is to consider another argument Feyerabend provides in his correspondence with J.J.C. Smart in the mid-1960s that supports epistemological anarchism. My goal, here, is to reconstruct the argument, show how it builds on quieter themes in (...)
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  13. Madhouse on Campus: Demanding Reform of the Corrupt University Management System.Thobias Sarbunan - 2024 - Researchgate. Translated by Sarbunan Thobias.
    The higher education sector in Indonesia is currently confronting a concerning issue. Corruption and poor management plague various universities in this country, creating an unfavorable work environment for the academic community. The university management system, which should be an essential pillar in enlightening the nation, has instead become a source of problems troubling professors, staff, and students. This essay argues that urgent reform of the corrupt and ineffective university management system is necessary for the academic community's well-being.
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  14. Can Moral Anti-Realists Theorize?Michael Zhao - 2024 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 102 (3):693-709.
    Call ‘radical moral theorizing’ the project of developing a moral theory that not only tries to conform to our existing moral judgments, but also manifests various theoretical virtues: consistency, simplicity, explanatory depth, and so on. Many moral philosophers assume that radical moral theorizing does not require any particular metaethical commitments. In this paper, I argue against this assumption. The most natural justification for radical moral theorizing presupposes moral realism, broadly construed; in contrast, there may be no justification for radical moral (...)
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  15. Quel che rimane. Un'introduzione a Bernard Williams.Francesco Testini - 2023 - Pisa: ETS.
    Bernard Williams is universally recognised as one of the most important voices in 20th century moral and political philosophy. Yet his thought has only rarely been the subject of comprehensive analysis and interpretation: more often, attention has focused on his celebrated critiques of specific theoretical paradigms, such as the Kantian and the utilitarian ones. This book attempts to fill this gap. Considering Williams' work in its entirety, it reconstructs the particular and fascinating picture of moral philosophy that emerges from it. (...)
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  16. Modelling in Normative Ethics.Joe Roussos - 2022 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice (5):1-25.
    This is a paper about the methodology of normative ethics. I claim that much work in normative ethics can be interpreted as modelling, the form of inquiry familiar from science, involving idealised representations. I begin with the anti-theory debate in ethics, and note that the debate utilises the vocabulary of scientific theories without recognising the role models play in science. I characterise modelling, and show that work with these characteristics is common in ethics. This establishes the plausibility of my interpretation. (...)
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  17. Whence the Demand for Ethical Theory?Damian Cueni & Matthieu Queloz - 2021 - American Philosophical Quarterly 58 (2):135-46.
    Where does the impetus towards ethical theory come from? What drives humans to make values explicit, consistent, and discursively justifiable? This paper situates the demand for ethical theory in human life by identifying the practical needs that give rise to it. Such a practical derivation puts the demand in its place: while finding a home for it in the public decision-making of modern societies, it also imposes limitations on the demand by presenting it as scalable and context-sensitive. This differentiates strong (...)
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  18. The Right Wrong‐Makers.Richard Yetter Chappell - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (2):426-440.
    Right- and wrong-making features ("moral grounds") are widely believed to play important normative roles, e.g. in morally apt or virtuous motivation. This paper argues that moral grounds have been systematically misidentified. Canonical statements of our moral theories tend to summarize, rather than directly state, the full range of moral grounds posited by the theory. Further work is required to "unpack" a theory's criterion of rightness and identify the features that are of ground-level moral significance. As a result, it is not (...)
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  19. Profilo: Bernard Williams.Francesco Testini - 2020 - Aphex 22:1-33.
    In questo saggio traccio un profilo del pensiero di Bernard Williams, concentrandomi su temi relativi alla filosofia morale e, più nello specifico, ricostruendo la sua disamina dell’idea di oggettività in questa disciplina. Dopo aver esaminato le sue critiche all’idea di teoria etica normativa, offro un inquadramento metaetico della sua posizione e concludo mostrando le sue affinità con la riflessione etica degli antichi Greci e, in particolar modo, di Aristotele.
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  20. ‘What Is Ethical Cannot be Taught’ – Understanding Moral Theories as Descriptions of Moral Grammar”.Anne-Marie Soendergaard Christensen - 2018 - In Christensen Anne-Marie Soendergaard, Wittgenstein’s Moral Thought. Routledge. pp. 175-199.
    Traditionally, the development of moral theories has been considered one of the main aims of moral philosophy. In contrast, Wittgenstein was very critical of the use of theories both in philosophy in general and in moral philosophy in particular, and philosophers inspired by his philosophy have become some of the most prominent critics of both particular, contemporary moral theories and the idea of moral theory as such. Nonetheless, this article aims to show how Wittgenstein’s later philosophy offers us resources for (...)
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  21. Bernard Williams: Ethics from a Human Point of View.Paul Russell - 2018 - Times Literary Supplement.
    When Bernard Williams died in June 2003, the obituary in The Times said that “he will be remembered as the most brilliant and most important British moral philosopher of his time”. It goes on to make clear that Williams was far from the dry, awkward, detached academic philosopher of caricature. -/- Born in Essex in 1929, Williams had an extraordinary and, in some respects, glamorous life. He not only enjoyed a stellar academic career – holding a series of distinguished posts (...)
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  22. The Inevitability of Inauthenticity: Bernard Williams on Practical Alienation.Nick Smyth - 2018 - In Sophie Grace Chappell & Marcel van Ackeren, Ethics Beyond the Limits: New Essays on Bernard Williams' Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. New York: Routledge.
    "Ethical thought has no chance of being everything it seems." Bernard Williams offered this cryptic remark in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, and in this chapter I argue that understanding it is the key to understanding Williams' skepticism about moral theory and about systematization in ethics. The difficulty for moral philosophy, Williams believed, is that ethics looks one way to embodied, active agents, but looks entirely different when considered from the standpoint of theory. This, in turn, means that following (...)
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  23. Wittgenstein’s Moral Thought.Reshef Agam-Segal & Edmund Dain (eds.) - 2017 - New York: Routledge.
    This book offers a radical reappraisal of the nature and significance of Wittgenstein’s thought about ethics from a variety of different perspectives. The book includes essays on Wittgenstein’s early remarks on ethics in the _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,_ on his 1929 "Lecture on Ethics", and on various aspects of Wittgenstein’s later views on ethics in the _Philosophical Investigations_ and elsewhere. Together, the essays in this volume provide a comprehensive assessment of Wittgenstein’s moral thought throughout his work, its continuity and development between his (...)
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  24. Wittgenstein’s Moral Thought.Edmund Dain - 2017 - In Reshef Agam-Segal & Edmund Dain, Wittgenstein’s Moral Thought. New York: Routledge. pp. 9-35.
  25. The relativity of ethical explanation.Kenneth Walden - 2016 - Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 6.
    Ethical theory is an explanatory endeavor, but until recently relatively little attention has been paid to the question of what makes for an adequate ethical explanation. This chapter argues that like explanation generally, ethical explanation is relativized to a contrast space: it is not a two-place relation between an explanandum and an ethical theory, but a three-place relation involving a background framework that, among others things, specifies a contrast space. The chapter then draws two morals from this thesis. The first (...)
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  26. Moral Objectivity: a Kantian Illusion?Bagnoli Carla - 2015 - Journal of Value Inquiry 49 (1-2):31-45.
  27. “How encounters with values generate demandingness”, in Michael Kuehler and Marcel van Ackeren, The Limits of Obligation, Routledge.Sophie Grace Chappell - 2015 - In Michael Kuehler and Marcel van Ackeren, The Limits of Obligation, Routledge. Routledge.
    I talk about the relation between the direct encounters with values that I take to be a key part of ordinary moral phenomenology, and the well-worn topic of demandingness. I suggest that an ethical philosophy based on (inter alia) such encounters sheds interesting light on some familiar problems.
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  28. Intuition, Theory, and Anti-Theory in Ethics.Sophie Grace Chappell (ed.) - 2015 - Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
    What form, or forms, might ethical knowledge take? In particular, can ethical knowledge take the form either of moral theory, or of moral intuition? If it can, should it? A team of experts explore these central questions for ethics, and present a diverse range of perspectives on the discussion.
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  29. Rules and Principles in Moral Decision Making: An Empirical Objection to Moral Particularism.Jennifer L. Zamzow - 2015 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 18 (1):123-134.
    It is commonly thought that moral rules and principles, such as ‘Keep your promises,’ ‘Respect autonomy,’ and ‘Distribute goods according to need ,’ should play an essential role in our moral deliberation. Particularists have challenged this view by arguing that principled guidance leads us to engage in worse decision making because principled guidance is too rigid and it leads individuals to neglect or distort relevant details. However, when we examine empirical literature on the use of rules and principles in other (...)
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  30. Sebastian Schleidgen (ed.): Should we Act Morally? Essays on Overridingness. [REVIEW]Alfred Archer - 2014 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 17 (2):349-350.
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  31. Theory Vs. Anti-Theory in Ethics: A Misconceived Conflict.Nick Fotion - 2014 - New York, US: Oup Usa.
    This book argues that theory formation in ethics might be, but does not have to be, grand; local and weaker theories can also be effective. Indeed, theory formation is far more varied than theorists and anti-theorists imagine it to be.
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  32. Knowing What to Do: Imagination, Virtue, and Platonism in Ethics.Timothy Chappell - 2013 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Timothy Chappell develops a picture of what philosophical ethics can be like, once set aside from conventional moral theory. His question is 'How are we to know what to do?', and the answer he defends is 'By developing our moral imaginations'--a key part of human excellence, which plays many roles in our practical and evaluative lives.
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  33. The Moral Philosophy of Bernard Williams.Alexandra Perry & Chris Herrera (eds.) - 2013 - Cambridge Scholars Press.
    A wide-ranging, collection focusing on the practical philosophy of Williams, with many chapters on politically relevant themes and many trying to assess the importance and influence of Williams. With contributions by Roman Altshuler, Mathieu Beirlaen, Thom Brooks, Jonathan Dancy, Jennifer Flynn, Lorenzo Greco, Chris D. Herrera, James Kellenberger, Colin Koopman, Stephen Leach, Esther Abin, Nancy Matchett, Jeff McMahan, Sarah Pawlett, Jonathan Sands-Wise, Robert Talisse, and Owen Ware.
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  34. (1 other version)Minding the Gap: Bernard Williams and David Hume on Living an Ethical Life.Paul Sagar - 2013 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 10 (4):615-638.
    Bernard Williams is frequently supposed to be an ethical Humean, due especially to his work on ‘internal’ reasons. In fact Williams’s work after his famous article ‘Internal and External Reasons’ constitutes a profound shift away from Hume’s ethical outlook. Whereas Hume offered a reconciling project whereby our ethical practices could be self-validating without reference to external justificatory foundations, Williams’s later work was increasingly skeptical of any such possibility. I conclude by suggesting reasons for thinking Williams was correct, a finding which (...)
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  35. Art and the ‘Morality System’: The Case of Don Giovanni.Genia Schönbaumsfeld - 2013 - European Journal of Philosophy 23 (4):1025-1043.
    Mozart's great opera, Don Giovanni, poses a number of significant philosophical and aesthetic challenges, and yet it remains, for the most part, little discussed by contemporary philosophers. A notable exception to this is Bernard Williams's important paper, ‘Don Juan as an Idea’, which contains an illuminating discussion of Kierkegaard's ground-breaking interpretation of the opera, ‘The Immediate Erotic Stages or the Musical-Erotic’, in Either/Or. Kierkegaard's pseudonymous author's approach here is, in some respects, reminiscent of a currently rather fashionable narrative-inspired moral philosophy, (...)
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  36. Luck, Value, and Commitment: Themes from the Ethics of Bernard Williams.Ulrike Heuer & Gerald Lang (eds.) - 2012 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press USA.
    Luck, Value, and Commitment comprises eleven new essays which engage with, or take their point of departure from, the influential work in moral and political philosophy of Bernard Williams (1929-2003).
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  37. Theory vs Anti-Theory.Brad Hooker - 2012 - In Ulrika Heuer Gerald Lang, Luck, Value, and Commitment: Themes from the Moral Philosophy of Bernard Williams. Oxford University Press.
    Bernard Williams influentially attacked ethical theory. This paper assesses arguments for the ‘anti-theory’ position in ethics, including mainly arguments put forward by Williams but also arguments put forward by others. The paper begins by discussing what is supposed to be theory in ethics and what ethical intuitions are taken to be by those involved in the theory versus anti-theory debate. Then the paper responds to the objections that ethical theory is mistaken to prize principles, mistaken to prize rationalism, mistaken to (...)
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  38. (1 other version)Theory vs anti-theory in ethics.Brad Hooker - 2012 - In Ulrike Heuer & Gerald Lang, Value, Luck, and Commitment. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 19-40.
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  39. (1 other version)Theory versus anti-theory in ethics.Brad Hooker - 2012 - In Ulrike Heuer & Gerald Lang, Luck, Value, and Commitment: Themes from the Ethics of Bernard Williams. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press USA. pp. 19.
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  40. Antitheory and Edification: Williams and Kierkegaard on Some Possibilities for Philosophy.Mark A. Tietjen - 2012 - International Philosophical Quarterly 52 (4):471-486.
    This paper shows the remarkable compatibility of the thought of Bernard Williams and Søren Kierkegaard regarding what Williams would call the “limits” of philosophical ethics and practice. In different ways both Williams and Kierkegaard critique a reductionist conception of the ethical life, its obligations, and the prescriptions that ethical theories make based upon such conceptions. Additionally, the high level of reflectiveness in their respective societies worries both. For Williams the concern is an epistemological one, whereas for Kierkegaard the issue is (...)
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  41. I—R. Jay Wallace: Duties of Love.R. Jay Wallace - 2012 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 86 (1):175-198.
    A defence of the idea that there are sui generis duties of love: duties, that is, that we owe to people in virtue of standing in loving relationships with them. I contrast this non‐reductionist position with the widespread reductionist view that our duties to those we love all derive from more generic moral principles. The paper mounts a cumulative argument in favour of the non‐reductionist position, adducing a variety of considerations that together speak strongly in favour of adopting it. The (...)
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  42. Glory as an Ethical Idea.Timothy Chappell - 2011 - Philosophical Investigations 34 (2):105-134.
    There is a gap between what we think and what we think we think about ethics. This gap appears when elements of our ethical reflection and our moral theories contradict each other. It also appears when something that is important in our ethical reflection is sidelined in our moral theories. The gap appears in both ways with the ethical idea glory. The present exploration of this idea is a case study of how far actual ethical reflection diverges from moral theory. (...)
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  43. Conflict, Regret, and Modern Moral Philosophy.Leonard Kahn - 2011 - In Thom Brooks, New Waves in Ethics. Palgrave-Macmillan.
    I begin this paper by discussing the difference between outweighing and canceling in conflicts of normativity. I then introduce a thought experiment that I call Crash Drive,and I use it to explain the nature of a certain kind of moral conflict as well as the appropriate emotional response – regret – on the part of the primary agent in this case. Having done this, I turn to a line of criticism opened by Bernard Williams and recently expanded by Jonathan Dancy (...)
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  44. Luck, Value, and Commitment: Themes from the Ethics of Bernard Williams.Heuer and Lang (ed.) - 2011 - Oxford University Press.
    The essays of this collection demonstrate the enormous influence of Williams’s writings on current philosophy; they are divide into five groups: ethical theory, moral luck, reasons and “ought,” intuitionism and moral knowledge, and political philosophy. In most cases, the chapters do not have exegetical or protreptic aims, but rather develop arguments linked to the projects that are central to Williams’s thoughts on ethics. With contributions by John Broome, Jonathan Dancy, David Enoch, Ulrike Heuer, Brad Hooker, Gerald Lang, Philip Pettit, Joseph (...)
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  45. (1 other version)Adorno's practical philosophy: Living Less Wrongly.Fabian Freyenhagen - 2010 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    Adorno notoriously asserted that there is no 'right' life in our current social world. This assertion has contributed to the widespread perception that his philosophy has no practical import or coherent ethics, and he is often accused of being too negative. Fabian Freyenhagen reconstructs and defends Adorno's practical philosophy in response to these charges. He argues that Adorno's deep pessimism about the contemporary social world is coupled with a strong optimism about human potential, and that this optimism explains his negative (...)
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  46. Worthy Lives.Lisa Rivera - 2010 - Social Theory and Practice 36 (2):185-212.
    Susan Wolf's paper "Meaning and Morality" draws our attention to the fact that Williams's objection to Kantian morality is primarily a concern about a possible conflict between morality and that which gives our lives meaning. I argue that the force of Williams's objection requires a more precise understanding of meaning as dependent on our intention to make our lives themselves worthwhile. It is not meaning simpliciter that makes Williams's objective persuasive but rather meaning as arising out of our positive evaluation (...)
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  47. Can Morality Be Codified.Peter Shiu-Hwa Tsu - 2010 - Australian Journal of Professional and Applied Ethics 11 (1-2):145-154.
    In this paper, I will examine the debate between the principlists and the particularists with special focus on the question of whether there is any true and coherent set of moral principles that codifies the moral landscape metaphysically speaking. My stance on this issue is an extreme sort of particularism which gives a ‘no’ answer to the above question. Yet it is significantly different from the positions of other extremists like John McDowell, Jonathan Dancy and Margaret Little. In section 2, (...)
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  48. Moral schizophrenia and the paradox of friendship.Scott Woodcock - 2010 - Utilitas 22 (1):1-25.
    In his landmark paper, , Michael Stocker introduces an affliction that is, according to his diagnosis, endemic to all modern ethical theories. Stocker's paper is well known and often cited, yet moral schizophrenia remains a surprisingly obscure diagnosis. I argue that moral schizophrenia, properly understood, is not necessarily as disruptive as its name suggests. However, I also argue that Stocker's inability to demonstrate that moral schizophrenia constitutes a reductio of modern ethical theories does not rule out the possibility that he (...)
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  49. Ethics Beyond Moral Theory.Timothy Chappell - 2009 - Philosophical Investigations 32 (3):206-243.
    I develop an anti-theory view of ethics. Moral theory (Kantian, utilitarian, virtue ethical, etc.) is the dominant approach to ethics among academic philosophers. But moral theory's hunt for a single Master Factor (utility, universalisability, virtue . . .) is implausibly systematising and reductionist. Perhaps scientism drives the approach? But good science always insists on respect for the data, even messy data: I criticise Singer's remarks on infanticide as a clear instance of moral theory failing to respect the data of moral (...)
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  50. Is Moral Theory Harmful in Practice?—Relocating Anti-theory in Contemporary Ethics.Nora Hämäläinen - 2009 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 12 (5):539-553.
    In this paper I discuss the viability of the claim that at least some forms of moral theory are harmful for sound moral thought and practice. This claim was put forward by e.g. Elisabeth Anscombe ( 1981 ( 1958 )) and by Annette Baier, Peter Winch, D.Z Phillips and Bernard Williams in the 1970’s–1980’s. To this day aspects of it have found resonance in both post-Wittgensteinian and virtue ethical quarters. The criticism has on one hand contributed to a substantial change (...)
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