Problems for Hard Moral Particularism: Can We Really Dismiss General Reasons?

Philosophical Inquiries 8 (2):31-46 (2020)
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Abstract

Moral particularism, in its extreme version, is the theory that argues that there are no invariant context-independent moral reasons. It states also that moral knowledge is not constituted by principles and that these are useless or harmful in practice. In this paper, I intend to argue that this position takes context-sensitiveness of reasons too seriously and has to face many philosophical problems—mainly because its most important argument (the argument from holism of reasons) is not convincing but also because a pluralist generalist account is preferable both from metaethical and normative points of view.

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Dario Cecchini
North Carolina State University

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