Abstract
In response to challenges to moral philosophy presented by other disciplines and
facing a diversity of approaches to the foundation and focus of morality, this paper
argues for a pluralist meta-ethics that is methodologically hierarchical and guided by
the principle of subsidiarity. Inspired by Deweyan pragmatism, this novel and original
application of the subsidiarity principle and the related methodological proposal for a
cascading meta-ethical architecture offer a “dirty” and instrumentalist understanding
of meta-ethics that promises to work, not only in moral philosophy but also in the
(rest of the) real world, and that facilitates collaboration with other disciplines outside
moral philosophy.