Abstract

In celebration of the centennial of the Institute of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Leuven, a series of lectures was organized to outline the evolution of various philosophical disciplines in the time span 1889-1989. The lcture on ethics was an attempt to depict the transition from foundational and universalist ethics into a hermeneutical type of ethics that is anti-foundational and particularistic. Such can be interpreted as a transition from modernity into post-modernity,or from ethics into post-ethics : it is the abandonment of the belief that ethics might offer a rational legitimation of ethical principles, or that such principles might be shown to be universal dictates of reason. Several historical and philosophical aspects of this criticism of rationalistic ethics are traced and evaluated, in discussion with authors such as Nussbaum, Rorty, Walzer, and Lévi-Strauss. — 1. The post-modern rehabilitation of moral sensitivity correctly criticizes the poverty of a moral life that is only based on principles. However, it is shown that even loyalty to a particular person or group can only be of an ethical nature ifsome universality is presupposed. — 2. The post-modern rehabilitation of tradition is based on two arguments: moral judging can only occur within a particular way of life, and this particularism is the most efficient anti-dote against totalitarian powers of rationalization and homogenization. Nevertheless, it is evidenced that the universalism of human rights is needed to safeguard such particularism. — 3. Other motives in the criticismof a universalist ethical theory derive from the Wittgensteinian or Heideggerian rejection of humanism as a form of subjectivism or anthropocentrism. The final conclusion is that the particularity of ethos has an important role to playin the development of our moral sense, but that this role is essentially heuristic. Thisparticularity is the experiential matrix for a responsibility that is nevertheless of a universal nature. Ethics can never be equated with the articulation of a particular way of life, or ethos, because it needs the tension between facts and values. Without such atension it is reduced to a positivism of culture. The foundational questions should not be abandoned. They are not rationalistic abstractions precluding experience, but they are the reminders that our norms are norms, i.e. tasks to be fulfilled and not just actualsocial sentiments and preferences