An Audience for Moral Philosophy?
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An Audience for Moral Philosophy? lohn T. Edelman
Assodate Professor of Philosophy Nazareth College of Rochester, Neui York
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-21105-0 ISBN 978-1-349-21103-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21103-6
© [ohn
T. Edelman 1990
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1990 978-0-333-52989-8 All rights reserved. For Information, write: Scholarly and Referenee Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 First published in the United States of Ameriea in 1990 ISBN 978-0-312-04931-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Edelman. [ohn T. 1953An audienee for moral philosophy/John T. Edelman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical referenees and index. ISBN 978-0-312-04931-7 1. Ethies . 2. Logic, I. Title. BJ43.E34 1990 90-36808 17O-dc20 cn-
Contents Preface
vii
Part I: A Tradition Observed
1
The Politicization of Morality
2
The Classic Text: Hobbes' Leviathan
11
3
The Tradition Renewed
27
4
'The Great Beast'
49
3
Part 11: Some Limits of Moral Philosophy 5
An Audience Assumed ...
61
6
Differences and Distances
78
7
Argument and Agreement
90
8
'What Is To Be Done?'
103
Notes
114
Bibliography
118
Index
121
Ta Kathy
Preface The main ideas in this book were first developed in a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Wales in [une of 1981. In May of 1985 I returned to the University College of Swansea as A.E. Heath Fellow and took the opportunity to reformulate those ideas and present them in aseries of seminars there in the Philosophy Department. The present essay incorporates revisions made in the light of comments and criticisms offered by those attending those seminars. In the book I am concerned to do two things: first, to criticize a certain tradition in western moral philosophy and, second, to understand something of what it is to have done that. H, despite the faults that remain, there is some value in this book, it lies, I think, in this: By drawing out some of the connections between certain enduring problems in moral philosophy and some fundamental issues in the philosophy of logic, the book manages, I think, to throw some light on the nature of moral philosophy, that is, on the nature of philosophical criticism in ethics . This seems to me especiaIly important today, given, on the one hand, a variety of things said in recent years suggesting a certain moral neutrality for moral philosophy and, on the other hand, the recent growth in philosophers' contributions in 'applied' or 'practical' ethics, contributions that sometimes suggest a certain prescriptive role for moral philosophy. While I try to point up a sense in which moral philosophy cannot be morally neutral, I also suggest a sense in which it cannot be prescriptive. In these respects I am concerned with what I shall speak of as 'some limits of moral philosophy' . My debts are many. I am grateful to the University College of Swansea for offering me an A.E. Heath Fellowship, and to Nazareth College of Rochester for a research grant enabli
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