Moral Certainty and the Foundations of Morality
What lies at the foundation of our moral beliefs? If we dig down far enough do we find that our moral values have no ground at all to stand on, and so are apt to collapse upon serious philosophical investigation? This book seeks to answer these and relate
- PDF / 2,029,254 Bytes
- 211 Pages / 433.701 x 612.283 pts Page_size
- 43 Downloads / 193 Views
ora
lC
ert
ain
ty
Ne
il O
’H
ar
a
an
dt
he
Fo u
nd
ati
on
so
fM
ora
lit
y
Moral Certainty and the Foundations of Morality
Neil O’Hara
Moral Certainty and the Foundations of Morality
Neil O’Hara Independent Scholar Luton, UK
ISBN 978-3-319-75443-7 ISBN 978-3-319-75444-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75444-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018934855 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Mellok Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Preface
Hard problems are sometimes best tackled obliquely. Why be moral? What is the status of moral language? Isn’t morality all relative to culture or person? These are all hard problems of moral philosophy, and it is important that we try to tackle them. In this book I will seek to shed light on these problems by getting clear about the basic foundations of our moral thinking. In getting clear about foundations, solutions to some of these hard problems will, I hope, be suggested and ways forward opened up. In particular, I will be defending a view of morality as essentially other-regarding, recasting questions like ‘Why be moral?’ as questions about why we should regard others. Then, I want to suggest that the source of our other-regarding thought is a phenomenon I call ‘primary recognition’. By this I mean the unmediated experience of seeing other humans as those due moral concern. This experience is, I will argue, an incorrigible and necessary part of all functioning human beings. The third strand of my project here will be to locate all of this within a wider discussion about the Witt
Data Loading...
