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This book shows that Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later philosophical methods can be fruitfully applied to several problems in contemporary moral philosophy. The author considers Wittgenstein’s ethical views and addresses such topics as meta-ethics, objectivity in ethics and moral perception. Readers will gain an insight into how Wittgenstein thought about philosophical problems and a new way of looking at moral questions. The book consists of three parts. In the first part, Wittgenstein’s later philosophical methods are discussed, including his comparison of philosophical methods to therapies. The book then goes on to explore how these methods give insight into Wittgenstein’s ethical views...
Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen presents a new account of the role of moral philosophy and its relationship to our ordinary moral lives. She challenges the idea that moral theories have an authoritative explanatory or action-guiding role, and develops instead a descriptive, pluralistic, and elucidatory conception of moral philosophy.
This volume offers a collective study of the work of P. F. Strawson (1919-2006) and an exploration of its relevance for current philosophical debates. It is the first book since Strawson's death to cover the full range of his philosophy, with chapters by world-leading experts about his lasting contributions to the philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, moral philosophy, and philosophical methodology. It aims to achieve a balance between exegesis of Strawson, critical engagement, and consideration of the reception and continuing value of his work. It explores the intellectual relations between Strawson and some of his predecessors and contemporaries and it will be an indispensable source for scholars and students of twentieth-century philosophy and its influence in the twenty-first.
The clean separation between manifold phenomena and a systematic order that prevails in them is a basic feature of the rational-scientific orientation system. The first authoritative formulation of this premise is found in Plato. His discussion of constitutive forms of world events has initiated a broad development in the history of philosophy, which is also effective today in the preference for reason-guided analyses of often confusing circumstances. The authors of this volume address the lasting relevance of this idea within two interrelated areas of research, namely Plato scholarship and contemporary Platonism. Of particular interest is the relationship between Plato and Wittgenstein. Following this overall idea, this volume is divided into three sections: Plato scholarship, Platonism, and Plato and Wittgenstein. As the contributions show, Platonism proves to be not only a purely historical-exegetical field of research but rather a fruitful stimulus for contemporary discussions on logical, linguistic, and social topics.
This is a collection of essays on Wittgenstein and Wittgensteinian themes that appeared between 1996 and 2019. It is divided into three parts, with a common trajectory laid out in a substantial introduction. The first part links meaning, necessity and normativity. It defends and modifies Wittgenstein’s claim that the idea of a ‘grammatical rule’ holds the key to understanding linguistic meaning and its connection to necessary truth. The second part elucidates the connections between meaning, concepts and thought in Wittgenstein and beyond. It shows how he laid the grounds for a sound understanding of four contested issues—radical interpretation, concepts, nonsense and animal minds. T...
This book provides a philosophical assessment of the idea of personhood advanced in popular self-help literature. It also traces, within academic philosophy and philosophical scholarship, a self-help culture where the self is brought forth as an object of improvement and a key to meaning, progress, and profundity. Unlike other academic treatments of the topic of self-help, this book is not primarily concerned with providing a critique of popular self-help and self-transformative practices. Rather, it is concerned with how they work to shape contemporary forms and ideals of moral personhood and are conducive to moral renegotiation and change. The book consists of two parts with somewhat diffe...
A central figure in Anglo-American philosophy for over four decades, Paul F. Snowdon made seminal contributions to the fields of metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and the history of twentieth-century philosophy. Snowdon's work on perception and perceptual experience--much of which is collected in this volume for the first time--was particularly influential and firmly established 'disjunctivism' as a view with which any theorist working in the field must reckon. In the essays collected in the first part of this volume, Snowdon traces the contours of the concept of perception, refining his formulation of the disjunctivist position, determining the degree of involvement of the concept of causati...
Moral certainty refers to those aspects of morality – moral acting, feeling, and thinking – that are beyond doubt, explanation, and justification. The essays in this book explore the concept of moral certainty and its application and usefulness in contemporary moral debates. The notion of moral certainty, which is inspired by the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, is emerging as a key reference point in contemporary moral philosophy. An investigation into the implications of moral certainty is called for, given that so many discussions in moral philosophy concern the possibility of justifying our moral beliefs. The concept of moral certainty also feeds directly into the emerging field of...
These essays discuss various ontological and epistemological questions in moral philosophy, drawing on ideas from Platonic-Aristotelian ethics, the later Wittgenstein, and Iris Murdoch, though without seeking to weave these into any unified system. The general approach is realist or objectivist, paying some attention to the role of imaginative literature (especially the novel) in ethical formation. A common theme is the lived experience of the socially situated subject, including our capacity for engagement with the values present in an inherited tradition or 'form of life'. Such engagement, once raised to consciousness, may contain elements both of affirmation and of cultural critique. In the book as a whole, the critical theme predominates, with a certain emphasis on discourses of social disruption. But it is always assumed that the right place to stand as an observer of the domain of value is within that domain, and that moral critique will be immanent with respect to the culture addressed--that is, it will make do with just the conceptual and linguistic resources available to ordinary participants in moral, political, or aesthetic conversation.
The 100th anniversary of the first publication of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is celebrated by a collection of original papers by well-known experts on various aspects of one of the greatest works of philosophy in the twentieth century.