Philippa Foot's Metaethics

This Element defends Philippa Foot's controversial claims grounding moral norms on human nature.

John Hacker-Wright (Author)

9781108713290, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 10 June 2021

75 pages
22.7 x 15.1 x 0.4 cm, 0.11 kg

This Element presents an interpretation and defence of Philippa Foot's ethical naturalism. It begins with the often neglected grammatical method that Foot derives from an interpretation of Ludwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy. This method shapes her approach to understanding goodness as well as the role that she attributes to human nature in ethical judgment. Moral virtues understood as perfections of human powers are central to Foot's account of ethical judgment. The thrust of the interpretation offered here is that Foot's metaethics takes ethical judgment to be tied to our self-understanding as a sort of rational animal. Foot's metaethics thereby offers a compelling contemporary approach that preserves some of the best insights of the Aristotelian tradition in practical philosophy.

1. Introduction
2. Goodness and the Grammatical Method
3. Placing Ethics in Human Life
4. Virtues as Perfections of Human Powers.

Subject Areas: Social & political philosophy [HPS], Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ], Philosophy [HP]