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Descriptive Ethics

What does Moral Philosophy Know about Morality?

  • Book
  • © 2016

Overview

Authors:
  1. Nora Hämäläinen

    1. University of Helsinki , Helsinki, Finland

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  • Contributes to the growing scientific and philosophical literature on valuation studies

  • Addresses analytic ethical theory in a fresh way

  • Brings together methodological questions raised in post-Wittgensteinian ethics, Pragmatist ethics, and post-Foucaudlian discussions of personhood and subjectivity with communitarian approaches to ethics

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Table of contents (11 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiv
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  2. Introduction—or What Does Moral Philosophy Know about Morality?

    • Nora Hämäläinen
    Pages 1-6

  3. Moral Philosophy Today

    • Nora Hämäläinen
    Pages 7-14

  4. Morality as Known by Moral Philosophers

    • Nora Hämäläinen
    Pages 15-25

  5. The Foundational Project of Ethics and a Different Way of Going Below the Surface

    • Nora Hämäläinen
    Pages 27-35

  6. The Challenge from X-phi

    • Nora Hämäläinen
    Pages 37-47

  7. Dewey’s Empirical Ethics

    • Nora Hämäläinen
    Pages 49-57

  8. Wittgensteinian Applications

    • Nora Hämäläinen
    Pages 59-71

  9. Foucault’s Archeology and Genealogy of the Self

    • Nora Hämäläinen
    Pages 73-89

  10. Charles Taylor’s Affirmation of the Modern Self

    • Nora Hämäläinen
    Pages 91-106

  11. The “Merely Descriptive” and the “Empirical” Revisited

    • Nora Hämäläinen
    Pages 107-116

  12. Descriptive Ethics and the Philosopher

    • Nora Hämäläinen
    Pages 117-128

  13. Back Matter

    Pages 129-138
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Keywords

About this book

This book is an investigation into the descriptive task of moral philosophy. Nora Hämäläinen explores the challenge of providing rich and accurate pictures of the moral conditions, values, virtues, and norms under which people live and have lived, along with relevant knowledge about the human animal and human nature. While modern moral philosophy has focused its energies on normative and metaethical theory, the task of describing, uncovering, and inquiring into moral frameworks and moral practices has mainly been left to social scientists and historians.  Nora Hämäläinen argues that this division of labour has detrimental consequences for moral philosophy and that a reorientation toward descriptive work is needed in moral philosophy. She traces resources for a descriptive philosophical ethics in the work of four prominent philosophers of the twentieth century: John Dewey, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault, and Charles Taylor, while also calling on thinkers inspired by them. 

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of Helsinki , Helsinki, Finland

    Nora Hämäläinen

About the author

Nora Hämäläinen is a docent (affiliated senior researcher) at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and a research fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala, Sweden, 2016-2017. She is the author of Literature and Moral Theory and has co-edited the volume Language, Ethics and Animal Life — Wittgenstein and Beyond (with Niklas Forsberg and Mikel Burley).

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Descriptive Ethics

  • Book Subtitle: What does Moral Philosophy Know about Morality?

  • Authors: Nora Hämäläinen

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58617-9

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York

  • eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-58616-2Published: 21 October 2016

  • eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-58617-9Published: 20 October 2016

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: X, 132

  • Topics: Ethics, Analytic Philosophy, Moral Philosophy

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