Abstract
Within Aristotelian Naturalism, the concepts of ethics and metaethics undergo a serious expansion of meaning, going beyond their customary usage in current debates. In particular, Aristotelian Naturalism does not regard the ascription of a deontic status such as “permitted”, “required” or “forbidden” to certain actions as paradigmatic for determining the scope of ethics. Rather, if it does not altogether seek to eliminate these ascriptions, as Elizabeth Anscombe, one of the decisive figures of inspiration for Aristotelian Naturalism, does, it merely conceives of them as particular applications of a general structure of normativity which can then also provide a framework for the conduct of a specific species of normativity, that is that of human actions. What we find at the centre of Aristotelian Naturalism, therefore, are two key objectives: First, to characterize the overall structure of natural normativity as applicable to all living creatures; and second, to determine how this general structure can be brought to bear on the special case of the character and actions of rational human agents, without undergoing so radical a transformation that the claim for ethics in the strict sense to be successfully incorporated into a theory of natural normativity would be put into question.
So much the worse for moral philosophy!
Foot 2001, 79
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
For a critique of Foot’s „pure descriptivism“, according to which “reference to the speakers’ desire or dispositions to act is no part of a proper account of acting well any more than it is a part of a proper account of seeing well or reproducing well or any other such merit of an organism”, see Müller (2004), 30. According to Müller, the category of “good actions” contains a reference to the principles of practical reasoning which entail a readiness on the part of the honest speaker which cannot be considered as purely descriptivist, i.e.. the readiness “to pass from a certain kind of reason to doing what is thought to be a reason to do.” (Müller 2004, 45).
- 3.
For this metaphor, cf. Thompson (2008), 29.
- 4.
- 5.
Hacker-Wright (2009) and Lott (2012) justly warn us to be cautious about the misunderstandings that may arise if we confuse the logical project of exploring the human life form by means of natural-historical judgements with the empirical-biological project of determining the behavioural patterns typical of human beings (including practices such as gender-based infanticide or the readiness to deceive strangers).
- 6.
Cf. Thompson (2008), 81.
- 7.
Cf. Geach (1977), 17.
- 8.
As argued by Philippa Foot in Foot (2001), 39.
- 9.
Cf. the enlightening reflections in Lott (2014), as well as M. Brandhorst’s contribution on Aristotelian Naturalism as ethical naturalism in the present volume.
- 10.
Cf. for this distinction Annas (2005), 17ff.
- 11.
- 12.
Cf. Anscombe (2005), 169.
- 13.
This is the definition of “right action” in Hursthouse (1999), 28.
- 14.
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Halbig, C. (2020). Aristotelian Naturalism as Metaethics. In: Hähnel, M. (eds) Aristotelian Naturalism. Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37576-8_5
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