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Abstraction, Idealization and Ideology in Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Onora O'Neill
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Extract

Although Burke, Bentham, Hegel and Marx do not often agree, all criticized certain ethical theories, in particular theories of rights, for being too abstract. The complaint is still popular. It was common in Existentialist and in Wittgensteinian writing that stressed the importance of cases and examples rather than principles for the moral life; it has been prominent in recent Hegelian and Aristotelian flavoured writing, which stresses the importance of the virtues; it is reiterated in discussions that stress the distinctiveness and particularity of moral vicissitudes and query the importance of ethical theory. Recent critics of abstraction are opposed not only to theories of rights, and the Kantian notions with which these are linked, but also to consequentialist ethical theories. The two ethical theories that are most influential in the English-speaking world now both stand accused of being too abstract.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 22: Moral Philosophy and Contemporary Problems , September 1987 , pp. 55 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1987

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References

1 Including MacIntyre, (1981)Google Scholar, Williams, (1985)Google Scholar and Walzer, (1983)Google Scholar; also, in rather different idioms, Baier, (1985b)Google Scholar, Blum, (1980)Google Scholar and Seidler, (1986).Google Scholar

2 Benthamite utilitarians, we shall see, can avoid the charge of abstraction, but at the cost of implausible assumptions.

3 See Seidler, (1986)Google Scholar, Sandel, (1982).Google Scholar

4 Gewirth, (1982)Google Scholar, Shue, (1980).Google Scholar

5 Formalism and idealization are, however, linked. Principles that could be relevant both for idealized agents and for varying human agents would have to be particularly schematic and indeterminate.

6 Mill, (1962)Google Scholar, Utilitarianism, Ch.1.

7 Péguy, (1961)Google Scholar, Victor Marie, Comte Hugo.

8 Baier, (1985b) 226Google Scholar; the criticism is frequent.

9 Baier, (1985b) 216–17Google Scholar; again the point is standard.

10 Kant, (1929) A133/B172.Google Scholar

11 Kant, (1970)Google Scholar, Sartre, (1948).Google Scholar

12 See Winch, (1972)Google Scholar and discussion of his paper in Mendus, (1985b).Google Scholar

13 Ruddick, (1980)Google Scholar, O'Neill, (1986).Google Scholar

14 For good reasons: a full consideration of the topic has to give an account of how one may, without begging questions, discuss with those who allege that there are barriers that prevent any discussion.

15 This brief discussion draws mainly on Kant's account of shifting horizons and of the sensus communis in the First and Third Critiques and in his Logic and on Gadamer's rather different use of the metaphor of the horizon.

16 Kant, (1978) 293–4.Google Scholar

17 For recent discussion of the significance of such fragmentation of ethical discourse see above all MacIntyre (1981).