Moral Relevance and Moral Conflict

James D. Wallace

Published by Cornell University Press 1988

Moral Relevance and Moral Conflict

James D. Wallace

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501743764

Overview
Contents

About this book

How do we establish the relevance of a moral consideration when doing so is problematic? How are conflicts among relevant considerations properly resolved? James D. Wallace maintains that a successful ethical theory should be able to answer these important questions. Nevertheless, he argues, the leading contemporary moral theories do not satisfactorily address them.

In this book, Wallace criticizes the standard philosophical accounts of how we should resolve problems of moral relevance and moral conflict. He proceeds by looking at such accounts as utilitarianism, Kantian moral theory, and intuitionism, and by providing an extended evaluation of Henry Sidgwick's moral epistemology. According to Wallace, these approaches pose difficulties because they all assume that there exist fixed, unchanging standards, rules, or methods that give us explicit directions for the solution of such problems. He then goes on to develop his own, "contextualist," approach, which combines elements of both Aristotelian and pragmatic views. To solve new problems, he asserts, we must adapt what we have learned from past problems to novel circumstances, sometimes appreciably changing our ways of dealing with certain kinds of issues. In adapting our ways of dealing with these issues to unprecedented problems, and in dealing with the conflicts that arise from unprecedented juxtapositions of considerations, we alter and even reform morality.

Author / Editor information

James D. Wallace is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Ethical Norms, Particular Cases and Virtues and Vices, both from Cornell.

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Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
PREFACE Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
INTRODUCTION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 Relevance and Conflict Problems Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	6
2 The Passive Conception of Practical Reasoning Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	24
3 The Contextualist Response Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	50
4 The Importance of Importance Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	96
5 The End of a Life: A Relevance Problem Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	134
BIBLIOGRAPHY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	165

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 168
Keywords: Philosophy

eBook

Published: June 30, 2019
ISBN: 9781501743764