Ethics without principles

New York: Oxford University Press (2004)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In this much-anticipated book, Jonathan Dancy offers the only available full-scale treatment of particularism in ethics, a view with which he has been associated for twenty years. Dancy now presents particularism as the view that the possibility of moral thought and judgement does not in any way depend on an adequate supply of principles. He grounds this claim on a form of reasons-holism, holding that what is a reason in one case need not be any reason in another, and maintaining that moral reasons are no different in this respect from others. Ethics Without Principles offers detailed treatment and criticism of opposing positions of all sorts, with useful summaries. It also contains three chapters on the nature of what Dancy calls 'contributory' reasons, which, though the topic of much interest at the moment, are not often discussed in anything like the detail given here. And it offers a distinctive form of value-holism to go with the holism of reasons. As Dancy's definitive statement on particularism, the book will be required reading for all those working on moral philosophy and ethical theory.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Moral particularism and the real world.Brad Hooker - 2007 - In Mark Norris Lance, Matjaž Potrč & Vojko Strahovnik (eds.), Challenging Moral Particularism. Routledge. pp. 12--30.
Defending semantic generalism.Daniel Whiting - 2007 - Analysis 67 (4):303–311.
Why Sibley is Not a Generalist After All.Anna Bergqvist - 2010 - British Journal of Aesthetics 50 (1):1-14.
Crisp's ‘ethics without reasons?’: A note on invariance.Edward Harcourt - 2007 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 4 (1):50-54.
Ethics without reasons?Roger Crisp - 2007 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 4 (1):40-49.

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
468 (#36,587)

6 months
28 (#94,300)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Jonathan Dancy
University of Texas at Austin

Citations of this work

Against Grounding Necessitarianism.Alexander Skiles - 2015 - Erkenntnis 80 (4):717-751.
The Normativity of Rationality.Benjamin Kiesewetter - 2017 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The Ethics of Conceptualization: A Needs-Based Approach.Matthieu Queloz - forthcoming - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
What is inference?Paul Boghossian - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 169 (1):1-18.
The Unity of Grounding.Selim Berker - 2018 - Mind 127 (507):729-777.

View all 597 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references