Abstract

This is a PhD dissertation. Ethical particularism claims that any non-moral feature that in one situation is a reason why something is, for example, morally wrong, may in another situation be morally irrelevant or have an opposite moral valence. Ethical particularism entails, in other words, the non-existence of true or sound moral principles. Actions, persons, and situations acquire their moral features contextually in a way that escapes codification in principled terms. Particularism comes in this way in conflict with a classical approach to moral philosophy