The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge
Language
EnglishAbstract
Based on an unfinished manuscript by the late philosopher Dallas Willard, this book makes the case that the 20th century saw a massive shift in Western beliefs and attitudes concerning the possibility of moral knowledge, such that knowledge of the moral life and of its conduct is no longer routinely available from the social institutions long thought to be responsible for it. In this sense, moral knowledge—as a publicly available resource for living—has disappeared. Via a detailed survey of main developments in ethical theory from the late 19th through the late 20th centuries, Willard explains philosophy’s role in this shift. In pointing out the shortcomings of these developments, he shows that the shift was not the result of rational argument or discovery, but largely of arational social forces—in other words, there was no good reason for moral knowledge to have disappeared.
The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge is a unique contribution to the literature on the history of ethics and social morality. Its review of historical work on moral knowledge covers a wide range of thinkers including T.H Green, G.E Moore, Charles L. Stevenson, John Rawls, and Alasdair MacIntyre. But, most importantly, it concludes with a novel proposal for how we might reclaim moral knowledge that is inspired by the phenomenological approach of Knud Logstrup and Emmanuel Levinas. Edited and eventually completed by three of Willard’s former graduate students, this book marks the culmination of Willard’s project to find a secure basis in knowledge for the moral life.
Keywords
Aristotle’s Metaphysical Biology;Moral Knowledge;Dallas Willard;Good Life;Steve Porter;Logical Relations;Aaron Preston;Summum Bonum;Gregg TenElshof;Warranted Assertability;ethics;Principia Ethica;history of ethics;Objective Moral Knowledge;analytic ethics;Make Moral Judgments;19th-century philosophy;Intuitive Justification;20th-century philosophy;Untutored Human Nature;G.E. Moore;Evaluative Truths;John Dewey;Reflective Equilibrium;Alasdair MacIntyre;Dialectical Questioning;John RawlsDOI
10.4324/9780429491764ISBN
9780429958878, 9781138589254, 9780367502294, 9780429491764, 9780429958861, 9780429958885Publisher
Taylor & FrancisPublisher website
https://taylorandfrancis.com/Publication date and place
2018Imprint
RoutledgeClassification
Christianity
Religious ethics
Ethics and moral philosophy
Philosophy: epistemology and theory of knowledge
Western philosophy from c 1800
Philosophy of religion