Ethical and Philosophical Questions about Value and Obligation

Ethical and Philosophical Questions about Value and Obligation

I Recall the distinction between metaethics and normative ethics. Normative

ethics deals with substantial ethical issues, such as, What is intrinsically good?

What are our moral obligations? Metaethics deals with philosophical issues about

ethics: What is value or moral obligation? Are there ethical facts? What sort of

objectivity is possible in ethics? How can we have ethical knowledge?

Recall, also, the fundamental dilemma of metaethics. Either there are

ethical facts or there aren?t. If they are, what sort of facts are they? In what do

they consist? If there are not, why do we think, talk, and feel as though there are?

II Philosophical ethics is the integration of metaethics and normative ethics?the

attempt to come to an integrated understanding of both. Given our current

perspective, how can we view the philosophical ethics of Mill, Kant, Aristotle,

Nietzsche, and the ethics of care?

III For Mill, the question is what is the relation between his (metaethical)

empirical naturalism and his (normative) qualitatively hedonist value theory

and his utilitarian moral theory? One place we can see Mill?s empiricism is his

treatment, in Chapter III, of the question of why the principle of utility is

?binding?, how it can generate a moral obligation. Compare Mill?s treatment of

this question with Kant?s treatment of the question of why the CI is binding in

Chapter III of the Groundwork.

IV What is Kant?s metaethics? Since he holds that morality is both necessary and

a priori, Kant must be some kind of rationalist. But, unlike Plato, he is not the

kind of rationalist who holds that there are metaphysically...

... middle of paper ...

...ception might underlie the ethics of care?

Think about how we experience our relationships to others. Don?t we experience

particular others as making claims on us? Personal relationships are probably the

best examples, but aren't relationships with strangers quite similar. Think, for

example, of fundamental forms of human exchange like gift-giving, promise, and

contract. Indeed, the original root meaning of ?obligation? refers to bond created

between individuals by such exchanges. As in, ?much obliged.?

VIII Of course, we have only been able to pursue some of the many

different ways in which philosophers have tried to think through the ethical and

philosophical questions about value and obligation that any thoughtful human

being faces. In the end, it is up to each of us to decide what answers to these

questions we find most convincing.