The Futility of Philosophical Ethics: Metaethics and the Grounds of Moral Feeling

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The Futility of Philosophical Ethics puts forward a novel account of the grounds of moral feeling with fundamental implications for philosophical ethics. It examines the grounds of moral feeling by both the phenomenology of that feeling, and the facts of moral feeling in operation particularly in forms such as moral luck, vicious virtues, and moral disgust that appear paradoxical from the point of view of systematic ethics. Using an analytic approach, James Kirwan engages in the ongoing debates among contemporary philosophers within metaethics and normative ethics. Instead of trying to erase the variety of moral responses that exist in philosophical analysis under one totalizing system, Kirwan argues that such moral theorizing is futile. His analysis counters currently prevalent arguments that seek to render the origins of moral experience unproblematic by finding substitutes for realism in various forms of noncognitivism. In reasserting the problematic nature of moral experience, and offering a theory of the origins of that experience in unavoidable individual desires, Kirwan accounts for the diverse manifestations of moral feeling and demonstrates why so many arguments in metaethics and normative ethics are necessarily irresolvable.

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The Futility of Philosophical Ethics is a timely and fresh approach to many topics in ethics. James Kirwan takes our moral responses and feelings as central parts of our moral lives in a way that upends most modern moral philosophy. It is a challenging book that deserves a wide readership. * Simon Kirchin, Professor of Philosophy, University of Kent, UK *

Author Bio

James Kirwan is Professor of Philosophy, Department of Cross-Cultural Studies, Kansai University, Osaka, Japan.