Varieties of enlightenment optimism

discourse ethics and Wittgensteinian particularism in conversation

Thomas Wallgren

pp. 306-342

in: Lilli Alanen, Sara Heinämaa, Thomas Wallgren (eds), Commonality and particularity in ethics, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1997

Abstract

D. Ross once wrote that "in all the main theories in ethics… there is much that is true, and… even when theories are in broad opposition to each other, each is probably erring onlyl by overstatement or misstatement of something that is profoundly true".¹ Ross's dictum can be seen as a reason for conversation between different traditions in moral philosophy, as what is weak and what valuable in them might be most readily discernible through comparison and dialogue. To date, such dialogue between discourse ethics and particularism has been almost non-existent.² My essay presents an effort to recover some of the opportunities for learning about moral philosophy and the present moral predicament, which may thereby have been lost.

Cited authors

Wittgenstein Ludwig