Overview

Moral Philosophy and Moral Life addresses the questions of the role of moral philosophy and its relationship to our ordinary moral lives. Christensen's argument is motivated by the belief that one of the most important obstacles for doing work in moral philosophy today is the lack of a coherent answer to the question of the role and status of moral philosophy and the theories it develops. The first part untangles various criticisms of the dominant view of moral theories that challenge the explanatory, foundational, authoritative, and action-guiding role of these theories. It also offers an alternative understanding of moral theories as descriptions of moral grammar. The second part investigates the nature of the particularities relevant for an understanding of moral life; both particularities tied to the moral subject, her character, her commitments, and her moral position, and particularities tied to the context of the subject, her moral community, and her language. The final part marks a return to moral philosophy and addresses the wider question of what the revised conception of moral theories and the affirmation of the value of the particular mean for moral philosophy by developing a descriptive, pluralistic, and elucidatory conception of moral philosophy. While the scope of the argument is wide, the aims are more moderate: to present an understanding of descriptive moral philosophy aimed at spurring debate about the status and role of moral philosophy in relation to our moral lives.

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9780198866695

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A capacious and attractive account of what moral philosophy should be, and how it can relate to our moral lives ... a work that delivers not results so much (proven theories, say) as a clearer vision of what moral philosophy ought to be, what it means to live a moral life, and how the two relate to each other. * Duncan Richter, Metapsychology *

I very much recommend the book to moral philosophers of all orientations. * Søren Harnow Klausen, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice * A capacious and attractive account of what moral philosophy should be, and how it can relate to our moral lives ... a work that delivers not results so much (proven theories, say) as a clearer vision of what moral philosophy ought to be, what it means to live a moral life, and how the two relate to each other. * Duncan Richter, Metapsychology *

Author Information

Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen is associate professor in practical philosophy, University of Southern Denmark. Her main fields of expertise are Wittgensteinian ethics, virtue ethics and professional ethics, and she currently works on contextual ethics and ethics and literature. She has written a monograph on contemporary virtue ethics and has published papers in journals including The European Journal of Philosophy, The Journal of Value Inquiry and The Journal of Applied Philosophy. She is currently Vice Chair of the Independent Research Fund Denmark for the Humanities and former president of The Nordic Wittgenstein Society.

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