Abstract
In Natural Goodness, Philippa Foot repeatedly connects facts about human needs with facts about human goodness, or virtue. As a result both proponents and critics of her view tend to treat this connection as the core naturalist thesis upon which her theory principally rests, with proponents asserting and critics denying that human needs can indeed ground a substantive account of the virtues and of right action. In addition to her talk of what humans need, however, Foot also attributes a robustly objective, Aristotelian conception of practical rationality to human beings. This paper argues that the objectivity of morality is grounded, not in facts about human needs, but rather in facts about the nature of human practical rationality.
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Notes
- 1.
Here traditional naturalism is inspired by Lawrence’s views on human nature and human virtue in a further respect. In “The Function of the Function Argument” Lawrence (2001) argues that the function argument is not intended to provide a substantive specification of human excellence and the human good, but is rather “relatively formal, with a minimum of contentious commitment. Yet it is not so formal as to be taking the project nowhere: it draws out and articulates certain—admittedly very general—facts about human life , yet ones that are crucial in establishing a general frame, or skeleton of an answer” (445). This is how I understand the contribution of traditional naturalism. I take it to provide the general frame of an answer to the question of the objectivity, and basis in natural fact, of practical wisdom ; as opposed to yielding a substantive specification of practical wisdom .
- 2.
- 3.
Not all generic sentences about kinds have the kind of normative implications I am describing here. Thus I am using the word “characteristic” in a somewhat technical sense that deserves more explication. See Gehrman (forthcoming). Kapu is the name of the wolf in the children’s novel Julie of the Wolves, by Jean Craighead George.
- 4.
Lawrence’s talk of a call for explanation in the classroom, while teaching Ethics and Metaethics, influenced my views on this subject the most, and I quote the phrase here from notes taken in those courses. But see Lawrence (2006). See also Thompson (2008, 199ff.), with thanks to John Hacker-Wright for the latter reference.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the University of Tennessee Humanities Center for Fellowship support which allowed me to make significant progress on this project. I would also like to thank Paul Nichols and John Hacker-Wright for their many insightful comments on earlier drafts. I would also like to thank Barbara Herman, Gavin Lawrence, and A.J. Julius for their feedback on the theory of natural normativity discussed here.
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Gehrman, K. (2018). Traditional Naturalism. In: Hacker-Wright, J. (eds) Philippa Foot on Goodness and Virtue. Philosophers in Depth. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91256-1_5
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