Morality and the view from here

Journal of Ethics

Volumn 3, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 203-223

  Wolf, Susan ^a  

^a JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Kantianism; Moral point of view; Nonmoral values; Perfectionist values (or perfectionism); Personal point of view; Self interest; Utilitarianism

Indexed keywords

EID: 33746131711     PISSN: 13824554     EISSN: 15728609     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1009833100856     Document Type: Article

References (13)

1. One of the clearest statements of this idea is in Kurt Baier's The Moral Point of View (New York: Random House, 1967), pp. 90-91: "I shall argue ⋯that our moral convictions are true if they can be seen to be required or acceptable from the moral point of view ⋯a person must adopt the moral point of view if he is to be moral."
2. Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 11-13.
3. Stephen Darwall distinguishes between recognitional respect, which acknowledges a person's worth or dignity as a person from appraisal respect, which acknowledges a person's moral merit.
4. See Stephen Darwall, "Two Kinds of Respect," Ethics 88 (1977), pp. 36-49. I am referring here to recognitional respect.
5. This seems to be the view Samuel Scheffler has in mind in The Rejection of Consequentialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
6. See, e.g., pp. 56-57: "Each person has a point of view, a perspective from which projects are undertaken, plans are developed, events are observed, and life is lived. Each point of view constitutes, among other things, a locus relative to which harms and benefits can be assessed, and are typically assessed by the person who has the point ofview⋯But his point of view is independent of the impersonal point of view, and this independence is typically evidenced by the fact that he cares differentially about his projects just because they are his projects."
7. The claims of this section are explored in a somewhat different context in my "Happiness and Meaning: Two Aspects of the Good Life," Social Philosophy & Policy 14 (1997), pp. 207-225.
8. For an extended discussion of this point, see Michael Stocker, Plural and Conflicting Values (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
9. See again my "Happiness and Meaning: Two Aspects of the Good Life"
10. op. cit. and my "Meaningful Lives in a Meaningless World," Quaestiones Infinitae (publication of the Department of Philosophy, Utrecht University), Vol. XIX.
11. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1979), Chapter II.
12. A moral theory that accommodates perfectionist values in a somewhat different way than the theories I discuss here is developed in Thomas Hurka, Perfectionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Though some of the remarks in this section apply to Hurka's theory as well, a more satisfactory response to his view would require separate treatment.
13. Susan Wolf, "Moral Saints," The Journal of Philosophy 79 (1982), p. 437.