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Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy

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Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy Philippa Foot Great Clarendon Street, Oxford Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © in this edition, Philippa Foot 2002 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 1978 by Blackwell Publishers and University of California Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Philippa Foot Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Foot, Philippa. Virtues and vices and other essays in moral philosophy/Philippa Foot. p. cm. Originally published: Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. With new pref. and index. ISBN 0199252858 To The Memory Of Iris Murdoch Contents Preface to 2002 Edition.............................................................................................................5 Preface .......................................................................................................................................6 Introduction (1977) ...................................................................................................................6 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................9 I Virtues and Vices ................................................................................................................. 10 I ............................................................................................................................................ 10 II ........................................................................................................................................... 15 III .......................................................................................................................................... 20 II The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect ................................... 24 III Euthanasia .......................................................................................................................... 34 IV Free Will as Involving Determinism................................................................................ 55 V Hume on Moral Judgement ............................................................................................... 64 VI Nietzsche: The Revaluation of Values ............................................................................. 69 VII Moral Arguments ............................................................................................................ 80 VIII Moral Beliefs ................................................................................................................... 90 I ............................................................................................................................................ 90 II ........................................................................................................................................... 98 IX Goodness and Choice ...................................................................................................... 106 X Reasons for Action and Desires ....................................................................................... 118 Postscript ........................................................................................................................... 124 XI Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives ...................................................... 125 XII A Reply to Professor Frankena ..................................................................................... 137 XIII Are Moral Considerations Overriding? ...................................................................... 142 XIV Approval and Disapproval .......................................................................................... 148 Preface to 2002 Edition Preface to 2002 Edition These essays, originally published between 1958 and 1977, were written at a time when emotivist and prescriptivist views reigned in analytic moral philosophy, and when individual virtues and vices were still given relatively little attention. Things have changed since then, and I am conscious that some of the papers have dated at least in their idiom, given that at the time they appeared ‘man’ was taken to mean ‘human being’ rather than ‘male person’, so that the intrusively corrective ‘she’ or the cumbrous ‘he or she’ were considered unnecessary. But I believe that the path that I was taking in most of the papers towards an objectivist theory of ethics is still serviceable today, while other essays such as the one on euthanasia are fairly constantly in demand. In general I still agree with what I wrote in younger days. But I can claim little consistency over the years in respect of one crucial problem in moral philosophy: that of the relation between practical rationality and moral virtue. The problem is to see how for every person and in every case it can be rational to follow moral edicts—in particular the demands of justice and charity—when these seem to clash with self- interest or desire. We want to be able to say that to act as justice or charity demands is to act rationally in every case, even in the tight corner. But how is this possible? Ever preoccupied by this problem, I have tried now this now that way out of the difficulty. In ‘Moral Beliefs’ I argued that only the coincidence of virtue and self-interest could give the desired rationality to each and every person whatever his or her contingent desires. Later, when writing ‘Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives’, the problem of the ‘tight corner’ made me dissatisfied with this supposed solution, after which, in a despairing mood, I was even ready to deny that for everyone, always, it would be rational to act morally. This was often identified as ‘Foot's position’, long after I myself had abandoned it and was working my way around, very slowly, to the quite different position that I first took up in the eighties and have held ever since. In a 1995 lecture called ‘Does Moral Subjectivism Rest on a Mistake?’, which is substantially Chapter 1 of my 2001 book Natural Goodness, as well as in Chapter 4 of that book, I argued that the whole direction of my earlier efforts (and of those of many others) had been mistaken. We had tried to reconcile the demands of virtue with an independently determined canon of practical rationality such as conduciveness to the fulfilment of desire or to rational self-interest. And that was a mistake. A tip-off from my UCLA colleague the late Warren Quinn had allowed me to see that the very concept of practical rationality might not be independent of that of practical goodness as describable in a really general account of the virtues: indeed that it might have to fit in with them rather than them with it.1 Therefore, the appearance of a clash between the 1 See ‘Putting Rationality in its Place’, in Warren Quinn, Morality and Action, (Cambridge University Press, 1993). Philippa Foot requirements of moral virtue and practical rationality should put in question not charity or justice but rather the theory of reasons for action that gave that result. I am only sad that Quinn did not have time to develop this idea himself. P.R.F. December 2001 Preface It is hard to thank all those who have helped me with my work over the years in which these essays were written. I owe most, perhaps, to Donald MacKinnon who first taught me moral philosophy, but also much to Somerville College where I was supported most generously through many unproductive years. I was most fortunate to have Elizabeth Anscombe as my colleague at Somerville, and I know that some of the ideas for these essays came out of our lunchtime discussions in the Senior Common Room. More recently I have been helped, in different but always important ways, by Rogers Albritton, John Giuliano, Rosalind Hursthouse, Jerrold Katz, John McDowell, Warren Quinn, David Sachs, Barry Stroud, and Michael Sukale, while special thanks must go to Derek Parfit who has worked on drafts of my papers with a speed and skill that amaze me, and a kindness to warm the heart. I am also most grateful to the Philosophy Department at the University of California at Los Angeles, and to the efficient and generous office staff, with Louise Nunnink as its guiding spirit. P.R.F. November 1977 Introduction (1977) Two of the papers
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