In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

488 BOOK REVIEWS Indeed, I have omitted many of the issues that are crucial to her own attempt to contribute to contemporary debates. I have not said a word, for example, about her very interesting resolution of the vexing Gettier problems. I should now add that her work suggests more promising avenues of exploration for Thomists than some work in contemporary epistemology that purports to be Thomistic (see, for example, Scott Macdonald's piece on Aquinas's "Theory of Knowledge," in the Cambridge Companion to Aquinas [Cambridge, 1993), 160-95). Zagzebski's book brims with acute observations and is written in such a way that even those not trained in analytic philosophy will find it an enjoyable read. Her focus on the virtues leads her to avoid a style of philosophy that endlessly generates counterexamples and engages in barren possibleworlds speculation. Zagzebski brings the resources of premodem philosophy to bear on contemporary issues and opens up a line of inquiry that could prove as fruitful for epistemology as it already has for ethics. Throughout the book, she notes that this is a large project and invites the assistance of others. It is an invitation Thomists would do well to accept. THOMAS S. HIBBS Boston College Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts Moral Action and Christian Ethics. By JEAN PORTER. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. 235. $54.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-521-44329-6. In this latest work, Porter argues that Aquinas's account of the virtues supplies a more adequate model of moral reasoning than many contemporary approaches, in that it avoids both the excessive rigors of a Kantian morality, which seeks an apodictic certainty in moral rules, and a thorough moral relativism. With this in mind she takes up the challenge of this series on "New Studies in Christian Ethics," of which this book is the fifth: "to demonstrate that Christian ethics can make a distinctive contribution to [the contemporary] debate" (preface). Taking her cue from Friedrich Waismann's work concerning the inherent ambiguity of empirical concepts, Porter argues that a similar ambiguity lies at the heart of moral reasoning. This means that Kantian-influenced systems, that is, those which understand moral rules as apodictically determining the uniquely correct answer to any moral question (9), are bound to fail. They fail principally because "morally significant kinds of actions are indeterminate, in the sense that we can never eliminate the possibility that a real doubt may arise with respect to the scope of their application" (22). BOOK REVIEWS 489 Do we need an entire chapter (and then some) defending what should be known by any first-year student of Aristotle, namely, that we cannot expect more certainty than the discipline allows? It seems so; for while it is generally agreed that ethics does not yield necessary conclusions, the reason why is not always articulated. The inability of ethics to provide any apodictic certainty for all times and places comes from the fact that "there is no way that we can describe a particular (actual or contemplated) action so exhaustively that we can say that we have taken account of all the morally relevant details, and, therefore, have certainly arrived at the correct description of this action from the moral point of view" (39). This inability to capture specific actions, or even kinds of actions (ibid.), means that while it may be agreed in the broadest sense that "murder is wrong," there are a number of vital cases in which it is an open question for many as to whether or not a particular act (abortion or euthanasia, for example) constitutes an instance of murder. It is not usually, in other words, the major premise (murder is wrong) that is the problem; rather it is the truth of the minor premise (abortion is murder), or more specifically the un/clarity of the middle term (murder), that is the heart of the tnatter. It is difficult, Porter claims, to get a consistently sufficient description of "murder" such that one can claim with apodictic certainty that abortion is always wrong. In chapter 2, she argues that this "open texture" of moral analysis does not suggest a moral relativism. We need not move from a univocal...

pdf

Share