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PRAGMATIST ETHICS There is a central dogma of ethical theory, namely that it rests on revealing or constructing a moral bedrock that tells us the right way to think about moral problems. Moral skeptics accept this dogma, plausibly reject that such a foundation can be discovered or erected, and hear the bell toll for ethics. Many self-described normative ethicists hear no such bell. They argue, or uncritically assume, that the fundamental fact of morality is the capacity to set aside our patchwork of customary beliefs and then to discern and apply moral laws or rules derived from one or more foundational principles . This is indeed an ineliminable assumption of ethics, moral skeptics rejoin, but sadly we all lack such a capacity. The resulting diversity of proffered objective moral foundations is fascinating , and endless: universal laws of reason, the principle of respect for persons, natural rights, timeless moral intuitions, divine commands, natural laws, the doctrine of agape, to name a few. Ethicists also establish bedrocks by procedures whereby a person: discerns real duties among conflicting prima facie duties, impartially constructs socially contractual principles and rules from behind a “veil of ignorance,” maximizes aggregate happiness by giving weight to the ends or preferences of others equal to that we give to our own, renders rules of common morality consistent, or the like. Debates rage within and between each camp over which is exclusively entitled to be hailed “the right way to reason about moral questions.”1 Such debate is synonymous with “doing ethical theory.” Normative ethicists hope these FOUR Imagination in Pragmatist Ethics  A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others. . . . The great instrument of moral good is the imagination. —Percy Bysshe Shelley, Defense of Poetry Part ¾¾/ hapter 4 8/22/05 4:16 P Page 55 principles and procedures will tell us what we should do, or at least specify precise limits on what we can and cannot do. Virtue theory, with its pragmatic emphasis on habits and character, offers one way out. Alasdair MacIntyre, for example, turns back to Plato and Aristotle and rejects modern rule-governed ethics as great mistakes of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Yet MacIntyre still locates a moral bedrock in the human telos, implying a catalog of character traits uniquely suited to actualizing this end-for-humanity. Others, including classical pragmatists such as Dewey and, to a degree, feminist ethicists like Nel Noddings, favor a radically reconstructed conception of ethics that entreats people “to attend more fully to the concrete elements entering into the situations in which they have to act” (TIF, LW 5:288). What is needed, Dewey urged, is to reject the quest for “a single, fixed and final good” and “transfer the weight and burden of morality to intelligence” (RP, MW 12:172–173) with the aim of ameliorating the muddles of moral life. In “Three Independent Factors in Morals,” Dewey argues that ethical theorists should cease asking which principle is the ultimate and unitary one and attempt instead to reconcile inherent conflicts between irreducible forces that characterize all situations of moral uncertainty. He identifies three such forces that need to be coordinated: individual ends (the origin of consequentialist ethics), the demands of communal life (the origin of theories of duty and justice in deontological ethics), and social approbation (the principal factor in virtue theories) (LW 5:279–288). The preference for three primary factors may be an aesthetic one for Dewey, and he knowingly exaggerates differences among the three (TIF, LW 5:503). What is more interesting is his idea that moral philosophers have abstracted one or another factor of moral life as the central one and then treated this as a foundational source of moral justification to which all morality is reducible. Other factors are encompassed within this nexus of commensurability. Hence, ethical theories are categorized according to their chosen bottom line. In addition to Kantianism and utilitarianism, some contemporary examples include A. I. Meldon’s exclusive focus on welfare rights (Act so as not to violate others’ unalienable rights to pursue their legitimate interests.) and MacIntyre’s call to cultivate the virtues, which he has most recently described as traits of character that bring about the distinctive flourishing of one’s species.2 Additionally, hybrid views abound, such as R. M. Hare’s Kantian-utilitarian principle that we should weigh others’ preferences equally with our own. The mainstream ethicist develops a theory on...

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