Symposium on Moral Particularism
The Professor points to a Symposium on Moral Particularism in the Journal of Moral Philosophy.
The Symposium revolves largely around the version of the theory articulated by Jonathan Dancy, most notably in his recent book, Ethics Without Principles. In the book, Dancy explains that the moral particularist holds that "the possibility of moral thought and judgement does not depend on the provision of a suitable supply of moral principles" (p. 7).
I am a huge fan of Dancy's work on particularism, and of moral particularism in general, for a wide variety of reasons. First, I am deeply suspicious of principlism in general, and principlism in bioethics in particular. (For a different but energetic and compelling critique of principlism in bioethics, I recommend Leigh Turner's 2003 essay). The challenge to principlism posed by particularism is hopefully plain from the above quotation. In short, particularists question why we need principles at all to ascertain right action.
Second, I find particularism to be a most humanist theory. One of my aims on this blog is to stress some themes common to many humanist thinkers, so as to historicize the term "humanities" and give it some actual content other than a loose administrative designation. I continue to believe that the vast majority of interested parties -- including many scholars -- do not have an historically grounded notion of what the studia humanitatis actually were, and why they were so important to the medieval and Renaissance humanists.
I have suggested that the humanists were largely concerned with practices. Their program, if it can be called such, evolved dialectically in response to Scholastic pedagogy, which privileged logic and favored abstract theory. The idiom "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" is actually a disputation that can be traced to Scholastic theorizing. The humanists, most notably beginning with Petrarch in the 14th century, rejected this modality because they (correctly, IMO) deemed it to be totally disconnected from people's daily lives (i.e., their practices). The humanists were more interested in what moved people, what affected their practices, how they lived from moment to moment.
This partly explains the humanists emphasis on rhetoric, which is what moves men's hearts, to paraphrase Petrarch. I have seen this first-hand in some of my work in pharmaceutical litigation, where the logic of the argument -- in terms of scientific evidence of causation -- was virtually always with the defense. Yet, plaintiff's attorneys win some of these cases, and in part I think that demonstrates how rhetoric and narrative have surpassing power to move people.
To return to particularism, the humanist emphasis on practices is necessarily an emphasis on the local, and, here's the kicker, the particular. This is addressed by a number of scholars, though I am partial to Bouwsma and Toulmin's accounts. The late humanists in particular, no pun intended, displayed a consistent emphasis on the local, the particular, and the subjective. I believe one can make a compelling argument that Montaigne would have cared little for principlism.
In any case, I think moral particularism is a rich and exciting ethical theory, and it has relevance for my own work in pain, by sketching a path for subjectivizing ethics without implying moral nihilism.
In any case, the Symposium looks to be well worth reading.
*Timothy Chappell's detailed and nuanced review of Dancy's book is well worth reading, for those so inclined.
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