Cecilie Eriksen

The idea of moral certainties is venerable, highly contentious, and nevertheless alive. What I call “hinge ethics” (in analogy to hinge epistemology) combines three currents – meta-ethical concerns about the scope and limits of moral knowledge and objectivity, the idea of limits of doubt as articulated in On Certainty, and sympathies for Wittgensteinian ideas about ethics. This essay critically assesses hinge ethics, focusing on Nigel Pleasants’ work. My main objection is not that Wittgensteinian ideas about certainty cannot be transferred from the domain of physical phenomena to the moral domain. Nor shall I nail my colours to the mast of moral relativism. Instead my main tack will be as follows: Several of the views hinge ethicists detect in or derive from On Certainty are intriguing and ingenious, yet either unwarranted and/or not echt Wittgensteinian. Purported moral certainties like the wrongness of killing are neither ineffable, nor non-propositional, nor quasi-transcendental preconditions of moral thought and action. In so far as morality has scaffolding foundations, it is not certainties but capacities. At least some of these capacities are cognitive, a matter of social cognition.

Moral certainty refers to those aspects of morality- moral acting, feeling, and thinking-that are beyond doubt, explanation, and justification. The essays in this book explore the concept of moral certainty and its application and usefulness in contemporary moral debates. The notion of moral certainty, which is inspired by the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, is emerging as a key reference point in contemporary moral philosophy. An investigation of the implications of moral certainty is called for, given that so many discussions in moral philosophy concern the possibility of justifying our moral beliefs. The concept of moral certainty also feeds directly into the emerging field of hinge epistemolo,gy. The chapters in this volume tackle the following issues: meta-questions around whether and how we can make sense of the concept of moral certainty; the role of moral certainty in contemporary debates on gender, racism, bias and historically unjust practices; ways in which radical change in society engendered by new technologies might affect moral certainties; the role of the notion of moral certainty in the debates on free will and moral responsibility. Philosophical Perspectives on Moral Certainty will appeal to researchers and advanced students working on ethics and moral philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of technology, and Wittgenstein.

A prominent trend in moral philosophy today is the interest in the rich textures of actual human practices and lives. This has prompted engagements with other disciplines, such as anthropology, history, literature, law and empirical science, which have produced various forms ofcontextual ethics. These engagements motivate reflections on why and how context is important ethically, and such metaethical reflection is what this article undertakes. Inspired by the work of the later Wittgenstein and the Danish theologian K.E. Løgstrup, I first describe one of the ways in which context plays a central role with regard to ethical meaning and normativity. I then examine how ‘context’ is to be defined, and finally I discuss some of the questions which arise when giving context prominence in ethics – namely, how to delimit the scope of relevant context, the relevant traits of a particular context and what ‘the ethical’ is.

“Don’t think, but look!” (Wittgenstein 2009: § 66). This insistient advice has served as methodological inspiration for several influential thinkers in the broad range of ‘empirically informed’ philosophy, which has flourished over the last decades. There is, however, a worrisome tension between Wittgenstein’s work and these turns to practices, history, science, field work, and everyday life: Wittgenstein is in general doing something different from what the thinkers who claim to be inspired by him are doing. An argument for the legitimacy of the move from Wittgenstein to empirically informed philosophy is so far missing in the literature. This article shows how this move can be justifiable within a Wittgensteinian frame, philosophically beneficial, and at times even necessary.

In the last few decades, several philosophers have written on the topic of moral revolutions, distinguishing them from other kinds of society-level moral change. This article surveys recent accounts of moral revolutions in moral philosophy. Different authors use quite different criteria to pick out moral revolutions. Features treated as relevant include radicality, depth or fundamentality, pervasiveness, novelty and particular causes. We also characterize the factors that have been proposed to cause moral revolutions, including anomalies in existing moral codes, changing honour codes, art, economic conditions and individuals or groups. Finally, we discuss what accounts of moral revolutions have in common, how they differ and how moral revolutions are distinguished from other kinds of moral change, such as drift and reform.