Christopher Fremaux

Care ethicists often critique the history of Western philosophy for its tendency, at least within certain movements, to conceive of human nature in terms of independence. They argue that this has led some to disregard dependence’s role in human life, which in turn has led them to sideline care as basic to morality. In this paper, I complicate this narrative by examining the thought of the eighteenth-century philosopher Christian August Crusius. Like care ethicists, Crusius constructs his moral philosophy upon a model of human nature that places dependence at the center, arguing that moral obligations follow from dependence upon God. Following an examination of dependence in both theories, I discuss various points of overlap and distinction between them and identify ways in which both care ethicists and Crusius scholars stand to benefit from engaging with one another. In view of this analysis, I conclude that Crusius helps to bridge the gap between care ethics and the history of philosophy and should therefore be understood as a strong ally of care ethics with respect to their shared commitment to the dependence model of human nature and their efforts to construct a moral theory rooted therein.

James Frederick Ferrier is probably best known for the idealism he presents in An Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness and Institutes of Metaphysic, in which Ferrier critiques and offers an alternative to Common Sense Realism – the dominant school of thought in Scotland in the 18thand early 19thcenturies – spearheaded by Thomas Reid and his followers. What has received significantly less attention in the literature, however, is Ferrier's 1866 Lectures on Greek Philosophy, which serves as an important point of connection between the moral philosophy that Ferrier develops in the Introduction and Institutes and what Ferrier takes to be the ethics that Socrates taught and according to which he lived. In this paper, I examine Plato's early dialogues in order to demonstrate that Ferrier's ethics should be understood as a descendent of Socratic ethics insofar as both Ferrier and Socrates endorse the view that individual freedom is only possible through a life of thought that transcends the particularities of sensation.