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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 Wittgensteinia…Read more
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25Moral certainties – subjective, objective, objectionable?In Hans-Johann Glock, Cecilie Eriksen, Julia Hermann, Neil O'Hara & Nigel Pleasants (eds.), Glock, Hans-Johann (2022). Moral certainties – subjective, objective, objectionable? In: Eriksen, Cecilie; Hermann, Julia; O'Hara, Neil; Pleasants, Nigel. Philosophical perspectives on moral certainty. New York: Routledge, Taylor&Francis Group, 171-191, . pp. 171-191. 2022.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 Wittgensteinia…Read more
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31Concepts and experience in bounds of sense and beyondIn Hans-Johann Glock, Audun Bengtson, Sybren Heyndels & Benjamin De Mesel (eds.), Glock, Hans-Johann (2024). Concepts and experience in bounds of sense and beyond. In: Bengtson, Audun; Heyndels, Sybren; De Mesel, Benjamin. P. F. Strawson and his philosophical legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 120-145, . pp. 120-145. 2024.P.F. Strawson and his Philosophical Legacy aims to bring out the continuing relevance of Sir Peter Frederick Strawson’s (1919–2006) work for current philosophical debates. It is the first collection of essays published after Strawson’s death that covers the full range of his work. The focus in contemporary work on Strawson is often on his relation to Kant or his paper ‘Freedom and Resentment’. While this volume gives due attention to these topics, it also includes essays on Strawson’s lasting co…Read more
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50Normativity, meaning and philosophy: essays on WittgensteinAnthem Press. 2024.This is a collection of essays on Wittgenstein and Wittgensteinian themes that appeared between 1996 and 2019. It is divided into three parts, with a common trajectory laid out in a substantial introduction. The first part links meaning, necessity and normativity. It defends and modifies Wittgenstein’s claim that the idea of a ‘grammatical rule’ holds the key to understanding linguistic meaning and its connection to necessary propositions. The second part elucidates the connections between meani…Read more
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44The quest for rigour in early analytic philosophyRivista di Filosofia 114 (3): 589-614. 2023.This article is devoted to the historical roots of the quest for rigor associated with analytic philosophy. Starting out from distinctions between different senses of “rigourµ, it considers the rather diverse conceptions and pursuits of rigour in Frege, Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein and Carnap. On that basis it diagnoses a potential conflict that some of them were aware of, but that has been ignored by recent commentators, namely between certain kinds of rigour on the hand, clarity and surveyabil…Read more
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31The Tractatus revolves around the connection between two central topics – the preconditions of symbolic representation and the nature of logic-cum-philosophy. Proper philosophy is an activity, namely of revealing the hidden structures that allow language to represent reality by way of logical analysis. At the same time the main purpose of such logical analysis consists in revealing metaphysical statements to be nonsensical. In the subsequent development of analytic philosophy, these two ideas pa…Read more