Descriptive Ethics
What does Moral Philosophy Know about Morality?

Authors: Nora Hämäläinen



Contributes to the growing scientific and philosophical literature on valuation studies

Addresses analytic ethical theory in a fresh way

Brings together methodological questions raised in post-Wittgensteinian ethics, Pragmatist ethics, and post-Foucaudlian discussions of personhood and subjectivity with communitarian approaches to ethics

This book is an investigation into the descriptive task of moral philosophy. Nora Hämäläinen explores the challenge of providing rich and accurate pictures of the moral conditions, values, virtues, and norms under which people live and have lived, along with relevant knowledge about the human animal and human nature. While modern moral philosophy has focused its energies on normative and metaethical theory, the task of describing, uncovering, and inquiring into moral frameworks and moral practices has mainly been left to social scientists and historians.  Nora Hämäläinen argues that this division of labour has detrimental consequences for moral philosophy and that a reorientation toward descriptive work is needed in moral philosophy. She traces resources for a descriptive philosophical ethics in the work of four prominent philosophers of the twentieth century: John Dewey, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault, and Charles Taylor, while also calling on thinkers inspired by them.