Citation

Meliopoulos M. Ethical Perspect. 2015; 22(1): 151-195.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, European Centre for Ethics)

DOI

10.2143/EP.22.1.3073461

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Proceeding from the assumption that moral discourse is best conceived of as a practice in the technical sense specified by John Rawls, this article discusses whether it is possible, adequate or even necessary to take up a legislative perspective on the constitutive rules of the said practice. There seem to be two principal legislative manoeuvres with respect to practices, namely (i) rendering the practice under consideration compatible with a practice that is more important and (ii) evaluating the constitutive rules of the practice with respect to its point, purpose or telos. I explore two projects in normative ethics that offer an affirmative answer regarding the possibility of moral legislation and that make use of the respective manoeuvres, namely neo-Hobbesian contractarianism and rule-consequentialism. I then inquire into the merits of a position that draws upon broadly Wittgensteinian considerations and denies the existence of such a thing as a legislative perspective on morality.

Language: en