Patterns of Moral Complexity

by Charles E. Larmore

• ISBN13: 9780521338912
• ISBN10: 0521338913
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1987-01-30
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Larmore aims to recover three forms of moral complexity that have often been neglected by moral and political philosophers. First, he argues that virtue is not simply the conscientious adherence to principle. Rather, the exercise of virtue apply. He argues - and this is the second pattern of complexity - that recognizing the value of constitutive ties with shared forms of life does not undermine the liberal ideal of political neutrality toward differing ideals of the good life. Finally Larmore agrues for what he calls the heterogeneity of morality. Moral thinking need not be exclusively deontological or consequentialist, and we should recognize that the ultimate sources of moral value are diverse. The arguments presented here do not attack the possibility of moral theory. But in addressing some of the central issues of moral and political thinking today thay attempt to restore to that thinking greater flexibility and a necessary sensitivity to our common experience.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xv
Moral Judgment-An Aristotelian Insight	1	(21)
Kant on examples	1	(4)
The centrality of judgment	5	(9)
The puzzling nature of judgment	14	(5)
Theory and practice	19	(3)
The Limits of NEO-Aristotelianism	22	(18)
MacIntyre's indictment of modernity	23	(4)
The objectivity and autonomy of morals	27	(9)
A modernist malgre lui	36	(4)
Liberalism and the Neutrality of the State	40	(29)
In praise of bureaucracy	40	(2)
What is neutrality?	42	(6)
Neutrality and classical utilitarianism	48	(2)
Why neutrality?	50	(5)
Ideal conversations	55	(4)
Equal respect	59	(8)
Practical limits	67	(2)
The Political Order and Personal Ideals	69	(22)
Liberal justice as a modus vivendi	70	(7)
Kantian liberalism	77	(8)
Morality and moral psychology	85	(6)
Political Romanticism	91	(40)
Herder: pluralism and expressivism	93	(6)
Hegel's idea of Sittlichkeit	99	(8)
Marx's critique of liberalism	107	(11)
Rawls's ambiguities and neo-romanticism	118	(13)
The Heterogeneity of Morality	131	(20)
Butler's problem	134	(5)
Partiality	139	(5)
The ethics of conviction and the ethics of responsibility	144	(7)
Conclusion	151	(3)
Notes	154	(27)
Bibliography	181	(10)
Index	191