Wednesday, April 15, 2015

No ethics? Meta-ethics might be a better term

[W]hen phenomenological scholars have declared that Heidegger ‘had no ehtics’, they were simply appreciating the fact that phenomenology is a descriptive rather than an action-guiding philosophy. Devoid of ethical claims, phenomenology has never sought to issue forth policy recommendations. To that extent, in the final analysis phenomenology returns us to the metaethical debate about the foundations of ethics, about which principles are needed to sustain practices we already cherish and, if those principles are adopted, what their full implications are.—Ethics at the Beginning of Life, page xvi

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