Moral Individualism and Relationalism: a Narrative-Style Philosophical Challenge

Morally unequal treatment of different nonhuman species, like pigs and dogs, can seem troublingly inconsistent. A position Todd May calls moral individualism and relationalism appears to justify the moral discomfit attending such species-differentiated treatment. Yet some of its basic assumptions ar...

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1. VerfasserIn: Coghlan, Simon (VerfasserIn)
Medienart: Elektronisch Aufsatz
Sprache:Englisch
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Veröffentlicht: Springer Science + Business Media B. V [2016]
In: Ethical theory and moral practice
Jahr: 2016, Band: 19, Heft: 5, Seiten: 1241-1257
RelBib Classification:NCA Ethik
NCG Ökologische Ethik; Schöpfungsethik
VA Philosophie
weitere Schlagwörter:B Cora Diamond
B Relationalism
B Moral consistency
B Moral relevance
B Raimond Gaita
B Moral individualism
B Todd May
B Narrative philosophy
B Nonhuman animals
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Zusammenfassung:Morally unequal treatment of different nonhuman species, like pigs and dogs, can seem troublingly inconsistent. A position Todd May calls moral individualism and relationalism appears to justify the moral discomfit attending such species-differentiated treatment. Yet some of its basic assumptions are challenged by a philosophical style Roger Scruton called narrative philosophy. Expanding upon Christopher Cordner’s discussion of narrative philosophy, this paper develops a narrative-style philosophical critique of Todd May’s moral individualism and relationalism, especially its reductionist understanding of moral reasons, consistency, and relevance. Such criticism opens up the possibility that the unequal treatment of nonhuman species like pigs and dogs is perfectly consistent and even justified. However, the paper then presents a narrative-style argument that such species-differentiated treatment may be morally inconsistent and unjustified after all.
ISSN:1572-8447
Enthält:Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10677-016-9734-5