In this dissertation, I motivate and defend a neo-Aristotelian concept of absolute prohibitions. The starting point of my argument is Elizabeth Anscombe’s famous critique of modern moral philosophy. Anscombe’s argument is widely interpreted as a call to rehabilitate Aristotelian ethics, but few among the scholars who responded to that call have dealt head-on with Anscombe’s insistence that modern moral philosophy’s deepest failure is its inability to account for absolute prohibitions. I argue that not only does Aristotle take the view that some actions are necessarily wrong, and therefore impermissible without exception, but also that this view is of genuine philosophical interest and merit.
Drawing on Aristotle, I outline a concept of absolute prohibitions against gravely wrong actions on which absolute prohibitions emerge, as practical principles, from reflection on the goods human beings need to flourish. In neo-Aristotelian terms, absolute moral prohibitions are best formulated not as transcendent laws of reason or divine commands, but as preconditions for the shared life and the states of character that human beings need to live well. When we recognize that some actions directly and necessarily undermine or damage essential goods—human life, justice, virtue, and so on—we can and should rule those actions out as impermissible in principle. I argue that an Aristotelian concept of absolute prohibitions has considerable advantages over its rivals, found in traditional theology and in Kantian ethics, and that this concept can withstand the most powerful objection to the plausibility of absolute prohibitions, which is the problem of hard cases.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:columbia.edu/oai:academiccommons.columbia.edu:10.7916/b02c-0q05 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Gurdon, Molly |
| Source Sets | Columbia University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Theses |
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