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Sidgwick e il progetto di un’etica scientifica
Cremaschi, Sergio
2006
Abstract
In this paper I discuss the role played by the ideas of ‘common sense’ and ‘common sense morality’
in Sidgwick’s system of ideas. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common sense
morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly
taken from the example provided by the natural sciences, in order to reach also in the
moral field some body of ‘mature’ knowledge similar to that provided by the natural sciences.
His whole polemics with intuitionist was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread
ethos, not the theories of intuitionist philosophers was what was really worth considering
In spite of the naïve positivist starting point Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in
exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus Sidgwick left an
ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a ‘new’ morality of a consequentialist
kind, and the fruitful idea that in normative ethics we can argue rationally even if
without shared foundations.
Series
Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics
VIII (2006) 1
Subjects
Publisher
EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste
Source
Sergio Cremaschi, "Sidgwick e il progetto di un’etica scientifica", in: Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, VIII (2006) 1, pp. 1-36.
Languages
it
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