Document Type
Dissertation
Publication Date
2005
Abstract
Moral philosophers and teachers of ethics generally make episodes, cases, and stories the focus of their practical reflection. In this dissertation, I investigate the possible roles of richer accounts or investigations of lives in the research and teaching of practical ethics. By giving a close reading of passages from three central philosophic texts, Mill’s On Liberty, Plato’s Crito, and Descartes’ Discourse on Method, I show how attention to richly described lives is grounded in the tradition of Western philosophic inquiry. These readings also serve as the starting points for arguments about the importance of consideration of lives as a supplement to more abstract moral thinking. I find in all of these texts a common thread: the concern to take responsible account of the fallibility of moral thinking, the impulse to preserve oneself from serious error in matters of practical importance. In the final chapter of the thesis, I develop a view of philosophic responsibility as a kind of modesty in reflection and in teaching. I attempt to draw some practical conclusions about what responsibly modest philosophy teaching might mean and about the kind of responsible thinking that philosophy teaching should model. To illustrate these conclusions, I consider three pieces of common moral advice, discussing ways that information about particular lives might help to investigate and evaluate each piece of advice.
Book Publisher
University of Minnesota
MSU Digital Commons Citation
Shea, Peter, "The Arguments of Their Lives: A Role for Lives in Moral Reflection and Moral Teaching (2005)" (2005). Collected Papers of Peter Shea. 22.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/iapc_pshea/22