Ethical particularism an essay on moral reasons

Ethical particularism claims that any non-moral feature that in one situation is a reason why something is, for example, morally wrong, may in another situation be morally irrelevant or have an opposite moral valence. Ethical particularism entails, in other words, the non-existence of true or sound moral principles. Actions, persons, and situations acquire their moral features contextually in away that escapes codification in principled terms. Particularism comes in this way in conflict with a classical approach in moral philosophy. This essay is structured as a defence of ethical particularism. After a brief historical introduction, particularism and its rival positions are characterised. It is argued that intuitions are not very decisive in this issue, but that particularism can account for moral explanations in a satisfactory way. In response to another common challenge, it is suggested that there is a robust distinction between a grounding moral reason and a relevant context available to the particularist. Moral reasons are, according to this suggestion, those features that the morally competent person would apprehend as morally salient, while the context lacks such a phenomenological quality. A response-dependent account is also the most plausible way of picturing the objectivity of moral features: that they are such as to elicit certain responses from morally competent persons in ideal situations. This brings us to another way of stating the particularist claim: moral features are naturally shapeless. That is, moral grounding reasons do not form morally relevant categories recognisable as such on a non-moral level. In answer to an objection saying that ethical particularism leads to moral scepticism, it is argued that we may, and often are justified in holding a moral belief in virtue of holding an epistemically basic relief, and that what is basic in one situation may require justification in another. Fina1ly, it is argued that a particularist virtue theory can provide at least as much moral guidance as any universalist normative theory.