Thoughts from
San Diego on Law, Politics, and Culture

 
Naturalistic Ethics
By Tom Smith

I just finished reading one of the most interesting philosophy essays I've read in years. It was John McDowell's "Two Kinds of Naturalism," which is anthologized in this very useful book. The article resists summary, but you could say that McDowell is trying to recover Aristotle's naturalistic ethics by dispelling an illusion created by the 'shallow metaphysics' of 'neo-Humean' empiricism. The essay is rather hard going, but it also gives you the rewarding feeling that this is what philosophy is supposed to be. It is soaringly ambitious--it's trying to say, here's how Hume and Kant and our reaction to both has led us astray, and here's how to be Aristotelian in a world that's been 'disenchanted' by Hume and Kant. But the thing is, he almost seems to pull it off. Larry Solum turned me on to McDowell. One thing gives me pause about the essay. There is a rather nasty footnote in it attacking my old philosophy major advisor at Cornell, Terry Irwin, and his magisterial book Aristotle's First Principles. McDowell dismisses Irwin's reading of Aristotle on dialectic as anachronistic. Having witnessed Irwin's immersion in Greek sources and his obsessivley careful reading of texts, and his mastery of Greek history as well as philosophy, I just find it on its face implausible that Irwin would be far off. The next thing to read is McDowell's Mind and World, another Larry Solum recommendation. The question is, when? Oh well, got to drive kids to karate practice. Hi yahhhh!

posted by thomas at 9/27/2003 09:35:00 AM