Nora Hämäläinen

What is a Wittgensteinian Neo-Platonist?–Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics and Metaphor

Abstract The aim of this paper is to present a perspective on Iris Murdoch conception of metaphysics, starting from her puzzling contention that she could describe herself as a ‘Wittgensteinian Neo-Platonist’. I argue that this statement is a central clue to the nature both of her philosophical method which is strongly reminiscent of Wittgensteins, and of her Platonism, which in its emphasis on the everyday and metaphorical aspects of his work differs starkly from received modern interpretations. Placing Murdoch between Plato and Wittgenstein can help us to understand the nature of her metaphysics as a complex, continuous, pictorial activity, which shows a deep awareness of and is compatible with the late twentieth century and contemporary distrust of large metaphysical systems or explanations.

What is Metaphysics in Murdoch’s Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals?

Abstract Iris Murdoch is known for defending metaphysical thinking in the anti-metaphysical atmosphere of mid- and late 20th-century analytic philosophy. Yet, she does not present anything easily recognizable as a metaphysical theory in her own writings, but rather circles around her preferred neo-Platonic metaphysical imagery in various ways. But what, then, does she mean by metaphysics? I argue in this paper that it is essential for understanding Murdoch’s place in 20th-century thought - and the direction she points out - to understand the peculiar nature of her own contribution to metaphysics in her late work. To elucidate this issue, I will discuss three aspects of what she means by metaphysics in her late book Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals: 1) traditional metaphysical theories or systems (and why she doesn’t present one); 2) metaphysics as underlying worldviews; and 3) metaphysics as ‘heuristic images’ of our understanding of the world.

Latour's empirical metaphysics

In this article we examine the mode in which Bruno Latour engages in metaphysics in his social scientific and philosophical project. In contrast to Graham Harmans recent reading of his work, we take seriously how adamant Latour is about not creating a metaphysical system, and how he is thus essentially sharing the anti-metaphysical tenor of much of the twentieth-century philosophy. Nonetheless, he does not shun making bold claims concerning the way in which the world is. Therefore, we need to ask: what are, then, the purposes for which Latour evokes metaphysics? We recognize two main answers to the question. The first purpose is the creation of a makeshift, pragmatic, methodological ontology. His concepts such as trial, event, proposition, collective, and mode are not meant to describe ‘the furniture of the world’ in the style of classical metaphysics. Rather, they form a kind of ‘minimum-wage metaphysics’, an ‘experimental’ or ‘empirical’ metaphysics that serves the purpose of opening the world anew, in conjunction with empirical research. The second purpose is Latours elucidation of the metaphysics of modernity, in order to make our own preconceptions visible for ourselves. According to him, metaphysical assumptions are an unavoidable part of our relationship to our world, but we, the moderns, tend to give a distorted description of these assumptions. The ‘modes of existence’ of Latours recent book are aimed at elucidating the complexity of moderns’ real metaphysics. Yet they do not constitute a list of what there essentially is, but provide a toolkit for understanding our ways of being and our practices.

Morality as Known by Moral Philosophers

This chapter presents five different ways in which contemporary moral philosophers reach for descriptive knowledge about morality, values, and conceptions of the good. These include intuition, narrative literature/film, moral histories, experimental and empirical work, and contemporary “hard cases.” What is interesting about these entrances for knowledge about contingent moralities into philosophy is how they all, in different ways, both open and close the door to a richly descriptive take on ethics.

Charles Taylor’s Affirmation of the Modern Self

Taylor’s work offers itself as a vantage point to descriptive ethics, which seems close to the concerns of contemporary mainstream Anglophone moral philosophy. He places himself in explicit dialogue with contemporary Anglophone ethics and social philosophy, and his manner of coining concepts is amenable to Anglophone moral philosophers. But his work is constructed in a way which defies the demands of mainstream moral theory. His most influential book Sources of the Self is not just a history of ethics or moral personhood. It is also an essay on moral genealogy, as well as an exercise in moral and evaluative self-knowledge. Not suggesting a “rational grounding” and theoretical basis for given values and norms, but rather investigating certain aspects of our own evaluative framework, Taylor’s project is close to Foucault’s. But in contrast to Foucault he argues that an affirmative articulation of one’s own normative commitments is essential for a consistent descriptive moral philosophy.

The Foundational Project of Ethics and a Different Way of Going Below the Surface

Modern moral philosophy has generally organized its inquiries around two core subjects: 1) normative ethics or ethical theory, concerned with the good and the right, and 2) metaethics, concerned with the meaning, role and status of moral language and moral judgements. These are the central nodes to which other approaches to ethics and other areas of moral inquiry are appended, but they constitute only a part of moral philosophy. To rethink this mode of organizing the field Hamalainen identifies two distinct strands in modern moral philosophy. First, there is a main stream which follows the division of labor between metaethics and normative ethics, and which generally holds that the former should provide ideas concerning the nature and status of morals and the latter should provide rational grounding of morals along with action guidance. Second, there is a strand of moral philosophy which gives priority to the description of our moral lives, moral practices, historically contingent norms, ideas and habits.

Foucault’s Archeology and Genealogy of the Self

Like Dewey and Wittgenstein, Foucault is a thinker of the moving horizon, not interested in uncovering universal principles, but rather in understanding the different ways in which humans come to know about themselves and their world and act upon themselves and others: the conditions of possibility of taken-for-granted views and practices. Not all of this knowledge is ethical in any sense of the word, but much of it is. Foucault’s late work, especially volumes 2 and 3 of the History of Sexuality, is often described in terms of being his work on “ethics.” But these late writings present only the culmination of a thick descriptive and historical inquiry into moral personhood, ancient as well as modern. The essential input of his work for a descriptive ethics lies in his capacity to describe the complex interdependence of practices, institutions, values, forms of personhood, and forms of conceptualization. He also exhibits an intense relationship to his own moral present, which is exemplary for a descriptive philosophical ethics.

The “Merely Descriptive” and the “Empirical” Revisited

Hamalainen returns to the apparent methodological conflict between the Wittgensteinian conceptual elucidations and the kinds of empirical and archival work suggested by Dewey and Foucault. She (1) discusses Stanley Cavell’s defense of the Wittgensteinian procedure, (2) offers a critique of this defense, focused on the somewhat arbitrary rules it places on philosophical study, and (3) provides an analysis of what we can and should save of this analysis under the auspices of a broader descriptive moral philosophy.

Moral Philosophy Today

Hamalainen presents a methodological problem in contemporary moral philosophy: the problem of implicit methodological rules and boundaries that make it difficult to include, into moral philosophy, a rich account of our moral present. She develops the notion of a “moral present”: a communal framework of action and valuations, which not only sets the standard for our individual judgments, but is also responsive to the constant ongoing negotiation of practices and norms in human societies. She suggests that this moral present should be a central concern for moral philosophers.

Introduction—or What Does Moral Philosophy Know about Morality?

Hamalainen introduces the idea of descriptive ethics as a topic unduly neglected by contemporary philosophers. She argues, first, that philosophical ethics cannot be pursued in meaningful ways without substantial descriptive or comparative work, which often benefits from other sciences as well as the arts. Second, she argues that the main reason why the projects of descriptive ethics are left to others is that there is in today’s philosophical ethics too little understanding of the philosophical import of descriptive work and the philosophical hazards involved in such work.