Moral Contexts

By (author) Margaret Urban Walker

Not available to order

Publication date:

23 November 2002

Length of book:

248 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9780742513792

Many contexts shape and limit moral thinking in philosophy and life. Human conditions of vulnerability and interdependency, of limited awareness and control, of imperfect insight into ourselves and others are inevitable contexts that neither moral thought nor theory should forget. To be truly reflective, moral thinking and moral philosophy must become aware of the contexts that bind our thinking about how to live. This collection of essays by Margaret Urban Walker seek to show how to do this, and why it makes a difference. Contingent and changeable contexts that shape moral thinking include our individual histories, our social positions, and institutional roles, relationships, cultural settings, and social arrangements, and the specific moral idioms we pick up along the way. The paradigms and specialized language of ethical theory are contexts, too; they shape how moral theory looks and what or whom it looks at. Ethical theory and practice are meaningless without these Moral Contexts.
Margaret Walker is one of the most profound and original moral philosophers writing today. These essays, written over a period of fifteen years, reveal many ways in which unacknowledged ethical contexts shape not only the perceptions and daily choices of ordinary human beings but also the dominant styles of philosophical ethics.