Reply: Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Anscombe on Moral Unintelligibility

Abstract

There are two ways in which philosophers have tended to approach the question of how atheism and morality bear on one another: (1) by asking, broadly, whether morality in toto presupposes religious belief, and (2) by asking, more narrowly, whether the demise of religious belief has corroded certain features of morality. It is worth distinguishing these two ways of approaching the question. For even if one takes it to be obvious that atheism and morality are broadly compatible, that can still leave open whether certain features of our moral inheritance are at peril. Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Anscombe are three philosophers who approach the question in the second way and all three advance some version of the following thesis: in the wake of the demise of a Christian tradition of religious thought and practice, we are left with certain concepts which continue to appear — but which no longer are — intelligible.

This paper began life under the title ‘Atheism and Morality: Reply to Beardsmore’ as a contribution to a symposium on ‘Atheism and Morality’. The symposium was part of the Fifteenth Annual Claremont Philosophy of Religion Conference, on ‘Religion and Morality’, hosted by the Claremont Graduate School and organised by D. Z. Phillips. I am indebted to questions raised by participants at the conference — especially R. W. Beardsmore and Raimond Gaita — and to comments on an earlier draft by Cora Diamond, Martin Stone and Lisa Van Alstyne. This paper is also indebted in more diffuse but no less substantial ways to the writings of Stanley Cavell and Cora Diamond.