Characterizing Moral Particularism

Abstract

Moral particularism is becoming one of the most important topics in contemporary moral theory. Although there are reasons to think that the roots of particularism are very ancient, the position has been placed firmly at the forefront of recent philosophy primarily through the work of Jonathan Dancy (for example, 1993, 2004), who cites as inspiration the writings of John McDowell (Dancy, 1993, p. xii).¹ There is no settled way to characterize moral particularism, and this is partly because of the variety of considerations which explicitly support or can be interpreted as endorsing the position. Particularism is sometimes characterized as the source, and sometimes as the consequence, of commitments to theses about the relation between ethics, mind and world and there are an increasing number of nuanced qualifications and distinctions geared to defend or criticize particularism. Despite the wide interest that it now commands, the debate over particularism has recently been described as enjoying a well-earned ‘reputation for obscurity’, and that it ‘has been thought by some to be a refuge for those with patience for the murky’ (Schroeder, 2009, pp. 568, 578).² However, working through the problems and prospects of particularism need not lead to a dialectic of ever-decreasing circles. In fact, and as I hope to demonstrate, I think the opposite is true.