The Perfectionist Turn: From Metanorms to Metaethics
Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen
Abstract
Contemporary political philosophy—especially the works of Martha Nussbaum, John Rawls, and Amartya Sen—has assumed it can in various ways separate itself from more comprehensive philosophical positions and frameworks, and much of contemporary ethics—especially the works of Gerald Gaus and Stephen Darwall—has assumed that ethics can be based on a legislative or juridical model. Den Uyl and Rasmussen challenge both these trends. They do so by amplifying an account of human flourishing, which they call “individualistic perfectionism,” that they presented in their earlier work, Norms of Liberty. T ... More
Contemporary political philosophy—especially the works of Martha Nussbaum, John Rawls, and Amartya Sen—has assumed it can in various ways separate itself from more comprehensive philosophical positions and frameworks, and much of contemporary ethics—especially the works of Gerald Gaus and Stephen Darwall—has assumed that ethics can be based on a legislative or juridical model. Den Uyl and Rasmussen challenge both these trends. They do so by amplifying an account of human flourishing, which they call “individualistic perfectionism,” that they presented in their earlier work, Norms of Liberty. They continue to challenge the assumption that a neo-Aristotelian ethical framework cannot support a liberal, non-perfectionist political theory by describing in greater detail the nature of the perfectionist ethical approach they utilized in their previous political theorizing. They show that individualistic perfectionism represents a major and powerful alternative to much contemporary ethical thinking.
Keywords:
Agent-relative,
Aristotelianism,
constructivism,
individualistic perfectionism,
human flourishing,
liberalism,
naturalistic fallacy,
rights,
practical wisdom,
teleology
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9781474413343 |
| Published to Edinburgh Scholarship Online: May 2018 |
DOI:10.3366/edinburgh/9781474413343.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Douglas Den Uyl, author
Liberty Fund, Inc
Douglas Rasmussen, author
St. John's University
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