Abstract
The landscape of ethics or moral philosophy in the Western tradition has been thoroughly shaken and restructured by a late 20th-century philosophical and literary movement, generally known as postmodernism. Spearheaded by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida in the 1960s, the movement is distinguished from others by its broad skepticism about reason or rationality in traditional Western ethics and its vigorous defense of subjectivism or relativism. It is also marked by a general suspicion of the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power.1 This movement’s preferred method of philosophizing has been identified by Derrida as “deconstruction,” by which he means a form of philosophical and literary analysis with close examination of the language and logic of philosophical and literary texts.2
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Notes
A. Flew, (1984) A Dictionary of Philosophy (New York: St Martin’s Press).
Immanuel Kant (1785), Groundwork for Metaphysics of Morals.
A.J. Ayer (1936), Language Truth and Logic (London: Oxford University Press).
J. Habermas (1992), “Further Reflection on Public Sphere,” in C. Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
T. Serequeberhan (1991), African Philosophy: The Essential Readings (New York: Paragon House), p. 6.
A.J. Ayer, Language Truth and Logic. Cf. C.L. Stevenson (1944), Ethics and Language (New Haven: Yale University Press).
Ruth Benedict (1999), “A Defense of Ethical Relativism,” Conduct & Character: Readings in Moral Theory Wadsworth, NY, p. 66.
See Mark Timmons (2003), Conduct and Character: Readings in Moral Theory (New York: Wadsworth).
J. Rachels (2003), “Egoism and Moral Skepticism,” in Mark Timmons (ed.), Conduct and Character: Readings in Moral Theory (New York: Wadsworth), pp. 25–35.
Card, Claudia (1990), “Caring and Evil.” Ibid., p. 209. Original article in Hypatia 5.1, pp. 101–108.
W.D. Ross (1930), The Right and the Good (New York: Oxford University Press).
J. Osei (2010), Ethical Issues in Third World Development: A Theory of Social Change (New York: Edwin Mellon Press), p. 10.
Robert L. Holmes (2003) “Kantianism,” in Mark Timmons (ed.), Conduct and Character: Readings in Moral Theory (New York: Wadsworth), p. 159.
J. Habermas, (1992), Further Reflection on Public Sphere, p. 67.
Tom L. Beauchamp and Norman E. Bowie (2004), Ethical Theory and Business, 7th edition (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall), p. 24.
J. Rawls (2001), Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Belknap University Press).
J.F. Rosenberg (1978) Handbook for the Practice of Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall), p. 9.
Kant (1998), “The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals,” in L. Pojman (ed.), Ethical Theory, Classical and Contemporary Readings (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth), p. 289.
Kant, (1998) “Critique of Pure Reason,” in L. Pojman (ed.), Ethical Theory, Classical and Contemporary Readings (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth), p. 373.
K. Popper (1971), The Open Society and Its Enemies: The Spell of Plato (New Jersey: Princeton University Press), p. 247.
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© 2015 Joseph Osei
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Osei, J. (2015). Kant’s Contribution to Moral Evolution: From Modernism to Postmodernism. In: Imafidon, E. (eds) The Ethics of Subjectivity. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137472427_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137472427_3
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