Is there a single way for all humans to be human? Some problems for aristotelian naturalism in contemporary moral philosophy

Abstract

Aristotelian naturalists may have diverging interpretations of Aristotles idea that the good life for a human being is a life of activity in accordance with the virtues. Such is the case of John McDowell (McDowell 1998) and Philippa Foot (Foot 1978). One important question here is whether Aristotelian naturalism in moral philosophy commits one to the idea of a good, or goods, which are natural to humans qua humans. Naturalism is a very widespread position in contemporary analytic philosophy yet not always very clearly spelled out. In order to search for clarity regarding what one means by naturalism, I explore several strands of McDowells case for second-nature naturalism as a position in moral philosophy. I then assess an argument put forward against it by Bernard Williams in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Williams 1985). Building on a suggestion by Alan Thomas in Value and Context The nature of moral and political knowledge (Thomas 2006) and complementing it with a view of rationality inspired by S.Stich (The Fragmentation of Reason, Stich 1990) I end with a proposal on how to keep Aristotelianism in moral philosophy