Özmen, Onur;
(2022)
Towards a Critical Realist Ethics.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
This work is an extrapolation, critical analysis, defence and development of critical realist (CR) moral philosophy. CR’s main contribution to ethics is considered to be its theory of explanatory critiques (TEC), which rests on moral realism and ethical naturalism, at a critical distance from both utilitarianism and Kantian abstract universalism. In this thesis I argue for the necessity of a realist metaphysics for an emancipatory ethics, recasting the realist character of this metaphysics in terms of anti-anthropism; I show how TEC works in practice by portraying Marx’s analysis of the capitalist mode of production as a paradigm case; and I discuss the history of the dialecticisation of CR, focusing on ethical categories. I argue that this dialecticisation does not only inherit TEC, but sublates it, ushering in novel concepts in a shift from a formal refutation of ‘Hume’s law’ to a deeper ontology with substantial anthropological underpinnings. I situate the precursors of CR’s ethics in ancient Greek philosophy, and I lay out the distinctly Aristotelian, Marxian and dialectical characteristics of CR’s ethico-politics. More particularly, I align CR more closely with virtue theory than the other two major contemporary ethical positions, i.e. consequentialism and deontology, and suggest that virtue theory, once supported with a robustly realist, properly socialized and emancipatory philosophical footing, could be strong allies with CR. I try to show that in fact the greatest contribution of CR to moral philosophy might lie in building the groundwork for a thoroughly dialectical and social critical transformation of virtue theory. Throughout the thesis I hope to provide a full extraction and defence of Bhaskar’s dialectical moral philosophy, an original and critical interpretation of the history of its development with an emphasis on notions from ancient Greek ethics, and draw the contours of a critical realist development of virtue theory.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Towards a Critical Realist Ethics |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2022. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| Keywords: | Critical Realism, Ethics |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10147600 |
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