Løgstrup’s Ethical Demand and the Possibility of Moral Progress
Dr Patrick Stokes (Deakin University )

September 8, 2016, 12:15pm - 2:15pm
Department of Philosophy, University of Melbourne

G16 (Jim Potter Room)
Old Physics Building
Melbourne 3010
Australia

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Abstract: The question of whether and how progress in moral belief and practice is possible has been the site for important exchanges (e.g. Foucault vs. Taylor, Rorty vs. Nussbaum). Awareness that moral beliefs have changed across time threatens our confidence in our current moral beliefs, while pragmatist defences of moral progress seem to threaten their categorical force. In this paper, I set up four desiderata for a successful theory of moral progress. I then outline K.E. Løgstrup’s understanding of the relation between the ‘ethical demand’ and changing, socially mediated norms. While Løgstrup does think there is an unchanging ground of normativity - the ‘silent, one-sided, unfulfillable' demand to act for the sake of the other rather than our own – he also thinks that changing social norms are an indispensable part of ethical life. Løgstrup doesn’t give us a satisfactory account of moral progress directly, yet his discussion of the ‘refraction’ of the ethical demand through changing social norms provides resources for an account of moral progress that avoids both Platonism and disobligating pragmatism.

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