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Abstraction and Justification in Moral Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Cynthia A. Stark
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Abstract

Ethicists of care have objected to traditional moral philosophy's reliance upon abstract universal principles. They claim that the use of abstraction renders traditional theories incapable of capturing morally relevant, particular features of situations. I argue that this objection sometimes conflates two different levels of moral thinking: the level of justification and the level of deliberation. Specifically, I claim that abstraction or attention to context at the level of justification does not entail, as some critics seem to think, a commitment to abstraction or attention to context at the level of deliberation. It follows that critics who reject a theory's use of abstraction at the level of justification have not shown that the theory recommends abstraction at the level of deliberation. It follows that critics who reject a theory's use of abstraction at the level of justification have not shown that the theory recommends abstraction at the level of deliberation and that it, therefore, compels the deliberating agent to overlook morally salient details.

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Contributed Papers
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Hypatia , Volume 25 , Issue 4: Special Issue: Feminist Legacies/Feminist Futures: The 25th Anniversary Issue , Summer 2010, pp. 825 - 833
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Copyright © 2010 by Hypatia, Inc.

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