Against the "thin air of moral theory”

Abstract

The diagnosis was already given by Wittgenstein himself, as early as in the Tractatus, and more clearly so in the Philosophical Investigations: the urge to solve certain “philosophical problems” is but a symptom of a philosophical disease. We could indeed say that Wittgenstein’s main concern all along his work was to furnish an efficient philosophical treatment to cure the philosopher’s illusions and a method (or some methods) to establish a new philosophical attitude by means of a new philosophical activity. Both the diagnosis and the suggested treatment had an enormous impact on contemporary philosophical reflection, which I would like to consider here from the point of view of the so-called “moral philosophy”, the fate of which is an open question to be reflected on in this paper. In what follows I will begin with a brief characterization of the referred Wittgensteinian attitude as it applies to some authors: especially Anscombe, Gaita and Elliott; and to try to draw a picture of an anti-theoretical and anti-metaphysical moral-philosophical activity; this picture will then be completed with the authors shared criticism of traditional moral philosophy – as first and clearly stated by Anscombe; finally, I will try to delineate some of the alternative possibilities open to the future of “moral philosophy” against mere exegesis and against the old, pedantic – and always haunting – purely speculative attitude.