Philippa Foot

1920-2010 · English · Ethics, Metaethics, Virtue Ethics, Philosophy of Action

Morality just cannot be subjective in the way that different attitudes are subjective.

When news of the Nazi concentration camps reached Oxford in 1945, Philippa Foot could not accept what dominant moral philosophy was saying. If morality was merely the expression of attitude — as Ayer, Stevenson, and Hare maintained — "we are right and the Nazis are wrong" was just a stand-off of feelings. That intolerable conclusion became the engine of her career. A fellow at Somerville College Oxford, she later divided her time between Oxford and UCLA.

Topics Philippa Foot addresses

• virtue ethics
• natural goodness
• the trolley problem
• the doctrine of double effect
• moral subjectivism
• noncognitivism
• moral realism
• intended versus foreseen consequences
• hypothetical imperatives in morality
• the rationality of morality
• natural normativity
• Aristotelian categoricals
• practical rationality
• the descriptive-evaluative distinction
• virtues and vices
• courage
• temperance
• wisdom
• species-typical goodness
• the grammar of goodness
• reasons for action
• the human form of life
• Anscombe's influence
• the Aristotelian inheritance

Questions to put to Philippa Foot

Moral Objectivity and the Refutation of Subjectivism

• Why did the Holocaust convince you that moral subjectivism must be wrong?
• What's wrong with saying morality is just the expression of an attitude?
• How can moral judgments be objective without being like scientific facts?
• What do you mean when you say virtue concepts collapse the fact-value distinction?
• Can someone who disagrees with us about morality simply be making a mistake?

Virtue Ethics and the Aristotelian Tradition

• Why focus on virtues rather than rules or consequences?
• How did reading Aquinas change your approach to moral philosophy?
• What convinced you that loquacity could actually be a vice?
• What makes courage, temperance, wisdom, and justice the central virtues?
• How do you defend virtue ethics without appealing to theology?

The Trolley Problem and Double Effect

• What's the difference between the runaway tram case and the surgeon case?
• Does the distinction between intended and foreseen consequences really matter morally?
• Why is it permissible to divert the trolley but not to harvest the organs?
• How does the doctrine of double effect work?
• What do you think of the experimental psychology research on trolley cases?

Natural Goodness and Species Form

• What do you mean by saying humans with 32 teeth is an Aristotelian categorical?
• How is moral evaluation like the evaluation we apply to plants and animals?
• What makes a human being defective in their form of life?
• Are you really deriving ought from is, or is something else going on?
• How does practical rationality fit into the human species form?
• What did you learn from Michael Thompson's work on living things?

The Rationality of Morality and the Late Reversal

• Why did you once think moral norms were like the rules of etiquette?
• What made you reverse your position on hypothetical imperatives?
• Does someone who recognizes a moral reason necessarily have a reason to act on it?
• Can the question 'why should I be moral?' even be answered?
• How is acting morally part of practical rationality itself?

Converse with Philippa Foot on Simposeum. Every reply is grounded in Philippa Foot's own writing and cites the page it came from. The corpus is public-domain text.