Concept
Moral skepticism
Overview
Moral skepticism (or moral scepticism in British English) is a class of meta-ethical theories all members of which entail that no one has any moral knowledge. Many moral skeptics also make the modal claim that moral knowledge is impossible. Moral skepticism is particularly opposed to moral realism, the view that there are knowable and objective moral truths.
Some defenders of moral skepticism include Pyrrho, Aenesidemus, Sextus Empiricus, David Hume, J. L. Mackie (1977), Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Joyce (2001), Joshua Greene, Richard Garner, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (2006), and James Flynn. Strictly speaking, Gilbert Harman (1975) argues in favor of a kind of moral relativism, not moral skepticism. However, he has influenced some contemporary moral skeptics.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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For skepticism is the most spiritual expression of a certain many-sided physiological temperament, which in ordinary language is called nervous debility and sickliness; it arises whenever races or classes which have been long separated, decisively and suddenly blend with one another. In the new generation, which has inherited as it were different standards and valuations in its blood, everything is disquiet…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
States what Moral skepticism is; the author is tied to Moral skepticism in the knowledge graph.
_The Element of Moral Scepticism in Christianity._—Christianity also has made a great contribution to enlightenment, and has taught moral scepticism in a very impressive and effective manner—accusing and embittering, but with untiring patience and subtlety; it annihilated in every individual the belief in his virtues: it made the great virtuous ones, of whom antiquity had no lack, vanish for ever from the earth…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom
The author is tied to Moral skepticism in the knowledge graph.
In general, there is a degree of doubt, and caution, and modesty, which, in all kinds of scrutiny and decision, ought for ever to accompany a just reasoner.
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
The author is tied to Moral skepticism in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Moral skepticism
Related ideas
- Moral nihilism
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Pyrrho
- Gilbert Harman
- Expressivism
- Aenesidemus
- Sextus Empiricus
- Non-cognitivism
- J. L. Mackie
- Emotivism
- Moral relativism
- Cambridge University Press
- David Hume
- Agnosticism
- Moral realism
- Universal prescriptivism
- Russ Shafer-Landau
- Richard Joyce (philosopher)
- Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Agnosticism.