Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Derek Parfit on the History of Ethics

David Edmonds, in his superb biography, Parfit: A Philosopher and his Mission to Save Morality (Princeton UP, 2023, p. 160) reports,

Parfit once summed up the history of ethics in four neat steps:

1) Forbidden by God.

2)Forbidden by God, therefore wrong.

3)Wrong, therefore forbidden by God.

4) Wrong.


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