Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Utilitarianism

  • Utilitarianism and Natural Normativity: Further Foot Notes

    Philippa Foot argues (Natural Goodness, Oxford UP 2001, p. 48 ff.) that a naturalistic approach to normativity rules out utilitarianism. In this entry I try to understand the argument.  Foot writes, . . . utilitarianism never gets off the ground in a schema such as we find in the work of Elizabeth Anscombe and Michael…