An Analysis Of Moral Contextualism

Moral contexualism, with "context" in hand as an instrument, is a practical methodological theory which devotes itself to moral principles, moral judgements, moral beliefs and other problems moral realism and moral epistemology; And also, moral contextualism is a kind of methodology of social science which concerns itself with the essence and methodology of social science by studying the features of practical area. Moral contextualism maintains that the fundamental merits of moral practice guarantee the prevailingness of context over principles in moral thought. The dissertation is divided into three parts besides the introduction and conclusion. The first part is concerned with the basic assertions of moral contextualism, which argues that moral thought is not a rule-following activity, but a kind of individual scrutinization of concrete contexts; and although the formation of moral beliefs relies on a justification process, the basic information of the process is provided by the social cultural context. The second part offers a generalization of the traits of moral contextualism:Human initiative, contextual authority and the trait of anti-theory. As an instrument to analyze moral thought and moral facts, context differs from principle for the impossibility of being formulated by theories. Despite representing different thinking mode, "context" and "principle" both aim at certainty. The emphasis on principle is the endeavor to pursue certainty in facts, while the emphasis on context is the endeavor to pursue certainty in the ability of the agent. The third part concentrates on the significance and deficiency of moral contextualism, and a theory intending to reconcile moral contextualism and moral absolutism is proposed.