Beyond Moral Judgment

by Alice Crary

What is moral thought and what kinds of demands does it impose? Alice Crary's book Beyond Moral Judgment claims that even the most perceptive contemporary answers to these questions offer no more than partial illumination, owing to an overly narrow focus on judgments that apply moral concepts (for example, "good," "wrong," "selfish," "courageous") and a corresponding failure to register that moral thinking includes more than such judgments. Drawing on what she describes as widely misinterpreted lines of thought in the writings of Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin, Crary argues that language is an inherently moral acquisition and that any stretch of thought, without regard to whether it uses moral concepts, may express the moral outlook encoded in a person's modes of speech. She challenges us to overcome our fixation on moral judgments and direct attention to responses that animate all our individual linguistic habits. Her argument incorporates insights from McDowell, Wiggins, Diamond, Cavell, and Murdoch and integrates a rich set of examples from feminist theory as well as from literature, including works by Jane Austen, E. M. Forster, Tolstoy, Henry James, and Theodor Fontane. The result is a powerful case for transforming our understanding of the difficulty of moral reflection and of the scope of our ethical concerns.

Genres: Philosophy

240 pages, Hardcover

First published November 6, 9

About the author

Alice Marguerite Crary

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I'm partial to this book's argument, it's written in a somewhat frustrating style that made it less than a pleasure to read. I wouldn't recommend the first half of the book (except maybe the very beginning, as an introduction) since it makes a general argument about objectivity and rationality (drawing on Wittgenstein and Austin) and the connection to the specific topic of moral judgment doesn't always feel obvious. The later chapters, which utilize examples of literature as moral instruction, feminist ethics and the way we need a change in perspective to perceive certain moral wrongs, and moralism as a moral defect, read somewhat easier and are of more general interest. I think the book as a whole would have been more successful if Crary had led off with examples to demonstrate why her thesis is significant, and held off the foray into the nature of rationality for later.

[Nat]

Spotted this on the new books table at the Seminary Co-op. Just flipped through it out of curiosity, and found a big central chapter on J.L. Austin. So I dropped $40 for the book and went to the library instead of going to coffee hour and read it. It's very interesting in many ways, and has a long discussion of Austin which I got a lot out of (though I think it's mistaken). Crary also explicitly states some of the Travis arguments (which she agrees with), and it is becoming increasingly clear to me what is wrong with them.