7 Ethics

The philosophical study of morality is usually divided into three general areas: normative ethics, metaethics and applied ethics. This chapter discusses the theories of the foundations of ethics developed in the last forty years, focusing primarily on the discussion among analytic philosophers. According to the standard classification, the metaethical theories can be separated into two distinct general categories: cognitivist theories and noncognitivist theories. The classification depends on the adoption of a semantic and epistemic criterion which is centered on the use and the truth-value of moral sentences. The chapter presents three types of realist cognitivism. The most well known and influential of theories can be found in Philippa Foot's, John Finnis' and partly in Martha Nussbaum's writings. The nature of living beings in general and human beings in particular, Foot writes citing Elizabeth Anscombe, allows to identify capacities and functions that represent their "intrinsic" or "natural" goodness.