A Legacy of Ethical Atomism
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I want to deal in this essay with the group of philosophers that G.E.M. Anscombe includes under the term ‘modern moral philosophy’ in her essay by that name. The stars of this group are Hobbes, Hume, Adam Smith, Mill, Sidgwick, Moore. I mean to include as well generally the last hundred years of emotivists, utilitarians, and those theorists who have emphasized universalizability in its various versions. For reasons which I hope will soon become clear, I will refer to this broad group as the ‘atomistic tradition.’ I will be assuming, though not often saying, that the most forthright and thorough spokesman of the tradition is David Hume who, in his purely skeptical moments, was so atomistic and extensionalist that he even denied personal identity over time. Anything less than that is not purely atomistic.
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I want to deal in this essay with the group of philosophers that G.E.M. Anscombe includes under the term ‘modern moral philosophy’ in her essay by that name. The stars of this group are Hobbes, Hume, Adam Smith, Mill, Sidgwick, Moore. I mean to include as well generally the last hundred years of emotivists, utilitarians, and those theorists who have emphasized universalizability in its various versions. For reasons which I hope will soon become clear, I will refer to this broad group as the ‘atomistic tradition.’ I will be assuming, though not often saying, that the most forthright and thorough spokesman of the tradition is David Hume who, in his purely skeptical moments, was so atomistic and extensionalist that he even denied personal identity over time. Anything less than that is not purely atomistic.
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