Philosophers and the Moral Life
Abstract
Part of the obvious revival of pragmatism, at least in Europe is linked with the present success or "boom" of moral philosophy and the increasing tendency to identify the classical pragmatists (Peirce, James, Dewey) as a common group of writers who, much better than any philosophers from other traditions, knew how to define scientific inquiry as an inquiry submitted to norms and principels, and realized that "what applies to investigation in general equally applies to ethical investigation "(H. Putnam). The paper examines such claims and focuses, in particular on Peirce's (and Wittgenstein's) arguments against any form of moral rationalism and in favor of a normative conception of rationality, closer to a conception of the possible objectivity of ethics as may appear at first sight.