"Boundless Nature"

Next up is Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen's "Boundless Nature: Virtue Ethics, Wittgenstein and Unrestricted Naturalism." Christensen argues that, while there is an affinity between the later Wittgenstein and the neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics of such people as John McDowell, Philippa Foot, and Rosalind Hursthouse, adopting a Wittgensteinian form of naturalism would change the way we approach virtues in moral philosophy.

Drawing on work by Hans Fink, Christensen distinguishes between three types of naturalism: hard, liberal, and unrestricted. Hard naturalism is the kind that might be accused of scientism or being reductive. Liberal naturalism allows for human nature, including as it is shaped by culture, to count as part of nature. Unrestricted naturalism, as the name suggests, places no limits at all on what counts as natural. On this view, "everything that is, is indeed a part of nature" (p. 64).

I won't go through Christensen's discussion of hard naturalism, or much of what she says about liberal naturalism, but it's a nice discussion, and I think it sheds light on some of the strengths and weaknesses of Harcourt's paper. Of McDowell she writes that he:

presents the relationship between nature and language as the relation between a foundation and a superstructure, but this is not how Wittgenstein describes the relation between the two, as nothing in his piecemeal investigations can be said to underlie anything else. (p. 76)

One worry that someone reading Christensen's paper might have is that 'unrestricted naturalism' or 'unrestricted naturalist ethics' sounds like a theory, and surely Wittgenstein was not in the business of putting forward theories. This worry is unfounded however. As Christensen explains: "Unrestricted naturalism is not an informative or substantive philosophical claim" (p. 78). So does it have any value? Yes:

Wittgensteinian unrestricted naturalism is a way of re-directing the work we do in virtue ethics (and in ethics generally), allowing for the piecemeal clarification of the distinctions involved here. (p. 78)

We might, for instance, pay more attention to context. And then:

There are questions of what elements in societies and our circumstances influence the virtues. Questions of how changes in the way we live are tied to changes in the virtues for which we should strive. Questions of how we should understand the differences between cases where circumstances curb the possibility of realizing flourishing through virtue, and cases where circumstances further this possibility. (p. 79)

There is still plenty for virtue ethicists to do, in other words.

According to the notes on contributors Christensen is "finishing a monograph on the relation between moral philosophy, ethical theory and moral life" (p. 276), so that's something to look forward to.