Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Articles

What is Prudent Pragmatism?

William Bluhm & Robert Heineman show how to do ethics without foundations.

Nietzsche wrote finis to the idea of metaphysics as a cognitive enterprise. Few philosophers today would try to make a case for anything like Hegel’s Weltgeist or Plato’s Forms, although the latter remain alive and well among many mathematicians. Along with this collapse of metaphysical categories has gone disillusionment with ideas of absolute ‘good’ and ‘right’, the basic concepts of ethics. Yet we still feel the need in our daily lives to talk about ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘good and ‘bad.’ Political discourse in particular is infused with these terms, even in international politics.

…