• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
• /
• v.123
• /
• pp.379-407
• /
• 2012

The main purpose of this paper is to make a case for the availability of pragmatist ethics by showing the differences between utilitarianism and pragmatism. In this paper, drawing on Dewey's view, I show that Bentham and Mill were doomed to failure because they both regarded moral conduct not as a process but as a fixed act, the remarkable differences between their views notwithstanding. Besides, I also show that pragmatism distinguishes itself from utilitarianism by its focus on the aspect of the amendment of a conduct rather than its attainment. Pragmatist ethics works on the assumption that moral conduct arises only in conscious experience. What pragmatists mean by consciousness is not an ability just given to haman, but a function emerging from the human interaction with his environment. Therefore, morality is extended from and restricted by experience, because it is grounded in concrete experience, but not in the transcendental nor a priori realm. Since pragmatism suggests the possibility of "ethics without principles" in that it works through the way which successfully rejects the traditional absolutist ethics, while avoiding the downslide to a nihilistic form of skepticism. Thus, it may serve as a third view that overcomes a seriously divergent situation of the current ethical arguments. In other words, starting from the very nature of experience, pragmatist ethics offers a 'bottom-up' ethics, instead of a 'top-down' one. This reconstructive reading of pragmatism away from utilitarianism is expected to offer a more comprehensive account of our moral experience in the pluralistic world of diverged values.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society of Design Studies Conference
• /
• 2004.05a
• /
• pp.198-199
• /
• 2004