Topics Philosophy

Question Is there anything right about this characterization of a philosophical problem: a person torn because she doesn't know what to do about her marriage would not be a philosophical problem in the sense that no philosopher or no moral theory could tell the person what to do, in the sense of giving her the one correct moral answer; but asking whether the personal has any reality, whether we can really speak of a person making a responsible moral decision at all, that would be something philosophers would try to prove against skeptical challenges. Is something like that what philosophy is about?

Accepted:
April 22, 2010

Comments

The latter sort of question certainly is philosophical, but there is also such a thing as applied philosophy, and in particular, normative theory, which do attempt to provide grounds for specific kinds of decision-making. I do think that normative theories could at least provide reasonable grounds for making one decision or another about one's marriage, depending upon the circumstances of that marriage. For example, it seems to me that (other things equal) most normative theories would counsel abandoning an abusive marriage, especially where reasonable efforts to end the abuse (via counselling, say) have failed or have been rejected.