Philippa Foot

Abstract

Philippa Foot (b. 1920–d. 2010) is one of the leading philosophers of 20th-century analytic philosophy. Her two collections of essays and her one monograph include important contributions to debates concerning the objectivity of morality, the meaning of moral terms, the logical status of moral judgments, the nature of practical rationality, the place of human action and reason in nature, the limitations of consequentialism, the rationality of justice and morality, the connection between virtue and happiness, the relation between reasons and desires, the character and the pervasiveness of moral dilemmas, the threat of immoralism, etc. But the contribution of her work extends past these interventions in discussions that were already underway. Foot’s thought was part of what reoriented the focus of analytic philosophy from a partial view of morality as a system of rules concerning the relation between individuals and between individuals and society to a wider view of the human good as what it is to be good at being at work in being human. Her contribution to this shift in analytic philosophy was often overlooked (hence the scarce exegetic literature on her work) or misunderstood. When it was misunderstood, her thought contributed to the rise of the virtue-ethics alternative to the utilitarian and deontological normative ethical theories. But when it was properly appreciated, it contributed to the emergence of neo-Aristotelianism in practical philosophy in general (life, action, rationality, normativity, etc.). The substance of Foot’s philosophy is Aristotelian: her exploration of the human good through the lenses of the virtues, her conception of the human virtues as forms of goodness which don’t depart logically from forms of goodness in plant and animal life, and her account of practical rationality as the cognitive element of the virtues. The spirit in which she does philosophy is Wittgensteinian: her treatment of moral subjectivism by constantly bringing attention back to the grammar of moral concepts, as well as the construal of her positive view concerning the human good in terms of the nature of the representation of that good; especially in her later work. Given her wide-ranging contribution to philosophy, it is a shame that Philippa Foot is largely known for thought experiments such as the Trolley Problem. Luckily, excellent recent systematic and exegetic philosophy on her work is promising to correct this unfortunate circumstance.