Philippa Foot
Goodness in humans is like health in plants and animals, rooted in what our kind of creature needs to live well.
Placement
Invented the trolley problem and founded a naturalistic virtue ethics.
Key ideas
- Trolley problem
- Natural goodness
Influence
Influenced by 4
Aristotle
influenced by ✓
Foot built on Aristotle’s link between virtue and the good of living things: human virtues are natural goodness relative to the human life form (Natural Goodness, 2001). P. Foot, Natural Goodness (2001); Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (1978); SEP “Philippa Foot”
Aristotle › 384–322 BCE
Thomas Aquinas
influenced by ✓
Foot turned to Aquinas, alongside Aristotle, for an account of the virtues as beneficial dispositions that correct temptations and deficiencies of human nature (‘Virtues and Vices’, 1978). P. Foot, “Virtues and Vices”, in Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (1978); SEP “Philippa Foot”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Thomas Aquinas › c. 1225–1274
Ludwig Wittgenstein
influenced by ✓
Foot, influenced by Wittgenstein through Anscombe, argued that moral terms like ‘rude’ have criteria of application fixed by use, against the fact–value gap (‘Moral Arguments’, 1958). P. Foot, “Moral Arguments”, Mind 67 (1958); “Moral Beliefs”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 59 (1958–59); SEP “Philippa Foot”
Ludwig Wittgenstein › 1889–1951
G. E. M. Anscombe
influenced by
Foot took up Anscombe’s call for an ethics of the virtues and her ‘Aristotelian necessities’, grounding moral evaluation in facts about human life (Natural Goodness, 2001). P. Foot, Natural Goodness (2001); G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy”, Philosophy 33 (1958); “On Promising and Its Justice” (1969); SEP “Philippa Foot”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
G. E. M. Anscombe › 1919–2001
Influenced 1
Judith Jarvis Thomson
influenced
Thomson named the runaway tram of Foot’s essay on double effect (1967) the ‘trolley problem’ and set it against a transplant case (1976; ‘The Trolley Problem’, 1985). J. J. Thomson, “Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem”, The Monist 59 (1976); “The Trolley Problem”, Yale Law Journal 94 (1985); P. Foot, “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect”, Oxford Review 5 (1967); SEP “Doctrine of Double Effect”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Judith Jarvis Thomson › 1929–2020
Criticism
Criticizes 1
R. M. Hare
criticised
Foot argued against Hare that not just anything can count as a moral reason: moral terms are tied to facts about human good and harm (‘Moral Beliefs’, 1958). P. Foot, “Moral Arguments”, Mind 67 (1958); “Moral Beliefs”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 59 (1958–59)
Evidence: AI draft
R. M. Hare › 1919–2002
Works
The essay in which the trolley problem was born.
- 2001Natural Goodness
Moral goodness as natural goodness, like the roots of an oak.
Position
Foot opposed the view, dominant at Oxford, that moral judgments merely express attitudes or prescriptions that anyone can choose freely. Words like “rude” or “courageous,” she argued, have criteria of application that cannot be bent at will. In a 1967 essay on abortion and the doctrine of double effect she devised the case that became famous as the trolley problem: may one steer a runaway tram onto a track where it kills one person instead of five? Her late work Natural Goodness grounds ethics in a naturalistic virtue ethics: just as the roots of an oak can be good or defective, human beings can be good or deficient as the kind of living beings they are. She was one of the founders of modern virtue ethics.
Life & context
Philippa Foot, née Bosanquet, was born in 1920 and studied at Somerville College, Oxford, where she taught for decades. With Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch and Mary Midgley she belonged to a remarkable circle of Oxford women philosophers. From the 1970s she also taught at the University of California, Los Angeles. She died in 2010 on her ninetieth birthday.
Further main works
- Moral Beliefs (1958)
- Virtues and Vices (1978)
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