Boundless Nature: Virtue Ethics, Wittgenstein and Unrestricted Naturalism

In this chapter, I am concerned with the attempt to naturalize ethics found in contemporary neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics and represented amongst other by the work of John McDowell, Philippa Foot and Rosalind Hursthouse. I depart from a distinction between three forms of naturalism, hard or scientific naturalism, liberal naturalism and unrestricted or absolute naturalism, which I use to show how neo-Aristotelian virtue ethicists place themselves within a liberal form of naturalism in order to develop an account of the virtues as indeed natural. In the main part of the chapter, I argue, on the one hand, that there is a point of affinity between this endeavour and the approach to nature found in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy and, on the other, that a Wittgensteinian naturalism still differs from the liberal naturalism adopted in neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics in one crucial respect, namely by being unrestricted. Finally, I will make a call for an adoption of this form of naturalism in virtue ethics and argue that this will fundamentally alter the way we ought to approach the virtues in moral philosophy.