Normative Pluralism in Analytic and Continental Ethics: An En counter Shedding Light upon the Shadows of the Gods

Article

Abstract

[In English]

Given the famous schism, within philosophy, between continental
and analytic ethics, on what ground can we compare the
two and/or bridge the gap that separate them? Is the divide only
a matter of method and terminology or is there a deeper reason
for it?
This paper sketches an answer to these questions while proposing
that a rapprochement may be possible, between analytic
and continental ethics, through normative pluralism. After a
short presentation of Russ Shafer-Landau’s characterization of
the central positions in normative analytic ethics, a historical
perspective on the analytic/continental divide will be put forth
by way of Friedrich Nietzsche’s and Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophical
insights. I will hence suggest that a de facto dismissal
of the very cogwheel of ethics used by the majority of analytic
ethicists occurred, after the Second World War, in what we now
call ‘continental philosophy’ – a normative dismissal that had a
foundational impact for philosophy as a whole. Finally, I will show
how a broadly conceived normative pluralism can today offer a
common ground for discussion, for some philosophers at least, in
both philosophical traditions.