Particularism

Abstract

The term “particularist” was coined by Hare (1963: 18), and particularism arose, in part, as a response to his views ( see Hare, R. M.). As he defined it, moral particularism is, at least in its “extremest” form, the rejection of the supervenience of the moral upon the nonmoral – that is, the rejection of the notion that if two circumstances are alike in all nonmoral respects, then they must be alike in all moral respects. As contemporary exponents of the position use the term, however, it does not refer to a denial of supervenience. On one broad usage (e.g., Blum 1994), the particularist is someone who expresses hostility to the view that a decision about what we ought to do in some particular case can be mechanically ‘read off' from a general moral principle or principles. Rather, it is urged, a correct moral verdict can only be reached by paying close attention to the individual case – to what differentiates it from other cases as much as what it has in common with them. As well as an understanding of the correct moral principles, we need fine judgment, sensitivity, and even something approaching a perceptual capacity ( see Perception, Moral) to appreciate the saliences of the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Particularism in this broad sense, which claims that a grasp of moral principles is insufficient for the correct moral appreciation of the particular case, has won many adherents in recent years. It is a position explicitly held, for example, by those known by some as intuitionists (Urmson 1975), as can be seen from Rawls' definition, which we shall adopt: