Philippa Foot
Philippa Foot was a British philosopher whose work on virtue ethics, moral naturalism, and the famous trolley problem made her one of the most important moral philosophers of the twentieth century. She played a central role in reviving the Aristotelian tradition of virtue ethics as a serious alternative to utilitarian and Kantian moral theories, and her later work developed a form of moral naturalism that grounds ethics in facts about what is good for human beings as members of a natural species.
Key Ideas
Key Contributions
- ● Introduced the trolley problem, one of the most famous thought experiments in moral philosophy
- ● Played a central role in the revival of virtue ethics as a serious alternative to utilitarianism and Kantianism
- ● Developed a form of moral naturalism in Natural Goodness, grounding ethics in facts about human flourishing as a natural species
- ● Challenged non-cognitivism by arguing that moral concepts have substantive content tied to human harm and benefit
- ● Analyzed the doctrine of double effect and its implications for the distinction between doing and allowing harm
Core Questions
Key Claims
- ✓ Moral evaluation is structurally analogous to the evaluation of plants and animals: goodness is relative to the characteristic form of life of the species
- ✓ The virtues are character traits that humans need to live well as the kind of creatures they are
- ✓ Moral terms are not mere expressions of attitude but have substantive content tied to human harm and benefit
- ✓ Natural goodness provides a form of moral realism without invoking non-natural moral properties
- ✓ The doctrine of double effect captures a real moral distinction between intending harm and merely foreseeing it
Biography
Early Life and Education
Philippa Ruth Foot (née Bosanquet) was born on October 3, 1920, in Owston Ferry, Lincolnshire, England. Her maternal grandfather was Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th President of the United States. She studied at Somerville College, Oxford, where she was a contemporary and friend of Iris Murdoch and Elizabeth Anscombe. Together, these three women would profoundly reshape anglophone moral philosophy.
Early Work: Moral Arguments and Virtues
Foot's early papers challenged the prevailing non-cognitivism (the view that moral judgments are not truth-apt but merely expressions of attitude). In "Moral Arguments" (1958) and "Moral Beliefs" (1958), she argued that moral terms have a content that constrains their application: you cannot just call anything "good" or "bad" — moral concepts are tied to considerations about human harm and benefit.
Her paper "Virtues and Vices" (1978) was a landmark in the revival of virtue ethics. Foot argued that virtues are beneficial characteristics that humans need to live well, correcting for specific deficiencies of motivation and character. Courage, for instance, is needed because we are tempted to flee danger even when we should not.
The Trolley Problem (1967)
Foot introduced the trolley problem in "The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect" (1967). She asked why it seems permissible to divert a runaway trolley so that it kills one person instead of five, but impermissible for a doctor to kill one healthy patient to harvest organs for five dying patients. The thought experiment, later elaborated by Judith Jarvis Thomson, became one of the most discussed in all of philosophy and remains central to moral psychology, ethics, and the ethics of autonomous vehicles.
Natural Goodness (2001)
Natural Goodness (2001), Foot's culminating work, developed a form of moral naturalism inspired by Anscombe, Peter Geach, and Michael Thompson. Foot argued that moral evaluation is structurally analogous to the evaluation of plants and animals: just as we evaluate an oak tree's roots or a wolf's hunting behavior by reference to what is characteristic and beneficial for that species, we can evaluate human actions and character by reference to what is good for humans as members of the species Homo sapiens.
Goodness is not a mysterious non-natural property (as Moore claimed) or a mere projection of human attitudes (as non-cognitivists held), but a natural property: something is good for a human being if it contributes to the characteristic form of human flourishing. The virtues are those character traits that a human being needs to live well as the kind of creature she is.
Foot taught at Somerville College, Oxford, and regularly at UCLA. She died on October 3, 2010, on her ninetieth birthday, in Oxford.
Methods
Notable Quotes
"{'text': 'Virtues are in general beneficial characteristics, and indeed ones that a human being needs to have, for his own sake and that of his fellows.', 'source': 'Virtues and Vices', 'year': 1978}"
"{'text': 'I believe that evaluations of human will and action share a conceptual structure with evaluations of characteristics and operations of other living things.', 'source': 'Natural Goodness', 'year': 2001}"
"{'text': 'To act with virtue is, among other things, to have certain characteristic motivations, directed at things that matter.', 'source': 'Natural Goodness', 'year': 2001}"
Major Works
- The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect Essay (1967)
- Virtues and Vices Book (1978)
- Natural Goodness Book (2001)
- Moral Dilemmas Book (2002)
Influenced
- Martha Nussbaum · influence
Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Philippa Foot on Goodness and Virtue (Hacker-Wright, 2013)
- Virtues and Reasons: Philippa Foot and Moral Theory (Hursthouse et al., 1995)
External Links
Translations
Discussions
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