Practical contexts. Matjaz Potrc/Vojko Strahovnik

The thought and the findings of moral particularism are extended to contextualism. Moral particularism asserts that reasons for moral actions are not governed by general principles, but by a mixture of situation-bound deliberation and values. Particularism was established in the area of moral philosophy and its main results include delimitation with various forms of moral generalism. Many insights were accumulated along the way. This book claims that a serious contextualist approach needs to embrace particularist normativity. The thesis is then applied to the traditional areas of philosophy such as semantics, epistemology and ontology, making it possible to ask questions about the positive and not just negative story and about the wider impact of particularism. This work is an attempt at such a positive story. Foundations are laid for an exciting new field of research in the main systematic branches of philosophy, urging a rethinking of the normative basis of semantics, epistemology and metaphysics, in their interweaving with moral thought. The importance of narration and of phenomenology is stressed for these areas.