Foundations of Classical Ethical Theory

0191013
Project Director dr. sc. Josip Talanga

Summary:
The aim of this project is to investigate the problem of the moral and extramoral foundations of three classical types of ethical theory: Kantian, Stoic and contemporary evolutionary ethics. These three systems of ethics are taken as together providing the paradigm for a new attempt at a complete philosophical justification of morals, one which would combine deontological and virtue ethics by means of an integrated theory of rationality (Kant), cosmology (Stoics) and naturalised subjectivity (evolutionary epistemology and sociobiology). The hypothesis which the project puts forward is that deontological and virtue ethics, as representated by the classical theories of Kant and the Stoics, as well as in the metaethical theory of evolutionary sociobiology, find their common, extramoral foundation in a unified theory of human nature.