Moral philosophy in Australasia

Abstract

Before returning to Australia from Oxford, Peter Singer (1973) concluded one of his earliest papers with the timely comment that 'It is. necessary, before embarking on a discussion of morality, to make quite clear in what sense one is using terms like moral judgment, and what follows and what does not follow from such a use of the term. This is an essential preliminary; but it is only a preliminary. My complaint is that what should be regarded as something to be got out of the way in the introduction to a work of moral philosophy has become the subject-matter of almost the whole of moral philosophy in the English-speaking world' (Singer 1973, p. 56). The preoccupation with linguistic analysis bemoaned by Singer would shortly give way to a global renaissance of work in normative and applied ethics, and philosophers in Australia and New Zealand have figured quite prominently in these developments while also producing cutting-edge work in metaethics and moral psychology. Although Australasian philosophy was traditionally much better known for its contributions to metaphysics than to moral philosophy, the emergence of influential work in normative ethics, metaethics and moral psychology over the last two decades has done much to raise the profile of Australasian moral philosophy internationally.