S. N. Hampshire's anti-theory and H. P. Grice's anti-anti-theory

HAMPSHIRE -- Hampshire’s anti-theory: an ethical movement represented by figures such as S. N. Hampshire, Annette Baier, Bernard Williams, John McDowell, Martha Nussbaum, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Richard Rort. The “theory” that this movement opposes is modern moral theory, which takes it as its central task constructing and justifying a set of abstract universal moral rules and principles to guide and evaluate the moral behavior of all rational beings. These principles are completely context-free and can be applied in an almost computational way to any particular case. Correct moral judgments and practices seem to be deducible from these timeless principles, and all moral values are commensurable with respect to a single standard. Any moral conflict can be solved in a rational way. The anti-theory movement claims that moral theory of this sort is unnecessary, narrow, and impossible, for it cannot specify moral norms embedded in cultural and historical traditions, it cannot account for virtue that is culturally informed and it is incompatible with the fact that there are irresolvable moral conflicts and dilemmas. In contrast, this movement suggests that ethics should return to Aristotelian virtue ethics, claims the primacy of social moral practice over rational principles and the primacy of ethical perception over rules, and emphasizes the plurality of social conventions and customs. It is united in its opposition to modern moral theory, but varies in its positive doctrines. Authors supporting this movement have their own versions of what ethics should be. In many cases, this movement leads to moral contextualism, conservatism, or communitarianism. “The expression ‘anti-theory’ emphasises opposition to any assertion (whether in the form of a substantive moral principle or a meta-ethical theory about the nature of moral claims) that morality is rational only insofar as it can be formulated in, or grounded on, a system of universal principles.” S. G. Clarke and E. Simpson (eds.), Anti-Theory in Ethics and Moral Conservatism.