Thinker

Philippa Foot quotes

5 passages in English · 1920–2010 · Analytic Philosophy.

Overview

Philippa Foot (1920–2010) was a leading Oxford moral philosopher who helped restore virtue ethics within analytic philosophy. Across essays collected in Virtues and Vices and the late book Natural Goodness, she linked moral evaluation to the needs and life-form of human beings rather than to free-floating emotivist attitudes.

Main ideas

Foot treats virtues as beneficial traits humans need for living well together, and argues that moral judgment is constrained by the kinds of things humans are. Her discussions of trolley cases and double effect sharpened debates about killing, letting die, and the structure of practical reasons.

Major works

  • Virtues and Vices
  • Natural Goodness
  • Moral Dilemmas

Legacy

Foot’s naturalism and virtue theory continue to shape metaethics, applied ethics, and neo-Aristotelian moral philosophy.

Themes in this archive

Virtue (2) · Morality (2) · Human Nature (1)

  1. Moral evil is a kind of natural defect.
  2. 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.
  3. We are not free to say that just anything is the subject of a moral belief.
  4. There is no criterion for determining what is good for a human being that is independent of the nature of the human being.
  5. We are most of us inclined to think that a great deal of damage, and even lives lost, is better than doing murder.