Ricerc@Sapienza

In this paper, we propose the adoption of moral philosophy and in particular normative ethics, to clarify the concept of “good” evaluation of “research practices”. Using MacIntyre (1985)’s notion of a practice we argue that research is a form of social practice. As a result of this characterization, we claim that research practice typically requires three typologies of researcher: the leader, the good researcher and the honest researcher.

The article examines a dimension of ethics that Stanley Cavell names moral perfectionism, gathering under this label a host of different authors and philosophical lines, with Ludwig Wittgenstein holding the center stage. This dimension of ethics focuses on the mobility and transformation of the self, and in this light it is interesting to compare this approach with virtue ethics, given their shared emphasis on the self, its peculiar status, and the prospect of education. The idea of self-transformation informs Wittgenstein’s and Cavell’s philosophies in a number of ways.

Mainstream animal ethics theories, such as Singer’s and Regan’s, argue in favor of dietary behaviors excluding at all animal derived products. According to those accounts, in our societies and in our present conditions of life discarding food obtained from animals is mandatory according to the demands of normative ethical theories. In my paper I will present a different approach to reflective moral vegetarianism (defined in a very broad sense).