On the Analytical Style in Ethics

Abstract

The article gives brief characteristics of the analytic way of thinking in the form as it has took shape in the English and American analytic philosophy and ethics in the last decades and is gradually adopted, although with difficulty, into the methodological arsenal of the Russian ethics. General description is given of the evolution of the analytical philosophical thought mainly freed from the old neopositivist doctrine of logocentrism and turned into multi-purpose analytical style in principle compatible with the wide variety of methodology items and worldview in the moral philosophy. Differentiation was conducted of the contemporary analytical ethics embodying the analytical style in its pure form and meta-ethics preserving noticeable elements of the above mentioned logocentric doctrine in its approaches and concepts. Such a separation of the two (previously identifiable) disciplines makes its more simple to accept the analytical style by those schools of the ethical thought which have arouse in the traditions of classic ethics and therefore adversely treated the neopositivist logocentrism. In the last section of the article, the methodology approaches are described on which the analytical style in ethics is mainly oriented. The anti-metaphysical focuses of the ethical analytism and its antagonism to the speculative transcendentalism are mentioned. The metaphysical inclination is opposed against by the naturalism, empiricism and psychological logic. Moreover, the analytical style of the research is close to the philosophic principle of determinism the acceptance of which excludes the concept of free will understood in the indeterministic key. In conclusion it is stated that the analytical style contributes to the improvement of the scientific culture of ethical studies.