ABSTRACT
This paper revisits central controversies between moral philosophers strongly influenced by Wittgenstein—controversies sparked by Peter Winch’s discussion of the parable of the Good Samaritan in his 1987 inaugural lecture “Who Is My Neighbor?” Winch used the parable in tandem with allegedly Wittgensteinian insights to argue, pace Elizabeth Anscombe, that the perception of moral necessities is logically prior to moral principles and laws. Recently, Howard Mounce objected that this conception leads to an intolerable relativism, arguing instead that the parable of the Good Samaritan makes sense only if the meaning of the moral law is seen as fixed prior to the story told in the parable. Drawing on passages in Wittgenstein, and also on works by Boyle, Dain, Gaita, Hertzberg and Phillips, Gustafsson argues that both Winch’s and Mounce’s positions are unsatisfactory in their own right and also as applications of Wittgenstein’s thought. He rejects Winch’s prioritization of sensibility over principle as well as Mounce’s prioritization of principle over sensibility, arguing instead that principles and sensibilities make moral sense only because they interact in ways that preclude the one having priority over the other.
