ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the logical role or function of philosophical accounts, with the purpose of explaining how Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later method of the use of philosophical clarificatory models can help to resolve certain problems that arise in connection with more traditional conceptions of the function of moral philosophical theories. With regard to these problems, Iris Murdoch criticized moral philosophy and the linguistic method of analytic philosophy of her time for narrowness and ahistoricity, for imposing a false unity on the phenomena of morality and for presenting unacknowledged evaluative views in the guise of neutral analyses. Similar criticisms were later made by Bernard Williams. I agree with the critical points raised by the two philosophers. But although their work contains responses to the mentioned problems, neither spells out explicitly or in detail the solution they think is required, or explains how moral philosophy, as they propose to reconceive it, avoids collapsing into empirical moral anthropology, sociology or psychology. This is where Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of logic and philosophical methodology can help.
