Abstract

Raimond Gaita's moral philosophy has a Platonic emphasis on “goodness beyond virtue.” But it also displays an anti-rationalist tendency, subordinating reason to the immediate responsiveness of human beings to each other. However, Gaita's account of the lucidity on which moral life depends fits ill with this subordination. Some Wittgensteinian remarks that have influenced Gaita are deployed to show that a Platonic rationalist psychology better serves his purposes than does his own, implicitly empiricist, psychology. The conclusion notes that Gaita's more recent work evidences less hostility to rationality