Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the problems that contingency presents for moral theorizing and how we might avoid some of the issues that have frustrated attempts to cope with those problems. I argue that much of the misunderstanding surrounding discussions of the traditionally recognized problems of contingency are the result of how we think about morality and not, as commonly assumed, merely symptomatic of problems within the eudaimonistic or Kantian positions in which those problems emerge. ;After canvassing the traditional problems and the most successful attempts at their resolution, I show that both sides in this debate can answer their respective problems as they are currently formulated. Nevertheless, the problems remain problems because those solutions presuppose contested conceptions of morality as their starting points for deliberation. Therefore, although there are satisfying solutions to the traditional problems, neither side is capable of recognizing any solution but its own as relevant to a discussion about morality. To avoid the ensuing intractable conflicts, the general goal here is to present a method of conflict resolution that can account for the importance that we assign to our moral commitments without appealing to contentious presuppositions and without ignoring the source of the kinds of moral conflicts discussed throughout. This, I argue, requires a change in the way we think about morality. ;The change that is suggested here follows the kind of approach to conflict and conflict resolution set out in the discussion of Aristotle. By developing a broadly Aristotelian approach to conflict resolution free from eudaimonistic prejudices, I construct an approach to morality that recognizes the plurality of ultimate moral considerations and denies that reasonable conflict resolution at this level can be attained in terms set out prior to the actual contexts in which the conflicts emerge. Such an approach, I argue, is preferable to the standard monistic conceptions of morality given the goals and nature of practical deliberation and avoids the kind of intractable problems generated by the monistic approach to morality that underlie the traditional solutions to the problems of contingency