Jonathan Dancy

Jonathan Dancy (1946— ) is a British philosopher, best known for his works in ethics and epistemology.

Ethics

In ethics, Dancy is the foremost defender of moral particularism, the idea that there are no principles of ethics that can be properly formulated. Instead, Dancy argues that moral judgements are always particular to a situation.

Dancy says that one may assume a “rule of thumb” when it comes to certian moral decisions, but that these are not truly principles of morality, but merely analogies for easily making decisions in new particular situations.

Selected Works

• An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology
• Moral Reasons
• Ethics Without Principles