Forthcoming in R . Crisp ed , The Oxford Handbook to the History of Ethics Emotion and the Emotions

A prominent theme in twentieth and early twenty-first century moral philosophy is that a full and accurate picture of the ethical life must include an important role for the emotions. The neglect of the emotions has been a major point of criticism raised against the dominant consequentialist, Kantian, and contractualist theories by virtue ethicists such as G.E.M. Anscombe, Alisdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum, and Michael Stocker. Bernard Williams and Susan Wolf also develop a similar line of criticism as part of their arguments against the supremacy or priority of moral values as conceived by utilitarianism and other “impartialist” theories.