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Disgust and Moral Taboos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

John Kekes
John Kekes
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Albany
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Extract

Disgust is not a pleasant subject. It is perhaps partly for this reason that it has not been much discussed in philosophical literature, or, indeed anywhere else. Disgust has considerable moral significance however, and appreciating its significance will illuminate the present state of our morality. One may be led to this view by reflecting on several recent works on pollution. The pollution in question, of course, is not of the air, soil, or water, but that of people who have violated moral taboos of their society'.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 67 , Issue 262 , October 1992 , pp. 431 - 446
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1992

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References

1 There is no entry under “disgust” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, in The Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, in The Dictionary of the History of Ideas, or in the cumulative index of the last ten years of The Philosopher's Index.

2 Some particularly illuminating works combine the techniques of classical studies, literary criticism, and social anthropology. A few of the outstanding examples are Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971)Google Scholar, Douglas, M., Purity and Danger (London: Routledge, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Lloyd-Jones, H., The Justice of Zeus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971)Google Scholar, Parker, R., Miasma (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983)Google Scholar, and Redfield, J. M., Nature and Culture in the Iliad (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975).Google Scholar

3 McGuiness, I., New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 13, 245 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967).Google Scholar

4 Devlin's writings on the subject are collected in Devlin, P., The Enforcement of Morals (London: Oxford University Press, 1965)Google Scholar; the reprint of 1979 contains responses to his critics. Perhaps the most forceful rejoinder is Hart, H. L. A., Law, Liberty and Morality (Stanford University Press, 1963)Google Scholar. Mitchell, B., Law, Morality and Religion in a Secular Society, (London: Oxford University Press, 1970)Google Scholar is a review of the whole controversy and contains a useful bibliography.