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(2012) Social injustice, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Studying social injustice

the methodology of empirical philosophy

Vittorio Bufacchi

pp. 30-44

This chapter explores a methodology ideally suited for researching social injustice. I will refer to this methodology, which is inspired by the work of Jonathan Glover (2001), as "empirical philosophy".1 In the opening chapter to Humanity, his haunting moral history of the 20th century, Glover says that he hopes to encourage an idea of ethics as a more empirical subject. Unfortunately Glover does not tell us in any detail what it means to make ethics more empirical, and apart from some general comments, the idea of turning ethics into a more empirical subject remains elusive and obscure. Glover indicates the general direction in which ethics should move, but he does not provide us a clear route mapping how to proceed. My aim is to add some substance to Glover's aspiration by indicating a possible methodology for empirical philosophy.

Publication details

DOI: 10.1057/9780230358447_3

Full citation:

Bufacchi, V. (2012). Studying social injustice: the methodology of empirical philosophy, in Social injustice, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 30-44.

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