R. S. Peters: The reasonableness of ethics

This article will begin by examining the extent to which R. S. Peters merited the charge of analytic philosopher. His background in social psychology allowed him to become more pragmatic and grounded in social conventions and ordinary language than the analytic philosophers associated with empiricism, and his gradual shift from requiring internal consistency to developing a notion of 'reasonableness', in which reason could be tied to passion, grounded him in an idiosyncratic notion of ethics which included compassion and virtue as well as reason. I describe his position on ethics as a systemic one of principled pragmatism. © 2013 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia.