13. The Emergence and Structure of The Moral Ideal

This chapter returns to Wedgwood’s vacillation between phenomenological and historical objections to naturalism. I explain why she became more focused on the historical angle and on tracing a historical progression culminating in the ethics of Christianity. In that light, her worry is that naturalists are repudiating not simply lived experience, but their entire cultural inheritance. These historical studies crystallise in her book The Moral Ideal. I explain how imperfect antithesis structures her account of historical change in that book, how it compares to and differs from Hegel, and how she understands progress. She needs progress to unite history and phenomenology, yet her progressivism makes her historical narrative essentially and problematically Eurocentric, especially when she overtly defends the British empire. For Wedgwood, the necessary next stage in history is to reconcile naturalism and Christianity. She thinks this requires reciprocity between the sexes, since the heterosexual bond embodies an ambiguous unity of nature and transcendence. Positively, this integrates feminist concerns into the heart of historical movement. Negatively, she does this in a way that marginalises non-heterosexual people, and she neglects the exploitative structure of the patriarchal family. These mixed considerations lead into my overall assessment of Wedgwood’s philosophy of imperfect antithesis, and its strengths and limitations.