C.L. Stevenson - Icon Profile | Alexandria
C.L. Stevenson (Clarence Lewis Stevenson, 1908-1979) was a pioneering American philosopher and ethicist whose work revolutionized 20th-century moral philosophy through his groundbreaking analysis of ethical language and emotive meaning. Best known for his seminal work "Ethics and Language" (1944), Stevenson developed an innovative form of ethical emotivism that would profoundly influence the trajectory of meta-ethical discourse.
First emerging in academic circles during the 1930s at Yale University, Stevenson's ideas took shape amid the rising tide of logical positivism and the linguistic turn in philosophy. His early papers, particularly "The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms" (1937), appeared at a crucial juncture when philosophers were grappling with questions about the nature of moral judgments and their relationship to facts and feelings. The intellectual climate of post-war America, characterized by a growing skepticism toward traditional moral absolutism, provided fertile ground for his nuanced analysis.
Stevenson's distinctive contribution lay in his sophisticated treatment of moral disagreement and his theory of persuasive definitions. Unlike his contemporaries in the logical positivist movement, he recognized that moral language served not merely to express emotions but to influence attitudes and behavior. His analysis of "persuasive definitions" revealed how ethical terms could be used to redirect attitudes while appearing to merely clarify meaning, a insight that would later influence fields ranging from rhetoric to political theory. This subtle understanding of language's role in ethical discourse set him apart from both pure emotivists and traditional moral realists.
The legacy of Stevenson's work continues to reverberate through contemporary meta-ethical debates and practical ethics. His insights into the interplay between factual and emotional meaning in moral language have found new relevance in current discussions of political polarization and moral disagreement. Modern philosophers continue to engage with his ideas about the nature of ethical disagreement and the role of persuasion in moral discourse, suggesting that perhaps Stevenson's greatest contribution was not in providing definitive answers but in helping us better understand the complex nature of moral communication itself.