Castañeda’s Moral Theory as Point of Departure. Moral Codes, Moral Ideal, Political Communities, Global Community

Hector-Neri Castañeda (1924–1991) was a prominent analytic philosopher in the second half of the last century, with his contributions to moral philosophy (Castañeda 1974), action theory and deontic logic (Castañeda 1975a), philosophy of language, especially on indicators and quasi-indicators (Castañeda 1967), and ontology with his guise theory (Castañeda 1989a). His work has been very much discussed (Tomberlin 1983, 1986; Jacobi and Pape 1990), but tends to be neglected nowadays. This is particularly true of his theory of morality, enshrined in his book The Structure of Morality (SM from now on). Bruce Aune wrote some decades ago (1986, 291) that it is “one of the most intricate theories of morality to have appeared in recent years and also … one of the most interesting.” I think it remains a most interesting theory even now, and I propose to go back to it