Charles Stevenson

Charles Leslie Stevenson (* June 27, 1908 Cincinnati, Ohio, † 1979) was an American philosopher. He worked primarily in the fields of ethics and aesthetics.

Stevenson first studied English literature at Yale University, then philosophy at the University of Cambridge at GE Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein ( 1930-33 ), and later at Harvard University ( 1933-35 ). He received his PhD in 1935 at Harvard, where he worked as a lecturer until 1939. 1939-46 he was an Assistant Professor at Yale, 1946-77 Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Stevenson is mainly known for his metaethical thesis that moral value judgments would not have any descriptive nature ( non- descriptivism ), but served solely for the purpose of eliciting emotions to allow others to influence or persuade. He is so - Alfred Jules Ayer next - one of the leading representatives of emotivism.

Based on Stevenson's meta-ethical theories is his theory of meaning, which builds on the work of Charles Kay Ogden and IA Richards. According to this theory serves only language of the psychological influence of the listener by certain psychological reactions to him are caused by stimuli.

Selected Works

• Ethics and Language, New Haven, Conn. , London 1944, ISBN 0-300-00975-5.
• Facts and Values. Studies in Ethical Analysis, New Haven, Conn. , 1963, ISBN 0-8371-8212-3.