Frankena William K. (1908–94), American moral philosopher who wrote a series of influential articles and a text, Ethics (1963), which was translated into eight languages and remains in use today. Frankena taught at the University of Michigan (1937–78), where he and his colleagues Charles Stevenson (1908–79), a leading noncognitivist, and Richard Brandt, an important ethical naturalist, formed for many years one of the most formidable faculties in moral philosophy in the world. Frankena was known for analytical rigor and sharp insight, qualities already evident in his first essay, ‘The Naturalistic Fallacy’ (1939), which refuted Moore’s influential claim that ethical naturalism (or any other reductionist ethical theory) could be convicted of logical error. At best, Frankena showed, reductionists could be said to conflate or misidentify ethical properties with properties of some other kind. Even put this way, such assertions were question-begging, Frankena argued. Where Moore claimed to see properties of two different kinds, naturalists and other reductionists claimed to be able to see only one.
Many of Frankena’s most important papers concerned similarly fundamental issues about value and normative judgment. ‘Obligation and Motivation in Recent Moral Philosophy’ (1958), for example, is a classic treatment of the debate between internalism, which holds that motivation is essential to obligation or to the belief or perception that one is obligated, and externalism, which holds that motivation is only contingently related to these. In addition to metaethics, Frankena’s published works ranged broadly over normative ethical theory, virtue ethics, moral psychology, religious ethics, moral education, and the philosophy of education. Although relatively few of his works were devoted exclusively to the area, Frankena was also known as the preeminent historian of ethics of his day. More usually, Frankena used the history of ethics as a framework within which to discuss issues of perennial interest.
It was, however, for Ethics, one of the most widely used and frequently cited philosophical ethics textbooks of the twentieth century, that Frankena was perhaps best known. Ethics continues to provide an unparalleled introduction to the subject, as useful in a first undergraduate course as it is to graduate students and professional philosophers looking for perspicuous ways to frame issues and categorize alternative solutions. For example, when in the 1970s philosophers came to systematically investigate normative ethical theories, it was Frankena’s distinction in Ethics between deontological and teleological theories to which they referred.
See also ETHICS, MORAL PSYCHOLOGY, MOTIVATIONAL INTERNALISM , NATURALIS. S.L.D.