Charles L. Stevenson authored the first thorough emotivist, or noncognitivist, account of ethical language. Traditionally the study of ethics had involved a quest for the truth about what is good and right, but Stevenson abandoned that search and set out to investigate the practical use of ethical language to shape attitudes. In a series of articles, and in his 1944 book Ethics and Language, he proposed answers to classical philosophical questions about meaning and justification that set the agenda for the next several generations of moral philosophers.

Stevenson earned degrees at Yale and Cambridge before receiving his doctorate from Harvard in 1935. He then taught at Harvard and Yale, where his original and challenging ideas about ethics were not popular. In 1946 he joined the philosophy department at the University of Michigan, where he remained till his retirement.

By the time Ethics and Language appeared...