Challenging, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity, Parfit claims that we have a false view about our own nature. It is often rational to act against our own best interersts, he argues, and most of us have moral views that are self-defeating. We often act wrongly, although we know there will be no one with serious grounds for complaint, and when we consider future generations it is very hard to avoid conclusions (...) that most of us will find very disturbing. (shrink)

Since its original publication in 1975, this groundbreaking work has awakened millions of concerned men and women to the shocking abuse of animals everywhere--inspiring a worldwide movement to eliminate much of the cruel and unnecessary laboratory animal experimentation of years past. In this newly revised and expanded edition, author Peter Singer exposes the chilling realities of today's "factory farms" and product-testing procedures--offering sound, humane solutions to what has become a profound environmental and social as well as moral issue. An important (...) and persuasive appeal to conscience, fairness, decency and justice, Animal Liberation is essential reading for the supporter and the skeptic alike.--From publisher description. (shrink)

The debate over whether human animals are linked by bonds of justice to nonhu-man animals is ancient and has been several times settled. The Roman jurists defined the j us naturae in terms of what nature had taught 'all animals', but Grotius and other natural-law theorists rejected this view and redefined the jus naturae as that which accorded with human nature, thereby founding the 'modern' view which has excluded nonhuman animals from the sphere of justice. This paper examines Grotius's argument (...) as part of a larger seventeenth-century 'counter-revolution' in thought and argues that its incoherence becomes intelligible only when viewed as an attempt to deal with the embarrassing phenomenon of inhumane warfare. Warned by the example of Grotius, we may wish to inquire to what extent any discussion of animal justice, whatever side it takes, may be an exercise in the perpetration of injustice. (shrink)

Two essays on utilitarianism, written from opposite points of view, by J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams. In the first part of the book Professor Smart advocates a modern and sophisticated version of classical utilitarianism; he tries to formulate a consistent and persuasive elaboration of the doctrine that the rightness and wrongness of actions is determined solely by their consequences, and in particular their consequences for the sum total of human happiness. In Part II Bernard Williams offers a sustained (...) and vigorous critique of utilitarian assumptions, arguments and ideals. He finds inadequate the theory of action implied by utilitarianism, and he argues that utilitarianism fails to engage at a serious level with the real problems of moral and political philosophy, and fails to make sense of notions such as integrity, or even human happiness itself. This book should be of interest to welfare economists, political scientists and decision-theorists. (shrink)