The essays in this collection examine the moral import of emotion, motivation, judgment, perception, and group identifications, and explore how all these psychic capacities contribute to a morally good life. They examine moral exemplars and the "moral saints" debate, the morality of rescue during the Holocaust, role morality as lying between "personal" and "impersonal" perspectives, Carol Gilligan's theory of women and morality, Iris Murdoch's moral philosophy, and moral responsiveness in young children.

Iris Murdoch was one of the great philosophers and novelists of the twentieth century and The Sovereignty of Good is her most important and enduring philosophical work. She argues that philosophy has focused, mistakenly, on what it is right to do rather than good to be and that only by restoring the notion of ‘vision’ to moral thinking can this distortion be corrected. This brilliant work shows why Iris Murdoch remains essential reading: a vivid and uncompromising style, a commitment to (...) forceful argument, and a courage to go against the grain. With a foreword by Mary Midgley. (shrink)

The author presents and defends three theses: (1) "the first is that it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology." (2) "the second is that the concepts of obligation, And duty... And of what is morally right and wrong, And of the moral sense of 'ought', Ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible...." (3) "the third thesis is that (...) the differences between the well-Known english writers on moral philosophy from sidgwick to the present day are of little importance." (staff). (shrink)

This book examines some of the deepest questions in philosophy: What is involved in judging a belief, action, or feeling to be rational?

I will argue that this intuitive description is in fact accurate: that we can and do perform actions we know to be wrong simply because we fail to decide what to do. I will then try to show that once we recognize this fact, we can identify a character trait which any plausible moral theory which is not strictly self-defeating must require that we develop. Finally, I will sketch some implications of this argument for the role of virtue in moral (...) theory, and for the nature of moral objectivity. (shrink)

BEGINNING with G. E. M. Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy" in 1958, various critics--e.g., Frankena, Foot, MacIntyre, and Murdock--have, to one extent or another, expressed dissatisfaction with the condition of modern moral philosophy. Prior to this round of critiques, H. A. Prichard in 1912 asked the question "Is Moral Philosophy Based on a Mistake?" in an essay of that title in Mind. One finds precedent for these expressions of discontent with the ground rules of moral philosophy in both Aristotle and Kant, (...) two thinkers whose reformulations of the questions and procedures of ethics proved seminal for the discipline. Even neglecting other important developments in contemporary moral philosophy, the diversity and rigour of these critiques alone suggest that the prognosis for the discipline of ethics is quite favorable. Philosophy in at least one of its dimensions has recovered that self-reflective attentiveness that marks its most productive phases. So it is that several of these contemporary critiques raise the suspicion that what is wrong with moral philosophy is that it operates outside of a context in terms of which talk about moral laws or moral goods would be intelligible. Our contemporary situation can thus be contrasted with, for example, that of Aristotle for whom a discussion of "magnificence" was firmly rooted in an Athenian context in terms of which an argument over the merits of that particular virtue might be resolved. Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue brings this line of reflection into sharp new focus with a series of illuminating discussions concerning the role of the virtues both in the history of moral practices and in the logic of moral argument. In general, MacIntyre tries to show that "contemporary moral debate is interminable" ; that is, he tries to show why, given the nature of contemporary moral philosophy, there is "no rational way of securing moral agreement". Because I believe MacIntyre is successful in his demonstration, I shall, in this paper, take that demonstration for granted and try to construct a set of arguments designed to show how, in terms of a universally accessible paradigmatic character, we have at hand a way of avoiding the "interminable" regress of moral debate. Thus although my argument is derivative to MacIntyre's diagnosis and dependent, in part, upon his treatment of the concept of virtue, the proposal I develop here for the resolution of moral arguments is, sadly to say, somewhat at odds with his own. (shrink)