In her provocative discussion of the challenge posed to the traditional impartialist, justice-focused conception of morality by the new-wave care perspective in ethics, Annette Baier calls for ‘a “marriage” of the old male and newly articulated female... moral wisdom,’ to produce a new ‘cooperative’ moral theory that ‘harmonize[s] justice and care.’ I want in this paper to play matchmaker, proposing one possible conjugal bonding: a union of two apparently dissimilar modes of what Nel Noddings calls ‘meeting the other morally,’ a (...) wedding of respect and care. (shrink)

This volume contains four versions of the lecture notes taken by Kant's students of his university courses in ethics given regularly over a period of some thirty years. The notes are very complete and expound not only Kant's views on ethics but many of his opinions on life and human nature. Much of this material has never before been translated into English. As with other volumes in the series, there are copious linguistic and explanatory notes and a glossary of key (...) terms. (shrink)

We need modal imagination in order to extend our conception of reality - and, in particular, of human beings - beyond our immediate experience in the indexical present; and we need to do this in order to preserve the significance of human interaction. To make this leap of imagination successfully is to achieve not only insight but also an impartial perspective on our own and others' inner states. This perspective is a necessary condition of experiencing compassion for others. This is (...) the primary thesis I will try to defend in this discussion. (shrink)

The moral philosophy of the first half of the twentieth century, at least in the English-speaking part of the world, has been largely devoted to problems of an ontological or epistemological nature. This concentration of effort by many acute analytical minds has not produced any general agreement with respect to the solution of these problems; it seems likely, on the contrary, that the wealth of proposed solutions, each making some claim to plausibility, has resulted in greater disagreement than ever before, (...) and in some cases disagreement about issues so fundamental that certain schools of thought now find it unrewarding, if not impossible, to communicate with one another. Moral philosophers of almost all schools seem to agree, however, that no major possibility has been neglected during this period, and that every proposed solution which can be adjudged at all plausible has been examined with considerable thoroughness. It is now common practice, for example, for the authors of books on moral philosophy to introduce their own theories by what purports to be a classification and review of all \emph{possible} solutions to the basic problems of analysis; and in many cases, indeed, the primary defense of the author's own position seems to consist in the negative argument that his own position cannot fail to be correct because none of the others which he has mentioned is satisfactory. (shrink)

This essay examines Kant's relationship to the Stoics with respect to the affective dimension of the moral life. Besides offering a general description and comparison of the two philosophies in this particular regard, it utilizes numerous specific Kantian references to and parallels with Stoicism to argue that his own position was, throughout its development, shaped by a growing contact with and appreciation of the Stoic view. The paper proceeds from some negative remarks of Kant about suppressing or even eliminating the (...) emotions and inclinations found mainly in the Grundlegung and the second Critique, and then goes on to show how Kant was able to draw upon a number of Stoic distinctions and concepts, such as that between the affects and the passions, in order to mitigate these negative and exclusivistic attitudes and to reincorporate the affective components of the personality into his conception of a fully human moral life. Moreover, because of the numerous subtopics explored in making the main case for the Kant-Stoa link, the essay also accomplishes its subsidiary purpose of showing the importance of the sometimes overlooked emotional factor or dimension of Kant's ethics as such. (shrink)

Since it appeared in 1971, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice has become a classic. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of difficulties he and others have found in the original book. Rawls aims to express an essential part of the common core of the democratic tradition--justice as fairness--and to provide an alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition of political thought since the nineteenth century. Rawls substitutes the ideal of the (...) social contract as a more satisfactory account of the basic rights and liberties of citizens as free and equal persons. "Each person," writes Rawls, "possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override." Advancing the ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Emerson, and Lincoln, Rawls's theory is as powerful today as it was when first published. (shrink)

The paper examines the question of whether a person could know the difference between right and wrong and have the capacity to control his or her conduct yet not be moved by his or her knowledge of right or wrong. It proceeds by considering psychopathy and inquiring into the nature of the psychopath's cognitive deficits, if any. One possibility is that psychopaths are inconsistent in the sense of Kant's test of universalizability. This possibility is rejected after considerable argument. A second (...) possibility is that psychopaths are incapable of empathy. Consideration of recent work in developmental psychology leads to the conclusion that this possibility remains open. (shrink)