Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition. This reissue makes the first edition once again available for scholars and serious students of Rawls's work.

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition.

Morals from Motives develops a virtue ethics inspired more by Hume and Hutcheson's moral sentimentalism than by recently-influential Aristotelianism. It argues that a reconfigured and expanded "morality of caring" can offer a general account of right and wrong action as well as social justice. Expanding the frontiers of ethics, it goes on to show how a motive-based "pure" virtue theory can also help us to understand the nature of human well-being and practical reason.

Ruling Passions is about human nature. It is an invitation to see human nature a certain way. It defends this way of looking at ourselves against competitors, including rational choice theory, modern Kantianism, various applications of evolutionary psychology, views that enchant our natures, and those that disenchant them in the direction of relativism or nihilism. It is a story centred upon a view of human ethical nature, which it places amongst other facets of human nature, as just one of the (...) elements which give us the manifold objects of our concerns and cares. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism is one of the most important, controversial, and suggestive works of moral philosophy ever written. Mill defends the view that all human action should produce the greatest happiness overall, and that happiness itself is to be understood as consisting in "higher" and "lower" pleasures. This volume uses the 1871 edition of the text, the last to be published in Mill's lifetime. The text is preceded by a comprehensive introduction assessing Mill's philosophy and the alternatives to utilitarianism, (...) and discussing some of the specific issues Mill raises in Utilitarianism. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Right and the Good, a classic of twentieth-century philosophy by the eminent scholar Sir David Ross, is now presented in a new edition with a substantial introduction by Philip Stratton-Lake, a leading expert on Ross. Ross's book is the pinnacle of ethical intuitionism, which was the dominant moral theory in British philosophy for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Intuitionism is now enjoying a considerable revival, and Stratton-Lake provides the context for a proper understanding of Ross's great (...) work today. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Normative theories of obligation, moral and nonmoral value, and meta-ethical issues and theories are considered.

All this is tightly reasoned, the argument is packed, but the language is clear."—Christian Century "The man value of this book seems to me to be that it ...

Richard Brandt's last book discusses foundational questions in metaethics and normative ethics. Many of the central views expressed, as well as the topics taken up, will be familiar to those who know Brandt's earlier works, although some parts of the book represent new and welcome additions to his corpus. Brandt was very much a systematic moral philosopher, a theory builder. I can here only sketch the outlines of the theory he developed in the book, and suggest some points at which (...) one might wish to demur. (shrink)

This paper comprises three sections. First, we offer a traditional defence of deontology, in the manner of, for example, W.D. Ross (1965). The leading idea of such a defence is that the right is independent of the good. Second, we modify the now standard account of the distinction, in terms of the agent-relative/agentneutral divide, between deontology and consequentialism. (This modification is necessary if indirect consequentialism is to count as a form of consequentialism.) Third, we challenge a value-based defence of deontology (...) proposed by Quinn (1993), Kamm (1989, 1992), and Nagel (1995). (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show how some of the controversial questions concerning utilitarianism can be clarified by the modelling techniques and the other analytical tools of decision theory (and, sometimes, of game theory). It is suggested that the moral rules of utilitarian ethics have a logical status similar to that of the normative rules (theorems) of such formal normative disciplines as decision theory and game theory.The paper argues that social utility should be defined, not in hedonistic or (...) in ideal-utilitarian terms, but rather in terms of individual preferences, in accordance with the author's equiprobability model of moral value judgments. (shrink)

Investigates a complex structure of morality, the demands such morality places on individuals, and the behavioral consequences of the system of right and wrong.

In this lucid portrayal of human behavior, Fred Dretske provides an original account of the way reasons function in the causal explanation of behavior.

Introduction to one of the most important, controversial, and suggestive works of moral philosophy ever written.

Basterra examines human behavior in two specific areas; life sciences and healthcare. The perspective is specific: what are the moral values and principles behind or affected by that human behavior? His work is thoroughly researched and clearly presented.

Richard Brandt is one of the most influential moral philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. He is especially important in the field of ethics for his lucid and systematic exposition of utilitarianism. This new book represents in some ways a summation of his views and includes many useful applications of his theory. The focus of the book is how value judgments and moral belief can be justified. More generally, the book assesses different moral systems and theories of (...) justice, and considers specific problems such as the optimal level of charity and the moral tenability of the criminal law. This book will be essential reading for all professional philosophers concerned with ethics, and will prove helpful to students as well. (shrink)

Oxford Scholarly Classics brings together a number of great academic works from the archives of Oxford University Press. Reissued in a uniform series design, they will enable libraries, scholars, and students to gain fresh access to some of the finest scholarship of the last century.

The consideration of normative ethics and methodology is a relatively recent phenomena in Catholic moral theology. Similar to any nascent discussion, having adopted terms and concepts from one conceptual genre, Britisch-analytic philosophy, into a radically other genre, Catholic moral theology, one then needs to begin the work of clarifying how, and to what extent, those terms and concepts contribute to the overall project of moral theology as a science. As Pope John Paul II's encyclical Veritatis Splendor attests, this incorporation has (...) met with a great deal of resistance based on misunderstandings of the nature and purpose of normative ethics and methodology. Deontology and Teleology is a pioneer account which exposes and clarifies many of the terminological and conceptual ambiguities inherent to this discussion. It begins with an investigation of C.D. Broad's meta-ethical division of theories into deontology and teleology, and the epistemological/ontological foundations on which he established this division. An analysis of how and why Broad's theory has been incorporated into Catholic discussions on the foundation and formulation of norms along with the inherent difficulties of such an incorporation is then taken up. Finally, this study argues and substantiates through detailed historical analysis that a fundamental difference between traditionalists and revisionists in their relative perspectives on norms rest in the traditional understanding and moral evaluation of the human act, specifically, the objectum, circumstantiae and finis (fontes moralitates). This is an indispensable resource work for those interested in fundamental moral theology and lays the foundation for pursuing further the complex question of normative ethics in Catholic moral theology. (shrink)

This long-awaited two-volume set constitutes the definitive presentation of the system of classifying moral judgment built up by Lawrence Kohlberg and his associates over a period of twenty years. Researchers in child development and education around the world, many of whom have worked with interim versions of the system, indeed, all those seriously interested in understanding the problem of moral judgment, will find it an indispensable resource. Volume I reviews Kohlberg's stage theory, and the by-now large body of research on (...) the significance and utility of his moral stages. Issues of reliability and validity are addressed. The volume ends with detailed instructions for using the forms in Volume 2. Volume 2, in a specially-designed, user-friendly format, includes three alternative functionally-equivalent forms of the scoring system. (shrink)

Simon Blackburn puts forward a compelling original philosophy of human motivation and morality. He maintains that we cannot get clear about ethics until we get clear about human nature. So these are the sorts of questions he addresses: Why do we behave as we do? Can we improve? Is our ethics at war with our passions, or is it an upshot of those passions? Blackburn seeks the answers in an exploration of guilt, shame, disgust, and other moral emotions; he draws (...) also on game theory and cognitive science in his account of the structures of human motivation. Many philosophers have wanted a naturalistic ethics a theory that integrates our understanding of human morality with the rest of our understanding of the world we live in. What is special about Blackburn's naturalistic ethics is that it does not debunk the ethical by reducing it to the non-ethical. At the same time he banishes the spectres of scepticism and relativism that have haunted recent moral philosophy. Ruling Passions sets ethics in the context of human nature: it offers a solution to the puzzle of how ethics can maintain its authority even though it is rooted in the very emotions and motivations that it exists to control. (shrink)