What is the Moral Problem? NORMATIVE ETHICS VS. META-ETHICS It is a common fact of everyday life that we appraise each others' behaviour and attitudes from ...

Christine Korsgaard has become one of the leading interpreters of Kant's moral philosophy. She is identified with a small group of philosophers who are intent on producing a version of Kant's moral philosophy that is at once sensitive to its historical roots while revealing its particular relevance to contemporary problems. She rejects the traditional picture of Kant's ethics as a cold vision of the moral life which emphasises duty at the expense of love and value. Rather, Kant's work is seen (...) as providing a resource for addressing not only the metaphysics of morals, but also for tackling practical questions about personal relations, politics, and everyday human interaction. This collection contains some of the finest current work on Kant's ethics and will command the attention of all those involved in teaching and studying moral theory. (shrink)

Putnam's goal is to embed philosophy in social life. The first part of this book is dedicated to metaphysical questions.

When this work was first published in 1960, it immediately filled a void in Kantian scholarship.

This is a short, accessible introduction to John Rawls' thought and gives a thorough and concise presentation of the main outlines of Rawls' theory as well as drawing links between Rawls' enterprise and other important positions in moral and political philosophy.

The new critical edition of the works and correspondence of Jeremy Bentham is being prepared and published under the supervision of the Bentham Committee of University College London. In spite of his importance as jurist, philosopher, and social scientist, and leader of the Utilitarian reformers, the only previous edition of his works was a poorly edited and incomplete one brought out within a decade or so of his death. Eight volumes of the new Collected Works, five of correspondence, and three (...) of writings on jurisprudence, appeared between 1968 and 1981, published by the Athlone Press. Further volumes in the series since then are published by Oxford University Press. The overall plan and principles of the edition are set out in the General Preface to The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 1, which was the first volume of the Collected Works to be published.An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Jeremy Bentham's best-known work, is a classic text in modern philosophy and jurisprudence. First published in 1789, it contains the important statement of the foundations of utilitarian philosophy and a pioneering study of crime and punishment, both of which remain at the heart of contemporary debates in moral and political philosophy, economics, and legal theory. Printed here in full is the definitive edition, edited by the distinguished scholars J. H. Burns and H. L. A. Hart. An introductory essay by Hart, first published in 1982 and a widely acknowledged classic in its own right, is reprinted here. It contains an important analysis of Bentham's principle of utility, theory of action, and an account of the relationship between law and morality.A new introduction by the leading Bentham scholar F. Rosen, specially written for this Clarendon Paperback edition, provides students with a helpful survey of Bentham's main ideas and an extensive bibliographical study of recent critical work on Bentham. Professor Rosen's essay also contains a new analysis of the principle of utility in Bentham's philosophy which is compared with its use in Hume and J. S. Mill. (shrink)

Barbara Herman argues for a radical shift in the way we perceive Kant's ethics. She convincingly reinterprets the key texts, at once allowing Kant to mean what he says while showing that what Kant says makes good moral sense. She urges us to abandon the tradition that describes Kantian ethics as a deontology, a moral system of rules of duty. She finds the central idea of Kantian ethics not in duty but in practical rationality as a norm of unconditioned goodness. (...) This book both clarifies Kant's own theory and adds programmatic vitality to modern moral philosophy. (shrink)

The fundamental task of philosophy since the seventeenth century has been to determine whether the essential principles of both knowledge and action can be discovered by human beings unaided by an external agency. No one philosopher contributed more to this enterprise than Kant, whose Critique of Pure Reason shook the very foundations of the intellectual world. Kant argued that the basic principles of the natural sciences are imposed on reality by human sensibility and understanding, and thus that human beings are (...) also free to impose their own free and rational agency on the world. This volume is the only systematic and comprehensive account of the full range of Kant 's writings available, and the first major overview of his work to be published in more than a dozen years. An internationally recognized team of Kant scholars explore Kant 's conceptual revolution in epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, moral and political philosophy, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion. The volume also traces the historical origins and consequences of Kant 's work. (shrink)

This book marks a total departure from previous studies of the Boxer War. It evaluates the way the war was perceived and portrayed at the time by the mass media. As such the book offers insights to a wider audience than that of sinologists or Chinese historians. The important distinction made by the author is between image makers and eyewitnesses. Whole categories of powerful image makers, both Chinese and foreign, never saw anything of the Boxer War but were responsible for (...) disseminating images of that war to millions of people in China and throughout the world. (shrink)

This major collection of essays offers the first serious challenge to the traditional view that ancient and modern ethics are fundamentally opposed. In doing so, it has important implications for contemporary ethical thought, as well as providing a significant re-assessment of the work of Aristotle, Kant and the Stoics. The contributors include internationally recognised interpreters of ancient and modern ethics. Four pairs of essays compare and contrast Aristotle and Kant on deliberation and moral development, eudaimonism, self-love and self-worth, and practical (...) reason and moral psychology. The final pair of essays introduces the Stoics as an example of how the apparently antithetical views of Aristotle and the Stoics might be reconciled. (shrink)

In der Reihe werden herausragende monographische Untersuchungen und Sammelb nde zu allen Aspekten der Philosophie Kants ver ffentlicht, ebenso zum systematischen Verh ltnis seiner Philosophie zu anderen philosophischen Ans tzen in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Ver ffentlicht werden Studien, die einen innovativen Charakter haben und ausdr ckliche Desiderate der Forschung erf llen. Die Publikationen repr sentieren damit den aktuellsten Stand der Forschung.

The essays in this volume offer an approach to the history of moral and political philosophy that takes its inspiration from John Rawls. All the contributors are philosophers who have studied with Rawls and they offer this collection in his honour. The distinctive feature of this approach is to address substantive normative questions in moral and political philosophy through an analysis of the texts and theories of major figures in the history of the subject: Aristotle, Hobbes, Hume, Rousseau, Kant and (...) Marx. By reconstructing the core of these theories in a way that is informed by contemporary theoretical concerns, the contributors show how the history of the subject is a resource for understanding present and perennial problems in moral and political philosophy. This outstanding collection will be of particular interest to historians of moral and political philosophy, historians of ideas, and political scientists. (shrink)

A classic exposition of Kant's ethical thought.

Why should we act morally? What justification is to be found in moral demands? This lucid, pithy, and eminently readable book examines the arguments in favor of the claims of moral demands to be found in contemporary ethical theory, arguments deriving from Kant's attempt to provide a foundation for morality.

This volume also includes "Metaphysics and Ethics," a classic essay by Iris Murdoch.

Beck, L.W. Können Kants synthetische Urteil in analystische umgewandelt werden?--Ebbinghaus, J. Kants Lehre von der Anschauung a priori.--Mittelstrass, J. Spontaneität.--Prauss, G. Zum Wahrheitsproblem bei Kant.--Henrich, D. Die Beweisstruktur von Kants transzendentaler Deduktion.--Kaulbach, F. Schema, Bild und Modell nach den Voraussetzungen des Kantischen Denkens.--Frede, M. und Krüger, L. Über die Zuordnung der Quantitäten des Urteils und der Kategorien der Grösse bei Kant.--Weizsäcker, C.F. von. Kants "Erste Analogie der Erfahrung" und die Erhaltungssätze der Physik.--Beck, L.W. Die Zweite Analogie und das Prinzip der (...) Unberstimmtheit.--Tuschling, B. Kants "Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft" und das Opus postumum.--Hilbner, K. Leib und Erfahrung in Kants Opus postumum.--Patzig, G. Die logischen Formen praktischer Sätze in Kants Ethik.--Henrich, D. Der Begriff der sittlichen Einsicht und Kants Lehre vom Faktum der Vernunft.--Schwemmer, O. Vernunft und Moral.--Ebbinghaus, J. Die Formeln des kategorischen Imperativs und die Ableitung inhaltlich bestimmter Pflichten. (shrink)

Krämer untersucht weitere mögliche Funktionen Philosophischer Praxis v.a. unter dem Gesichtspunkt angewandter Ethik; Beiträge zu Legitimierung und Methoden, Nähe zur akademischen Philosophie, Praktische Philosophie als Ethik, Verhältnis zu anderen beratenden Berufen, Beraterethos, interdisziplinäre Kooperativität in einer Praxis.

From the Amazon.com description: On 5–6 April 1991, there was a conference on Kant at Florida State University; this volume collects the (revised versions of the) papers presented on that occasion. The occasion was, give or take a few months, the 90th birthday of Professor (Emeritus) William H. Werkmeister. Werkie (as all his friends call him) himself gave the final paper at this conference. Hence the inclusion of a paper by Werkie in a volume honoring him. Although he is primarily (...) known for his expertise in the field of Kantian philosophy, Werkie’s published scholarship has spanned a wide range of subjects for more than fifty years: his first book, A Philosophy of Science, appeared in 1940. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch is a philosopher, as well as a prominent and prolific novelist. Although she has not provided a systematic account of her moral philosophy, Murdoch's ideas have nevertheless influenced certain practitioners of feminist philosophy, including Marilyn Frye and Sara Ruddick. Murdoch's ideas also have appeared in the writings of Lawrence Blum and Charles Taylor, among others. This volume gives a developed account of Murdoch's position, making it more accessible by fitting ideas from her lesser-known works into a systematic picture (...) of her moral philosophy as a whole. The book also argues for a connection between Murdoch's novels and her philosophy, seeing in both her deep concern with attention, love, and the Good. Readers of Murdoch's fiction and those intrigued by her philosphy will find much of interest here. (shrink)