In this paper moral philosophy of Mahrishi Valmiki discussed on the basis of his ideas in the Ramayana.

Despite being somewhat long in the tooth at the time, Aristotle, Hume and Kant were still dominating twentieth century moral philosophy. Much of the progress made in that century came from a detailed working through of each of their approaches by the expanding and increasingly professionalized corps of academic philosophers. And this progress can be measured not just by the quality and sophistication of moral philosophy at the end of that century, but also by the narrowing (...) of some of the gaps between Aristotelian, Humean and Kantian philosophers. (shrink)

Moral philosophy continues to be enriched by an ongoing empirical turn,mainly through contributions from neuroscience, biology, and psychology. Thusfar, cultural anthropology has largely been missing. A recent and rapidly growing‘ethical turn’ within cultural anthropologynow explicitly and systematically studiesmorality. This research report aims to introduce to an audience in moral philosophyseveral notable works within the ethical turn. It does so by critically discussing theethical turn’s contributions to four topics: the definition of morality, the nature ofmoral change and progress, (...) the truth of moral relativism, and attempts to debunkmorality. The ethical turn uncovers a richer picture of moral phenomena on theintersubjective level, one akin to a virtue theoretic focus on moral character, withstriking similarities of moral phenomena across cultures. Perennial debates are notsettled but the ethical turn strengthens moral philosophy’s empirical turn and itrewards serious attention from philosophers. (shrink)

It is well known the harmful effects that savage capitalism has been causing to the environment since its introduction in a sphere in which a different logic and approach to nature are the essential conditions for the maintenance of the ecosystem and its complex relations between humans and non-human organisms. The amazon rainforest is a portion of the planet in which for thousands of years its human dwellers have been interacting with nature that it is understood beyond its physical condition. (...) Thus, to what extent Amazonian’s approaches to nature could be considered as a moral philosophy through which the way of conceptualizing nature and its non-human denizens enhances the continuity of life and the intimate relations between entities? To answer this question, I will explore the cosmological system of the Shuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon with whom I lived for 5 months between July and November 2018, and thereby elucidate the spiritual relations that this society has with the metaphysical domain of nature. (shrink)

Owen Ware here develops and defends a novel interpretation of Fichte’s moral philosophy as an ethics of wholeness. While virtually forgotten for most of the twentieth century, Fichte’s System of Ethics is now recognized by scholars as a masterpiece in the history of post-Kantian thought and a key text for understanding the work of later German idealist thinkers. This book provides a careful examination of the intellectual context in which Fichte’s moral philosophy evolved and of the (...) specific arguments he offers in response to Kant and his immediate successors. A distinctive feature of this study is a focus on the foundational concepts of Fichte’s ethics—freedom, morality, feeling, conscience, community—and their connection to his innovative but largely misunderstood theory of drives. By way of conclusion, the book shows that what appears to be two conflicting commitments in Fichte’s ethics—a commitment to the feelings of one's conscience and a commitment to engage in open dialogue with others—are two aspects of his theory of moral perfection. The result is a sharp understanding of Fichte's System of Ethics as offering a compelling resolution to the personal and interpersonal dimensions of moral life. (shrink)

An overview of moral philosophy for the AQA A level philosophy syllabus.

With fifty-four chapters charting the development of moral philosophy in the Western world, this volume examines the key thinkers and texts and their influence on the history of moral thought from the pre-Socratics to the present day. Topics including Epicureanism, humanism, Jewish and Arabic thought, perfectionism, pragmatism, idealism and intuitionism are all explored, as are figures including Aristotle, Boethius, Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Mill, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre and Rawls, as well as numerous key ideas and schools (...) of thought. Chapters are written by leading experts in the field, drawing on the latest research to offer rigorous analysis of the canonical figures and movements of this branch of philosophy. The volume provides a comprehensive yet philosophically advanced resource for students and teachers alike as they approach, and refine their understanding of, the central issues in moral thought. (shrink)

People make moral judgments in response to actual or hypothetical situations. But should they ignore moral judgments made in some states of mind, such as when they are hesitant, frightened, or under the influence of a drug? John Rawls thinks that moral philosophers should ignore judgments made in such states, but I introduce a proposal according to which, if certain conditions are met, they should not. The proposal is loosely inspired by psychoanalysis.

Some of the most influential moral philosophers in the English-speaking world say or suggest that we should only pay attention to moral judgments made in certain states of mind, where these states exclude anxious states. In this paper, I argue that this position faces at least two major problems.

Anscombe counsels us to dispense with those moral concepts that presuppose a divine law conception of ethics, among which she numbers the concepts of “moral obligation and moral duty, […] of what is morally right and wrong, and of the moral sense of ‘ought’.” Schopenhauer made a similar point more than a century earlier, though his critique implicates a narrower range of concepts. Through reflection on his accounts of right and wrong and of duty and obligation, (...) I attempt to show that we can dispense with the imperative in ethics while retaining these notions, thus preserving a distinctively modern conception of morality. (shrink)

Christian moral philosophy is a distinctive kind of moral philosophy owing to the special role it assigns to God in Christ. Much contemporary 'Christian ethics' focuses on semantic, modal, conceptual and epistemological issues. This may be helpful but it omits the distinctive focus of Christian moral philosophy: the human condition in a morally ordered universe and the redemptive work of jesus Christ as a response to that predicament. Christian moral philosophers should seek to (...) remedy that neglect. (shrink)

In this history of the development of ideas of honor in Western philosophy, Peter Olsthoorn examines what honor is, how its meaning has changed, and whether it can still be of use. Political and moral philosophers from Cicero to John Stuart Mill thought that a sense of honor and concern for our reputation could help us to determine the proper thing to do, and just as important, provide us with the much-needed motive to do it. Today, outside of (...) the military and some other pockets of resistance, the notion of honor has become seriously out of date, while the term itself has almost disappeared from our moral language. Most of us think that people ought to do what is right based on a love for justice rather than from a concern with how we are perceived by others. Wide-ranging and accessible, the book explores the role of honor in not only philosophy but also literature and war to make the case that honor can still play an important role in contemporary life. (shrink)

Does Hegel have anything to contribute to moral philosophy? If moral philosophy presupposes the soundness of what he calls the 'standpoint of morality [Moralität]' (PR §137), then Hegel's contribution is likely to be negative. As is well known, he argues that morality fails to provide us with substantive answers to questions about what is good or morally required and tends to gives us a distorted, subject-centred view of our practical lives; moral concerns are best addressed (...) from the 'standpoint of ethical life [Sittlichkeit]' (ibid.). Hegel's criticism of morality has had a decisive influence in the reception of his thought. By general acknowledgement, while his writings support a broadly neo-Aristotelian ethics of self-actualization, his views on moral philosophy are exhausted by his criticisms of Kant, whom he treats as paradigmatic exponent of the standpoint of morality. My aim in this essay is to correct this received view and show that Hegel offers a positive argument about the nature of moral willing. (shrink)

James’s “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” sheds light not only on his views on ethics but also on his general approach to objectivity. Indeed, the paper is most interesting not for the ethical theory it defends but for its general openness to the possibility of our ethical claims lacking objective truth conditions at all. James will turn out to have a very demanding account of what it would take to construct something like objective ethical norms out (...) of more naturalistically respectable material such as our evaluative practices, but in doing so, he also faces up to the possibility that this objectivity is something we may fail to achieve. This comparatively pessimistic prospect in turn explains his surprising pivot toward the divine at the end of the “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” (MPML) James’s appeal to the divine is characteristically idiosyncratic, however, and this paper will attempt to explain how it fits in with the more generally naturalistic framework that dominates the rest of the paper. (shrink)

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was a system philosopher in the grand tradition of classical German idealism. Broadly an adherent of Kant’s transcendental idealism, he is now most noted for his belief that Kant’s thing in itself can best be described as ‘will’, something he argued in his 1819 work The World as Will and Representation (WWRI 124/H 2:119). Schopenhauer’s term ‘will’ does not refer primarily to human willing, that is, conscious striving towards a goal. Following Kant he argues that willing remains (...) conditioned by the forms of representation and therefore cannot be identified with the thing-in-itself. To reach the thing-in-itself, all forms of representation must be removed to arrive at a conception of will as striving without a goal. This conception is at the root of Schopenhauer’s pessimism: willing is experienced by conscious beings as suffering; and the world, including each of us, is in-itself endless willing without the possibility of satisfaction. Only two things hold out the prospect of any relief: the disinterested contemplation of works of art provides temporary respite from the striving will for the many; and a very few saintly beings may be able to still or quiet the will completely and achieve a state that Schopenhauer identifies as nirvana. These concerns—with suffering, meaning, asceticism and renunciation—are already problems in moral philosophy in a wide sense. But Schopenhauer also has a moral philosophy in the ‘narrower’ sense (WWRII 589/H 3:676; Cartwright 1999) that addresses questions such as freedom of the will, moral responsibility, the proper criterion for right action, moral motivation, and the virtues and vices. Indeed Schopenhauer makes a distinctive and quite contemporary contribution to virtue theory, advocating compassion (Mitleid) as the source of all human virtues. (shrink)

One important aspect of Nussbaum´s thesis on the moral value of literature concerns the power of literature to enhance our ability to empathise with other minds. This aspect will be the focus of the current article. My aim is to reflect upon this question regarding the moral value of our empathy for fictional characters. The article is structured in two main parts. I will first examine the concept of “empathy” and distinguish between empathy for human beings and empathy (...) for fictional characters. I will call the latter “literary empathy”. In the second part of the paper I will examine the arguments for and against the double thesis that reading literature enhances our ability to feel empathy, and that feeling empathy prompts altruistic behaviour. (shrink)

This chapter examines Kant's moral philosophy, which is developed principally in three major works: the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, the Critique of Practical Reason, and The Metaphysics of Morals. It begins with an overview of Kant's foundational theory, and then turns, more briefly, to his normative theory.

Summary, page 467: "This book is concerned with the influence of Hume’s metaphysics and moral philosophy in 18th-century Europe and it is divided into two main parts. The first part is focused on the exposition of Hume’s metaphysics and moral philosophy in their historical context, because this topic is still mostly unknown in Croatia. The second part deals with the influence of Hume’s metaphysics and moral philosophy on selected European thinkers of the Age of (...) Enlightenment until the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789.". (shrink)

I try to show that Richard Rorty, although is not a moral philosopher like Kant, nerveless, has moral philosophy that must be taken seriously. Rorty was not engaged with moral philosophy in the systematic manner common among leading modern and contemporary moral philosophers. This paper has two parts: first part, in brief, is concerned with principles of his philosophy such as anti-essentialism, Darwinism, Freudism, and historicism. Second part which be long and detailed, considers (...) many moral themes in Rorty's thought such as critique of Kantian morality, solidarity, moral progress, cruelty and concept of other, etc. Subsequently, I will try to answer the research question of the article namely, has Rorty a moral philosophy? (shrink)

In this paper I reconstruct the birth, blossoming and decline of an eighteenth century program, namely “Moral Newtonianism”. I reconstruct the interaction, or co-existence, of different levels: positive theories, methodology, worldviews and trace the presence of scattered items of the various levels in the work of Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Dugald Stewart. I highlight how Mirowski’s reconstruction of the interaction between physics and economics may be extended to the eighteenth century in an interesting way once the outdated reconstruction (...) of Adam Smith that has been adopted by Mirowski is updated. I show how general methodological ideas, such as the distinction between ultimate causes or essences and intermediate principles, that originated in a context where the issue was the interaction between natural science and theology, proved useful when transferred to social theory in encouraging a kind of “experimental” approach to social phenomena. I discuss finally the genesis of frozen metaphors such as equilibrium, circulation, and value, arguing that Canguilhem’s lesson – namely that scientific change is produced not only by similarity but also by opposition – may be applied also to the history of economic thought. I take as an example Adam Smith’s ‘discovery’ of social mechanisms vis-à-vis his sceptical mistrust of neo-Stoic and Platonic views of a world-order. (shrink)

I have therefore decided to venture out of the philosophical armchair in order to examine the empirical evidence, as gathered by psychologists aiming to prove or disprove motivational conjectures like mine. By and large, this evidence is indirect in relation to my account of agency, since it is drawn from cases in which the relevant motive has been forced into the open by the manipulations of an experimenter. The resulting evidence doesn’t tend to show the mechanism of agency humming along (...) in accordance with my specifications; it tends to show the knocks and shudders that such a mechanism emits when put under stress. But we often learn about the normal workings of things by subjecting them to abnormal conditions; and viewed in this light, various programs of psychological research offer indirect support to my account of agency. I’ll begin by reviewing the relevant research, leaving its relevance to my account of agency for the final section of the paper. (shrink)

Neuroscientific claims have a significant impact on traditional philosophy. This essay, focusing on the field of moral neuroscience, discusses how and why philosophy can contribute to neuroscientific progress. First, viewing the interactions between moral neuroscience and moral philosophy, it becomes clear that moral philosophy can and does contribute to moral neuroscience in two ways: as explanandum and as explanans. Next, it is shown that moral philosophy is well suited to (...) contribute to moral neuroscience in both of these two ways in the context of the problem of ecological validity. Philosophy can play the role of an agent for ecological validity, since traditional philosophy shapes and reflects part of our social reality. Finally, based on these arguments, I tentatively sketch how a Kantian account of moral incentive can play this role. (shrink)

In this essay I explore the potential contribution of Peirce's theory of scientific inquiry to moral philosophy. After a brief introduction, I outline Peirce's theory of inquiry. Next, I address why Peirce believed that this theory of inquiry is inapplicable to what he called "matters of vital importance," the latter including genuine moral problems. This leaves us in the end with two options: We can try to develop an alternative way of addressing moral problems or we (...) can seek to reconcile moral problems with scientific inquiry as described by Peirce. Though Peirce seems to argue for the former, I argue for the latter. (shrink)

Moral philosophers of late have been examining the implications of experimental social psychology for ethics. The focus of attention has been on situationism—the thesis that we routinely underestimate the extent to which minor situational variables influence morally significant behavior. Situationism has been seen as a threat to prevailing lay and philosophical theories of character, personhood, and agency. In this paper, I outline the situationist literature and critique one of its upshots: the admonition to carefully select one’s situational contexts. Besides (...) being limited in application, this strategy accentuates an untenable person/situation dichotomy. The deeper lesson of situationism lies in highlighting the interconnectedness of all social behavior—how we are inextricably involved in the actions of others, and how minor tweaks in our own behavior can lead to major payoffs in our moral lives. Situationism is better seen as an opportunity for moral progress than a threat to individual autonomy. (shrink)

The present essay discusses the relationship between moral philosophy, psychology and education based on virtue ethics, contemporary neuroscience, and how neuroscientific methods can contribute to studies of moral virtue and character. First, the present essay considers whether the mechanism of moral motivation and developmental model of virtue and character are well supported by neuroscientific evidence. Particularly, it examines whether the evidence provided by neuroscientific studies can support the core argument of virtue ethics, that is, motivational externalism. (...) Second, it discusses how experimental methods of neuroscience can be applied to studies in human morality. Particularly, the present essay examines how functional and structural neuroimaging methods can contribute to the development of the fields by reviewing the findings of recent social and developmental neuroimaging experiments. Meanwhile, the present essay also considers some limitations embedded in such discussions regarding the relationship between the fields and suggests directions for future studies to address these limitations. (shrink)

Introduction to a special issue of the journal Ethical Perspectives (2015, 22/1) on Wittgenstein and moral philosophy.

I argue that it is possible and useful for moral philosophy to provide surveyable representations of moral vocabulary. I proceed in four steps. First, I present two dominant interpretations of the concept “surveyable representation”. Second, I use these interpretations as a background against which I present my own interpretation. Third, I use my interpretation to support the claim that Wittgenstein’s “Lecture on Ethics” counts as an example of a surveyable representation. I conclude that, since the lecture qualifies (...) as a surveyable representation, it is possible to provide surveyable representations of moral vocabulary. Fourth, I argue that it is useful for contemporary moral philosophy to provide surveyable representations, because it may help to dissolve problems in current debates. I provide an example of such a debate, namely, the debate between cognitivists and non-cognivitists. (shrink)

I argue that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as (...) a holistic procedure for assessing the salience of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases, but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. (shrink)

Guest Editor's Introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Scottish Philosophy exploring 'New Perspectives on Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy'. The purpose of the special issue is to explore aspects of Hutcheson’s moral philosophy that have not received a great deal of attention in the past and to thereby illustrate that his contributions to the history of ethics are far richer than the current secondary literature suggests.

An extensive commentary on moral philosophy that is a renunciation of my previous two essays. This essay promotes the idea that the answer to an objective morality lies in examining moral problems through an epistemic lens.

Reeves and Sinnicks present Theodor Adorno as a philosopher with a sombre message to business ethics. Capitalist markets distort our needs and work in business organisations stultifies our moral capacities. Thus, the discipline’s self-understanding must be revised, and supplemented with reflections on what would be good work: free creative activity. After raising some questions about their interpretation of Adorno’s writings on human needs, I argue that the paper does not contain all the necessary resources to support its ferociously critical (...) claims. Once such resources are made available, however, the appeal to a notion of good work is no longer viable. (shrink)

Daniel R. DeNicola’s Moral Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction begins (pg. ix) with an anonymous reviewer’s quote, paraphrased here: ‘The author of an introductory ethics textbook has an impossible task, creating a work both accessible to undergraduates and rigorous enough for philosophers.’ DeNicola can of course be forgiven for not achieving this impossible task. Still, some attempts are better than others. After surveying the text content, I explain why I discourage instructors from using this textbook in introductory ethics courses.

Several authors claim that, according to Wittgenstein, ethics has no particular subject matter and that, consequently, there is and can be no such thing as meta-ethics. These authors argue that, for Wittgenstein, a sentence’s belonging to ethics is a classification by use rather than by subject matter and that ethics is a pervasive dimension of life rather than a distinguishable region or strand of it. In this article, I will critically examine the reasons and arguments given for these claims. In (...) my view, a Wittgensteinian perspective does not exclude the possibilities of doing meta-ethics and of there being a particular subject matter of moral philosophy. These alleged impossibilities are not the distinguishing marks of Wittgensteinian moral philosophy. What distinguishes Wittgensteinian moral philosophy from traditional moral philosophy is, rather, its emphasis on alternative ways of thinking about the subject matter of moral philosophy. (shrink)

It has previously been argued that Schopenhauer is a distinctive type of virtue ethicist (Hassan, 2019). The Aristotelian version of virtue ethics has traditionally been accused of being fundamentally egoistic insofar as the possession of virtues is beneficial to the possessor, and serve as the ultimate justification for obtaining them. Indeed, Schopenhauer himself makes a version of this complaint. In this chapter, I investigate whether Schopenhauer’s moral framework nevertheless suffers from this same objection of egoism in light of how (...) he conceives of the relationship between morality and ascetic 'salvation'. Drawing upon his published works and letters, I argue that Schopenhauer has the resources to avoid the objection. Because of his idiosyncratic metaphysics, I argue that Schopenhauer can also avoid the problem of self-effacement which may result from the way in which he avoids the egoism objection. The discussion thus intends to establish further nuance to Schopenhauer’s conception of virtue and its value. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that the principle of benevolence occupies a unique place in moral theory where duty and emotion both have equal importance, and moral philosophers generally are divided into two camps regarding the role of emotion in morality. Kant clarifies his position while introducing the deontic notion of benevolence. He only regards the moral value in which the duty of benevolence has been performed with ‘good will’. Some defenders of Kant’s ethics are Herman, McMurray, (...) Meyers, and Tannenbaum who argue that acting purely based on duty is far more superior to acting from emotions. On the other hand, several contemporary theorists such as Bernard Williams, Blum, Oakley, Stocker, Stohr, Foot, Korsgaard, Hursthouse, and Sherman refute Kant’s views towards emotion in the domain of morality. Following this Kantian and Non-Kantian debate, this article aims to explore the role of emotion and rationality in the moral context of benevolence. (shrink)

Dieser Artikel stellt Cora Diamonds Begriff des Mitgeschöpfs dar und untersucht dessen Relevanz für tierethische und tierpolitische Diskurse. Die traditionelle Tierethik hat eine rationalistische, naturalistische und reduktionistische Tendenz. Diamonds Moralphilosophie stellt dem einen praxissensitiven Ansatz gegenüber, der Emotionen und die moralische Imagination umfasst, wobei Diamond die Bedeutung des Menschseins betont. Letztere entspringt zwar einem epistemischen Anthropozentrismus, jedoch folgt aus diesem keine Mensch-Tier-Hierarchie: Diamond plädiert dafür, andere Tiere als Mitgeschöpfe, als Gefährten auf sterblichen Pfaden, zu begreifen. Dabei zeigt Diamond an ihrer (...) Interpretation von J.M. Coetzees The Lives of Animals, wie Konzepte von anderen Tieren auf das eigene Selbstverständnis rückwirken. Abschließend erörtert der Artikel den Vorwurf des Quietismus und die Schwierigkeit der politischen Umsetzbarkeit in Diamonds Philosophie. -/- [This article outlines Cora Diamond’s concept of the fellow creature and examines its relevance for animal ethics and animal politics. Diamond’s moral philosophy contrasts the rationalistic, naturalistic, and reductionistic tendency of traditional animal ethics with a practice-oriented approach that encompasses emotions and the moral imagination. Diamond emphasizes the importance of being human, which emanates from an epistemic anthropocentrism, but from which no human-animal hierarchy follows: She pleads for recognizing other animals as fellow creatures, as companions on mortal paths. In her interpretation of J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals, Diamond shows how conceptualizing other animals influences one’s own self-understanding. Finally, the article discusses the reproach of quietism and the difficulty of political feasibility in Diamond’s philosophy.]. (shrink)

Book review of "The Evil Within: Why we need Moral Philosophy", by Diane Jeske.

Classical presentations of the Buddhist path prescribe the cultivation of various good qualities that are necessary for spiritual progress, from mindfulness and loving-kindness to faith and wisdom. Examining the way in which such qualities are described and classified in early Buddhism—with special reference to their treatment in the Visuddhimagga by the fifth-century Buddhist thinker Buddhaghosa—the present article employs a comparative method in order to identify the Buddhist catalog of virtues. The first part sketches the characteristics of virtue as analyzed by (...) neo-Aristotelian theories. Relying on these accounts, the second part considers three lists from early Buddhism as possible catalogs of virtue: the components of ethical conduct, the 37 factors that contribute to awakening, and the wholesome or beautiful mental factors. I then raise the question of why the Buddhist tradition developed several classifications of virtue, whereas the Western tradition of virtue ethics used a single category. Appealing to the connection between the virtues and living well in the eudaimonistic version of virtue ethics, I propose that one of the reasons why Buddhism developed multiple lists of virtues is its pluralistic acceptance of different modalities of living well and associated practices, in MacIntyre’s sense of the term. These modalities and practices are not equal, but are ordered hierarchically. Accordingly, I conclude that Buddhist ethics ought to be seen as a pluralist-gradualist system rather than a universalist theory. (shrink)

In this article, I attempt to bridge the gap between partiality and impartiality in moral philosophy from an oft-neglected African perspective. I draw a solution for this moral-theoretical impasse between partialists and impartialists from Kwasi Wiredu's, one of the most influential African philosophers, distinction between an ethic and ethics. I show how an ethic accommodates partiality and ethics impartiality. Wiredu's insight is that partialism is not concerned with strict moral issues. -/- .

The contrast between Kant’s moral philosophy and Feder’s is not less crucial than the controversy caused by the Göttingen review of the first Critique. One of main targets of Kant’s moral philosophy was Feder’s view, which can be regarded as Kant's main competitor in the contemporary debate. I thus argue that the background provided by the conflict with Feder shows significant distinctive traits of Kant's view, with regard to three fundamental issues. First, I examine how the (...) project of a pure moral philosophy opposes Feder’s empirical investigation into the will, which is in fact one of the targets of Kant's criticism against universal practical philosophy. Second, a central element of Kant’s anti-eudaemonism, the contrast between happiness and self-contentment, is a rejection of the strongly moralized view of happiness that underlies Feder’s eudaemonism. Finally, I examine Tittel's objection that Kant had provided "only a new formula" of morality and Kant's response, which display a fundamental contrast between Kant’s understanding of the aims of moral theory with Feder’s common-sense conception. (shrink)

H. L. A. Hart’s (1907-1992) influence on contemporary philosophy is not restricted to the philosophy of law. As the book’s sub-title suggests and the table of contents confirm, he wrote widely on matters social, political and moral, not just legal. Probably best known for The Concept of Law (1961), Hart also authored a collection of essays on Jeremy Bentham (Essays on Bentham,1982), two books on the morality of criminal law based on his exchange with Lord Patrick Devlin (...) (Law, Liberty and Morality, 1963) and The Morality of the Criminal Law, 1965), one on punishment (Punishment and Responsibility, 1968), a treatise as well as a collection of essays on jurisprudential theory (Definition and Theory in Jurisprudence, 1953, and Essays in Jurisprudence and Philosophy, 1983), and finally a volume on legal causation, co-authored with Tony Honoré (Causation in the Law, 1959). The book under review here, on Hart’s legacy, is divided into six sections: the first is devoted to Hart’s general jurisprudential theory; the second to his writings on criminal law; the third to legal causation; the fourth to concerns of justice; the fifth to legal, political and moral rights; and the sixth and final section to matters of toleration and liberalism. (shrink)

The chapter shows how Kant’s ethical thought as reflected in the lectures, responds to Baumgarten’s works on moral philosophy. I argue that Kant chose Baumgarten’s textbooks for his classes for genuinely philosophical reasons. The thorough discussion of Baumgarten’s views provided Kant with important clues for developing an original position, even if mostly in opposition to Baumgarten. I illustrate this complex role of Baumgarten with a few significant examples, that also highlight some original aspects of Baumgarten’s position in comparison (...) to Wolff’s: (1) Kant follows Baumgarten’s in focusing on obligation as the crucial issue in moral philosophy, but Kant regards Baumgarten’s account as not satisfying. (2) Baumgarten’s sharply theistic foundation of morality is rejected by Kant. (3) Kant rejects also several significant aspects of Baumgarten’s division of ethical duties, thereby revealing profound differences in their conceptions of morality. (shrink)

The well-known paradox between Marxism and morality is that on the one hand, Marx claims that morality is a form of ideology that should be abandoned, while on the other hand, Marx makes quite a few moral judgments in his writings. It is in the research after Marx’s death that the paradox is found, explored and solved. This paper surveys the history of interpreting Marx from the aspect of moral philosophy by dividing it into three sequential phases. (...) Then it presents the research on Marx in each phase, points out conflicting questions within the different periods and puts forward the solution in the end. This paper points out that a philosophical viewpoint based on Marx’s theory of historical materialism is the key to solving the paradox between Marxism and morality. (shrink)

The title question arises because the philosophy seems the same as asking, “What if everyone did that?” In this paper, I give a partial response to the question. In an appendix, I consider the question of why should we tell you the answer?

This is a translation of "Minor Tweaks, Major Payoffs" (2010) prepared by 黃玉娥 for the Journal of Chinese Philosophy and Culture for a special issue edited by Brian Bruya on cognitive science and early Chinese philosophy.

Vicarious responsibility is a notoriously puzzling notion in normative reasoning. In this article we will explore two fundamental issues, which we will call the “explication problem” and the “justification problem”. The former issue concerns how vicarious responsibility can plausibly be defined in terms of other normative concepts. The latter issue concerns how ascriptions of vicarious responsibility can be justified. We will address these two problems by combining ideas taken from legal theory and moral philosophy. Our analysis will emphasise (...) the importance of the voluntary involvement of the normative parties considered liable in a relation with other normative parties who causally contributed to a prohibited state-of-affairs. (shrink)

The present article aims to analyze systematically the formularization of Kant on the dignity of the human person, in order to offer a interpretative direction to the jurists at the moment of the application of this principle, which today appears as one of the beddings of the Democratic State of Law(art. 1o, III, of the Federal Constitution of 1988). To carry through such task, the work is divided in two parts: the first one studies the conceptual elements of the (...) class='Hi'>moral philosophy of Kant, having as base the book Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. The second one investigates the main aspects of the principle of the dignity of the human person - its origin, its meaning and its limits - according to the thought of this philosopher. In this perspective, the kantian's categorical imperative prescribes that the rational being never must be treated merely as a mean, but always as end in itself. (shrink)

The dissertation traces the development of what I call “the problem of partiality” through the work of certain key figures in the British Moralist tradition: John Locke, Catharine Trotter Cockburn, Anthony Ashley Cooper (the Third Earl of Shaftesbury), Francis Hutcheson, John Gay, David Hume, Joseph Butler, and Adam Smith. On the one hand, we are committed to impartiality as a constitutive norm of moral judgment and conduct. On the other hand, we are committed to the idea that it is (...) permissible, or even obligatory, to expend disproportionate resources promoting the good of our loved ones over the good of strangers. However, these two commitments conflict with one another. This problem challenges us to provide an account of the scope and limits of reasonable partiality that does justice to both commitments. I argue that confronting this tension is a central project of early modern ethics. I offer a rereading of the British Moralist tradition, centered on debates about partiality, and thereby shift discussion of the tradition away from concerns about meta-ethics and moral epistemology, to issues of practical ethics. The topic of partiality remains central in contemporary ethics, as is evident in ongoing debates about the place of empathy in moral judgment, and the role of love in shaping our moral commitments. Though the aim of the dissertation is not to settle questions about the scope and limits of reasonable partiality, the focus here remains fixed on how the concept of partiality was problematized in our ethical thought, and how it informs our discussions in normative ethics and moral psychology. Alongside building a bridge between early modern scholarship and recent work in ethics, the dissertation casts light on two understudied figures in the British Moralist tradition – Cockburn and Gay – who contributed greatly to debates about partiality. By examining their contributions, I reconsider their place in the history of modern ethics and therefore provide a more contextualized account of philosophical thought in the period. (shrink)