"The Ethical" is a collection of readings on ethics and the nature of morality by some of the most important contemporary philosophers in the continental tradition.

Recent attention to ethics in continental thought - often taken to be antithetical to Anglo-American moral philosophy - demonstrates how much these two traditions have in common. The essays in this volume indicate the rich history and contemporary vitality of ethics in continental philosophy. They reflect a variety of currents in continental thought, including phenomenology, genealogy, deconstruction, and discourse ethics. Topics addressed include the status of the moral agent and its constitution or formation, the priority to be assigned to the other in relation to the self, the critique of rigid models of moral reasoning, and the limits of the moral.This is the first anthology of its kind devoted to emphasizing continental ethical philosophy as an important area of study in its own right.

Kristi A. Olson asks: What is a fair income distribution? She rejects equal income shares: equal pay undercompensates workers in dangerous and onerous jobs. The envy test, which takes both income and work into account, fares better. Yet, a distribution in which no one prefers someone else's circumstances to her own-as the envy test requires-is unlikely to exist, and even when it does exist, the normative connection between envy and fairness has not been established. After critiquing existing answers, Olson invokes the idea of mutual justifiability: when someone claims that her situation should be improved at someone else's expense, she must be able to give a reason that cannot be reasonably rejected by a free and equal individual who regards everyone else as the same. To give the answer bite, Olson distinguishes two types of envy. Reasons based on personal envy can be reasonably rejected; reasons based on impersonal envy cannot. Olson then tests the solidarity solution against the theories of Ronald Dworkin, Philippe Van Parijs, and Marc Fleurbaey and applies it directly to the concrete issues of the gender wage gap and taxation. By providing a new approach to problems of fair resource allocation, The Solidarity Solution establishes philosophical discussion as critical to today's fight to end economic injustice.

Particularism and the Space of Moral Reasons critically assesses the startling idea that our moral reasoning does not need to use moral principles. If we don't have principles, how do we work out what to do? This book examines 'moral particularism', a controversial idea at the forefront of contemporary moral theory.

In this collection of essays, leading environmentalists and philosophers explore the relationship between environmental ethics and policy, both in theory and practice. The first section of the book focuses on four approaches to change in ethical theory: ecological science, feminist metaphysics, Chinese philosophy, and holistic postmodern technology. In subsequent sections the contributors emphasize the need for nontraditional solutions and attempt to expand awareness of the most pressing practical problems. Among the topics discussed are the possibilities of real international cooperation, the inequitable but economically intractable issue of global gasses, the political and ethical challenges of city planning, and the growing evidence of fundamental inappropriateness in treating land as legal private property. This volume is based on essays presented in 1992 at the Second International Conference on Ethics and Environmental Policy. The conference was held in response to the increasing need for a new ethics that would counter the traditional human-centered, dominantly individualistic approach of the industrial world toward the environment.

Distinguished international scholars discuss the connection between emotion and value in Kant's philosophy, from his ethics to his philosophy of mind, aesthetics, religion and politics. Through a mixture of interpretation and critical discussion, this collection demonstrates the continuing relevance of Kant's work to philosophical debates.

What are the grounds for and limits to obedience to the state?

Dorota Mokrosinska presents a fresh analysis of the most influential theories of political obligation and develops a novel approach to this foundational problem of political philosophy, an intriguing combination of the elements of natural duty and associative theories. The theory of political obligation developed in the book extends the scope of the contemporary debate on political obligation by arguing that political obligation can be binding even under the jurisdiction of unjust states. The arguments pursued in the book are illustrated with the results of sociological research concerning the reasons that governed people's attitudes to the authoritarian communist regimes in East Europe viz. communist Poland. This book provides the first detailed argument of how a theory of political obligation can apply to subjects of an unjust state.

It is well over a decade since John Fischer and Mark Ravizza - and before them, Jay Wallace and Daniel Dennett - defended responsibility from the threat of determinism. But defending responsibility from determinism is a potentially endless and largely negative enterprise; it can go on for as long as dissenting voices remain, and although such work strengthens the theoretical foundations of these theories, it won't necessarily build anything on top of those foundations, nor will it move these theories into new territory or explain how to apply them to practical contexts.

To this end, the papers in this volume address these more positive challenges by exploring how compatibilist responsibility theory can be extended and/or applied in a range of practical contexts.For instance, how is the narrow philosophical concept of responsibility that was defended from the threat of determinism related to the plural notions of responsibility present in everyday discourse, and how might this more fine-grained understanding of responsibility open up new vistas and challenges for compatibilist theory? What light might compatibilism shed, and what light might be shed upon it, by political debates about access to public welfare in the context of responsibility for one's own health, and by legal debates about the impact of self-intoxication on responsibility. Does compatibilist theory, which was originally designed to cater for analysis of individual actions, scale to scenarios that involve group action and collective responsibility - e.g. for harms due to human-induced climate change?

This book's chapters deal with a range of theoretical problems discussed in classic compatibilist literature - e.g. the relationship between responsibility and capacity, the role of historical tracing in discounting the exculpatory value of incapacities, and the justifiability of retributive punishment. But instead of motivating their discussions by focusing on the alleged threat that determinism poses to responsibility, these chapters' authors have animated their discussions by tackling important practical problems which crop up in contemporary debates about responsibility.

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This work begins from our Socratic ignorance of empathy. It applies four philosophical methods -- phenomenology, self psychology, language analysis, and interpretive suspicion (hermeneutics) to generating a clearing for empathy as authentic being with one another in community. In philosophical empathy, the other individual humanizes the one who, in turn, give humanity back to the other in everyday empathy. Examples of empathy in story telling, literature, self psychology, and neurology explore the scope of empathy as the foundation for the community of fellow travelers in finitude. The inquiry is initially guided by Martin Heidegger's call for a 'hermeneutic of empathy.' It is informed by Edmund Husserl's posthumous writings on empathy, and it integrates the contribution of the Anglo-American tradition of John Searle. The result is an exposure of the deep structure of empathy as a fundamentally human capability for creating possibilities of community and human relations.

This book argues that the institutions of law, and the structures of legal thought, are to be understood by reference to a moral ideal. The idea of law is an ideal of freedom, or independence from the power of others. The moral value and justificatory force of law are not contingent upon circumstance, but intrinsic to its character as law. Doctrinal legal arguments are shaped by rival conceptions of the conditions for realisation of the idea of law. In making these claims, the author rejects the viewpoint of much contemporary legal theory, and seeks to move jurisprudence closer to an older tradition of philosophical reflection upon law, exemplified by Hobbes and Kant. Modern analytical jurisprudence has tended to view these older philosophies as confused precisely in so far as they equate an understanding of law's nature with a revelation of its moral basis. According to most contemporary legal theorists, the understanding and analysis of existing institutions is quite distinct from any enterprise of moral reflection. But the relationship between ideals and practices is much more intimate than this approach would suggest. Some institutions can be properly understood only when they are viewed as imperfect attempts to realise moral or political ideals; and some ideals can be conceived only by reference to their expression in institutions.

Alan Bailey offers a clear and vigorous exposition and defence of the philosophy of Sextus Empiricus, one of the most influential of ancient thinkers, the father of philosophical scepticism. The subsequent sceptical tradition in philosophy has not done justice to Sextus: his views stand up today as remarkably insightful, offering a fruitful way to approach issues of knowledge, understanding, belief, and rationality. Bailey's refreshing presentation of Sextus to a modern philosophical readership rescues scepticism from the sceptics.

This work sets the stage regarding debates about paternalism and health care for years to come. The anthology is organized around four parts: i) The concept of paternalism and theoretical issues regarding the idea of anti-paternalism, ii) strategies for justifying different forms of paternalism, iii) paternalism in psychiatry and psychotherapy, iv) paternalism and public health, and v) paternalism and reproductive medicine. Medical paternalism was arguably one of the main drivers of debates in medical ethics and has led to a wide acknowledgement of the value of patient autonomy. However, more recent developments in health care, such as the increasing significance of public health measures and the commercialization of medical services, have led to new social circumstances and hence to the need to rethink issues regarding paternalism. This work provides an invaluable source for many scholars and practitioners, since it deals in new and original ways with one of the main and oldest issue in health care ethics.

John MacFarlane debates how we might make sense of the idea that truth is relative, and how we might use this idea to give satisfying accounts of parts of our thought and talk that have resisted traditional methods of analysis. Although there is a substantial philosophical literature on relativism about truth, going back to Plato's Theaetetus, this literature (both pro and con) has tended to focus on refutations of the doctrine, or refutations of these refutations, at the expense of saying clearly what the doctrine is. In contrast, Assessment Sensitivity begins with a clear account of what it is to be a relativist about truth, and uses this view to give satisfying accounts of what we mean when we talk about what is tasty, what we know, what will happen, what might be the case, and what we ought to do. The book seeks to provide a richer framework for the description of linguistic practices than standard truth-conditional semantics affords: one that allows not just standard contextual sensitivity (sensitivity to features of the context in which an expression is used), but assessment sensitivity (sensitivity to features of the context from which a use of an expression is assessed). The Context and Content series is a forum for outstanding original research at the intersection of philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science. The general editor is Francois Recanati (Institut Jean-Nicod, Paris).

Are human beings born with a moral character, or does our character form and change as we experience life? In The Will's Harmonic Motion, author Fadel Sabry sheds light on this age-old question.

An extension of Arthur Schopenhauer's work, philosophy, and discussion, The Will's Harmonic Motion puts forth an extensive discussion of how moral character is obtained and on what basis. It provides an overview of Schopenhauer's treatment of metaphysics and introduces the concept of the will. It also explains the nature of morality and intelligible and empirical characters and investigates movements in nature, especially harmonic motion, and reviews the scientific laws that govern it. The study extends the concepts of moral characters and curves to animals, explains the mysterious qualities of creative power and healing power, explores the topic of pleasure, and addresses the mystery of existence.

This study approaching metaphysical subjects scientifically, seeking to apply rational thinking to all topics considered, including morality, death, and religion. Bringing new ideas to philosophy, Sabry considers these themes and more in his search for the truth about moral character.

This book seeks to clarify the concept of irony and its relation to moral commitment. Frazier provides a discussion of the contrasting accounts of Richard Rorty and Soren Kierkegaard. He argues that, while Rorty's position is much more defensible and thoughtful than his detractors tend to recognize, it turns out to be surprisingly more parochial than Kierkegaard's.

This book provides a detailed discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of the change driven by ICTs. Such a change is often much more profound than an emphasis on information technology and society can capture, for not only does it bring about ethical and policy vacuums that call for a new understanding of ethics, politics and law, but it also "re-ontologizes reality", as propounded by Luciano Floridi's philosophy and ethics of information. The informational turn is transforming our understanding of reality by challenging the conventional ways we have of thinking about our world and our identities in terms of stable and enduring structures and beliefs. The information age we inhabit brings to completion our self-understanding as informational systems that produce, process, and exchange information with other informational systems, in an environment that is itself made up of information. The present volume provides us with a better understanding of the normative nature and role of information, helping us to grasp the sense and extent to which informational resources serve as "constraining affordances" guiding our behaviours. It does so by delineating the background against which we build our beliefs about reality, make decisions, and behave, through our interactions with a multi-agent system that is increasingly dependent on ICTs. The book will be of interest to a vast audience, ranging from information technologists, ethicists, policy makers, social and legal scholars, and all those willing to embrace the following three tenets: we construct our world and ourselves informationally; by constructing our world and ourselves we thereby become aware of our limits; it is precisely these limits that make us become human beings.

An African-American single mother is harassed and threatened with violence until she moves out of an all 'white' neighborhood. A hate crime has occurred and we wonder, who is responsible? Is it just the few people who actively threatened the woman and her children, or does responsibility extend further? This book explores these questions in detail and ultimately finds that responsibility may extend far beyond active perpetrators.
Within philosophy, these kinds of questions are typically discussed in the debate over 'collective' or 'group' responsibility. This book reviews the debate and examines the standard objections to group responsibility. It also evaluates some currently available accounts but finds them unsatisfying in various ways. Ultimately, drawing on work in social psychology, narrative ethics, and feminist philosophy, the author presents a new account which answers the standard objections while also giving practical guidance to individuals who take their group-related responsibilities seriously.

A rare academic study on what John Rawls, Peter Singer, and Derek Parfit acknowledge as the finest book in ethics -- "The Methods of Ethics." With a rather shocking conclusion that "none of us can match Sidgwick," Mariko Nakano-Okuno lucidly analyzes Henry Sidgwick's impacts on contemporary ethics.

Scientists no longer accept the existence of a distinct moral organ as phrenologists once did. A generation of young neurologists is using advanced technological medical equipment to unravel specific brain processes enabling moral cognition. In addition, evolutionary psychologists have formulated hypotheses about the origins and nature of our moral architecture. Little by little, the concept of a 'moral brain' is reinstated.

As the crossover between disciplines focusing on moral cognition was rather limited up to now, this book aims at filling the gap. Which evolutionary biological hypotheses provide a useful framework for starting new neurological research? How can brain imaging be used to corroborate hypotheses concerning the evolutionary background of our species?

In this reader, a broad range of prominent scientists and philosophers shed their expert view on the current accomplishments and future challenges in the field of moral cognition and assess how cooperation between neurology and evolutionary psychology can boost research into the field of the moral brain.

Thomas Carson offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date investigation of moral and conceptual questions about lying and deception. Part I addresses conceptual questions and offers definitions of lying, deception, and related concepts such as withholding information, "keeping someone in the dark," and "half truths." Part II deals with questions in ethical theory. Carson argues that standard debates about lying and deception between act-utilitarians and their critics are inconclusive because they rest on appeals to disputed moral intuitions. He defends a version of the golden rule and a theory of moral reasoning. His theory implies that there is a moral presumption against lying and deception that causes harm - a presumption at least as strong as that endorsed by act-utilitarianism. He uses this theory to justify his claims about the issues he addresses in Part III: deception and withholding information in sales, deception in advertising, bluffing in negotiations, the duties of professionals to inform clients, lying and deception by leaders as a pretext for fighting wars (with special attention to the case of Bush and Cheney), and lying and deception about history (with special attention to the Holocaust), and cases of distorting the historical record by telling half-truths. The book concludes with a qualified defence of the view that honesty is a virtue.

The present collection represents an attempt to bring together several contributions to the ongoing debate pertaining to supervenience of the normative in law and morals and strives to be the first work that addresses the topic comprehensively. It addresses the controversies surrounding the idea of normative supervenience and the philosophical conceptions they generated, deserve a recapitulation, as well as a new impulse for further development. Recently, there has been renewed interest in the concepts of normativity and supervenience. The research on normativity - a term introduced to the philosophical jargon by Edmund Husserl almost one hundred years ago - gained impetus in the 1990s through the works of such philosophers as Robert Audi, Christine Korsgaard, Robert Brandom, Paul Boghossian or Joseph Raz. The problem of the nature and sources of normativity has been investigated not only in morals and in relation to language, but also in other domains, e.g. in law or in the c ontext of the theories of rationality. Supervenience, understood as a special kind of relation between properties and weaker than entailment, has become analytic philosophers' favorite formal tool since 1980s. It features in the theories pertaining to mental properties, but also in aesthetics or the law. In recent years, the 'marriage' of normativity and supervenience has become an object of many philosophical theories as well as heated debates. It seems that the conceptual apparatus of the supervenience theory makes it possible to state precisely some claims pertaining to normativity, as well as illuminate the problems surrounding it.

A compelling argument of how human health is adversely affected by our poor treatment of non-human animals. The author contents that in order to successfully confront the 21st Century's health challenges, we need to broaden the definition of the word 'public' in public health to include non-human animals.

As it was in Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, and Othello, so it is in life. Most forms of private vice and public evil are kindled and sustained by lies. Acts of adultery and other personal betrayals, financial fraud, government corruption--even murder and genocide--generally require an additional moral defect: a willingness to lie.
In Lying, best-selling author and neuroscientist Sam Harris argues that we can radically simplify our lives and improve society by merely telling the truth in situations where others often lie. He focuses on white lies--those lies we tell for the purpose of sparing people discomfort--for these are the lies that most often tempt us. And they tend to be the only lies that good people tell while imagining that they are being good in the process.