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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Ethics & moral philosophy
This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy
Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive
selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to
reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional
imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor
pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues
beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we
have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting,
preserving and promoting the world's literature.
The world we live in is unjust. Preventable deprivation and
suffering shape the lives of many people, while others enjoy
advantages and privileges aplenty. Cosmopolitan responsibility
addresses the moral responsibilities of privileged individuals to
take action in the face of global structural injustice. Individuals
are called upon to complement institutional efforts to respond to
global challenges, such as climate change, unfair global trade, or
world poverty. Committed to an ideal of relational equality among
all human beings, the book discusses the impact of individual
action, the challenge of special obligations, and the possibility
of moral overdemandingness in order to lay the ground for an
action-guiding ethos of cosmopolitan responsibility. This
thought-provoking book will be of interest to any reflective reader
concerned about justice and responsibilities in a globalised world.
Jan-Christoph Heilinger is a moral and political philosopher. He
teaches at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat, Munich, Germany, and at
Ecole normale superieure, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
This book explores how the ethical treatment and status of
other-than-human animals influence pedagogy, teaching, and learning
in general, aiming to fill what has been a gap in the philosophy of
education. It examines key trends in this regard, including
environmental education, humane education, posthumanist education,
ecopedagogy, critical animal pedagogy, critical animal studies,
animal standpoint theory, and vegan education. The book discusses
animal minds and interests, and how animals have been accommodated
in moral theory. Further, it investigates whether anti-racist and
anti-sexist education logically entail anti-speciesist education
and closes by proposing animal rights education as a viable and
sound alternative, a pedagogy that does justice not only to animals
in general and as species, but also to individual animals. If
animal rights education is philosophically and educationally
meaningful, then it can arguably offer a powerful pedagogical tool,
and facilitate lasting pro-animal changes.
In this book, the author argues that no current philosophical
theory of evidence in clinical medical science is adequate. None
can accurately explain the way evidence is gathered and used to
confirm hypotheses. To correct this, he proposes a new approach
called the weight of evidence account. This innovative method
supplies a satisfactory explanation and rationale for the
"hierarchical pyramid" of evidence-based medicine, with randomized
clinical trials and their derivatives, meta-analyses, and
systematic reviews of randomized clinical trials at the top and
case reports, case series, expert opinion, and the like at the
bottom. The author illustrates the development of various "levels"
of evidence by considering the evolution of less invasive surgical
treatments for early breast cancer. He shows that the weight of
evidence account explains the notion of levels of evidence and
other efforts to rank them. In addition, he presents a defense of
randomization as a method to maximize accuracy in the conduct of
clinical trials. The title also considers ethical issues
surrounding experimentation with medical therapies in human
subjects. It illustrates and discusses these issues in studies of
respiratory therapies in neonates and treatment for certain cancers
in adults. The author shows that in many cases sufficient evidence
can be accrued to warrant generally accepted new therapies without
the need for evidence derived from randomized clinical trials.
Normative reasons are reasons to do and believe things.
Intellectual inquiry seems to presuppose their existence, for we
cannot justifiably conclude that we exist; that there is an
external world; and that there are better and worse ways of
investigating it and behaving in it, unless there are reasons to do
and believe such things. But just what in the world are normative
reasons? In this book a case is made for believing normative
reasons are favouring relations that have a single, external
source, filling this significant gap in the literature in an area
within contemporary philosophy that has quickly grown in
prominence. Providing a divine command metanormative analysis of
normative reasons on entirely non-religious grounds, its arguments
will be relevant to both secular and non-secular audiences alike
and will address key issues in meta-ethics, evolutionary theory -
especially evolutionary debunking threats to moral reasons and the
normative more generally - and epistemology.
This is an original investigation of the structure of human
morality, that aims to identify the place and significance of moral
deeds. "Kantian Deeds" revokes and renews the tradition of Kant's
moral philosophy. Through a novel reading of contemporary
approaches to Kant, Henrik Bjerre draws a new map of the human
capacity for morality. Morality consists of two different abilities
that are rarely appreciated at the same time. Human beings are
brought up and initiated into a moral culture, which gives them the
cognitive mapping necessary to act morally and responsibly. They
also, however, acquire an ability to reach beyond that which is
considered moral and thus develop an ability to reinterpret or
break 'normal' morality. By drawing on two very different resources
in contemporary philosophy - more conservative trends in analytic
philosophy and more radical sources in recent works of
psychoanalytically informed philosophy - and claiming that they
must be read together, "Kantian Deeds" provides a new understanding
of what is termed 'the structure of moral revolutions'.
Essentially, deeds are revolutionary changes of moral character
that can only be performed by such creatures that have acquired
one. "Continuum Studies in Philosophy" presents cutting-edge
scholarship in all the major areas of research and study. The
wholly original arguments, perspectives and research findings in
titles in this series make it an important and stimulating resource
for students and academics from a range of disciplines across the
humanities and social sciences.
This is a philosophical exploration of the moral issues raised by
the use of private military contractors in war. The presence of
contractors on today's battlefields is without question one of the
most significant developments in modern warfare. While many
contractors perform relatively benign tasks on behalf of the
military, controversy rages around those contractors who offer
services that involve the use of armed force. The rise of the
private military industry raises some difficult issues. For
example, Jeremy Scahill, one of the industry's most vociferous
critics, questions whether the outsourcing of military force is not
'a subversion of the very existence of the nation-state and of
principles of sovereignty'. These questions are at essence
philosophical challenges to the existence of the private military
industry. In "Just Warriors, Inc.", philosopher and ethicist
Deane-Peter Baker argues that, contrary to popular assumptions, a
compelling moral and philosophical case can be made in favour of
the ongoing utilization of the services that these 'private
warriors' offer. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in
moving beyond the hyperbole and exploring in depth the real
questions that should be asked about the privatisation of military
force. "Think Now" is a new series of books which examines central
contemporary social and political issues from a philosophical
perspective. These books aim to be accessible, rather than overly
technical, bringing philosophical rigour to modern questions which
matter the most to us. Provocative yet engaging, the authors take a
stand on political and cultural themes of interest to any
intelligent reader.
Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC - AD 65), fully Lucius Annaeus Seneca
and also known simply as Seneca, was a Roman Stoic philosopher,
statesman, dramatist, and-in one work-humorist of the Silver Age of
Latin literature. As a tragedian, he is best-known for his Medea
and Thyestes.
A new account of Aristotle's Ethics, this book argues for the
central importance of the concept of techne or craft in Aristotle's
moral theory. Exploring the importance of techne in the Platonic
and pre-Platonic intellectual context in which Aristotle was
writing, Tom Angier here shows that this concept has an important
role in Aristotle's Ethics that has rarely been studied in
Anglo-American scholarship. Through close-analysis of the primary
texts, this book uses the focus on techne to systematically
critique and renew Aristotelian moral philosophy. Techne in
Aristotle's Ethics provides a novel and challenging approach to one
of the Ancient World's most enduring intellectual legacies.
This book provides a timely, compelling, multidisciplinary critique
of the largely tacit set of assumptions funding Modernity in the
West. A partnership between Michael Polanyi and Charles Taylor's
thought promises to cast the errors of the past in a new light, to
graciously show how these errors can be amended, and to provide a
specific cartography of how we can responsibly and meaningfully
explore new possibilities for ethics, political society, and
religion in a post-modern modernity.
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