First published in 1959, this volume follows on from Dr. A. C. Ewing's earlier work, The Definition of Good. The book does not apologize or undermine Ewing's previous publication but after further consideration on the topic, it explores the issues that were arguably overlooked in the original book. For example, it looks at the possibility of intermediate positions which have been developed since the philosophers Moore and Ross did their main work. Ewing also responds to the criticisms that originated from The Definition of Good and suggests that Secondary Thoughts in Moral Philosophy makes his reading on the topic more balanced.

First published in 1934, this book evaluates the characteristic doctrines of the idealism which dominated philosophy during the last century. It seeks to combine realism, as to epistemology and physical objects, with a greater appreciation of views which emphasize the unity and rationality of the universe. This work is not a history and does not try to compete with any histories of idealism but it instead reaches an independent conclusion on certain philosophical problems by criticising what others have said. The book considers differing arguments in order to determine their validity.

Virtue ethics has emerged as a distinct field within moral theory - whether as an alternative account of right action or as a conception of normativity which departs entirely from the obligatoriness of morality - and has proved itself invaluable to many aspects of contemporary applied ethics. Virtue ethics now flourishes in philosophy, sociology and theology and its applications extend to law, politics and bioethics. "The Handbook of Virtue Ethics" brings together leading international scholars to provide an overview of the field. Each chapter summarizes and assesses the most important work on a particular topic and sets this work in the context of historical developments. Taking a global approach by embracing a variety of major cultural traditions along with the Western, the "Handbook" maps the emergence of virtue ethics and provides a framework for future developments.

This Reader is the first anthology to cover the growing field of moral anthropology and will be an essential resource for students and scholars interested in exploring the important issues involved. Morality and ethics are increasingly invoked in the most diverse domains, from politics to economics, from war to sexuality, from international justice to biological research. To interpret this phenomenon from a critical standpoint, anthropology offers unique perspectives. This volume includes classical as well as recent material and sheds light on continuing debates about relativism and universalism, values and emotions, moral duty and ethical freedom, human rights and humanitarianism, the responsibility of the researcher and the regulation of research. The carefully chosen texts are contextualised with lucid editorial material, including a substantial introduction.

Originally published in 1985, this book establishes that moral discourse is critical, rational and objective and challenges the ideology of value irrationalism behind contemporary liberalism. The book discusses the origins of the fact/value distinction, and calls into question the thesis that logical derivability or strict implication is the only legitimate relationship between propositions. A straightforward philosophical treatment of the subject, in the analytical tradition, it will be especially useful for undergraduate students.

Originally published in 1995, this volume addresses a topical subject: assisted suicide. The book discusses the issues surrounding the morality of suicide and in so doing clarifies the literature in applied ethics. It critiques the complex moral and religious arguments on the topic offered by philosophers and theologians. It establishes a middle position between those who hold that suicide is never morally permissible and those who claim it always is and it determines when second parties ought to aid and when they ought to prevent suicides.

Originally published in 1987 and re-issued in 2020 with a new Preface, this book presents and elaborates interrelated solutions to a number of problems in moral philosophy, from the location of intrinsic value and the nature of a worthwhile life, via the limits of obligation and the nature of justice, to the status of moral utterances. After developing a biocentric account of moral standing, the author locates worthwhile life in the development of the generic capacities of a creature, whether human or nonhuman, and presents an account of relative intrinsic value which later generates a theory of interspecific justice. This value-theory also informs a consequentialist understanding of obligation, of moral rightness and of supererogation. The understanding thus supplied is shown to cope with the problems of integrity, of justice and of the 'Repugnant Conclusion' in population ethics. A cognitivist account of ethical conclusions such as those so far reached is then defended against non-cognitivist and relativist objections and a far-reaching naturalist theory is defended, integrating earlier conclusions with an account of the logic of the fundamental ethical concepts. This wide-ranging volume which maps the whole area of morality is thoroughly argued with reference both to contemporary philosophical developments and to classical theories.

Originally published in 1948, and reprinted in 1955 and updated in 1961, this book is a straightforward account of moral philosophy for students. It discusses comprehensively the contributions made by 20th Century moralists, both in terms of the interpretation of their predecessors and original ethical speculation.

Thinking About Stories is a fun and thought-provoking introduction to philosophical questions about narrative fiction in its many forms, from highbrow literature to pulp fiction to the latest shows on Netflix. Written by philosophers Samuel Lebens and Tatjana von Solodkoff, it engages with fundamental questions about fiction, like: What is it? What does it give us? Does a story need a narrator? And why do sad stories make us cry if we know they aren’t real? The format of the book emulates a lively, verbal exchange: each chapter has only one author while the other appears spontaneously in dialogues in the text along the way, raising questions and voicing criticisms, and inviting responses from their co-author. This unique format allows readers to feel like they are a part of the conversation about the philosophical foundations of some of the fictions in their own lives. Key Features Draws on a wide range of types of narrative fiction, from Harry Potter to Breakfast of Champions to Parks and Recreation. Explores how fiction, despite its detachment from truth, is often best able to teach us important things about the world in which we live. Concludes by asking in the final chapter whether we all might be fictions. Includes bibliographies and suggested reading lists in each chapter

What existential threats does humanity face? And how can we secure our future? 'The Precipice is a powerful book . . . Ord's love for humanity and hope for its future is infectious' Spectator 'Ord's analysis of the science is exemplary . . . Thrillingly written' Sunday Times We live during the most important era of human history. In the twentieth century, we developed the means to destroy ourselves - without developing the moral framework to ensure we won't. This is the Precipice, and how we respond to it will be the most crucial decision of our time. Oxford moral philosopher Toby Ord explores the risks to humanity's future, from the familiar man-made threats of climate change and nuclear war, to the potentially greater, more unfamiliar threats from engineered pandemics and advanced artificial intelligence. With clear and rigorous thinking, Ord calculates the various risk levels, and shows how our own time fits within the larger story of human history. We can say with certainty that the novel coronavirus does not pose such a risk. But could the next pandemic? And what can we do, in our present moment, to face the risks head on? A major work that brings together the disciplines of physics, biology, earth and computer science, history, anthropology, statistics, international relations, political science and moral philosophy, The Precipice is a call for a new understanding of our age: a major reorientation in the way we see the world, our history, and the role we play in it.

This book considers key ethical questions in museum policy and practice, particularly those related to issues of collection and display. What does a collection signify in the twenty-first century museum? How does an engagement with immateriality challenge museums concept of ownership, and how does that immateriality translate into the design of exhibitions and museum space? Are museums still about safeguarding objects, and what does safeguarding mean for diverse individuals and communities today? How does the notion of the museum as a performative space challenge our perceptions of the object?

The scholarship represented in this volume is a testament to the range and significance of critical inquiry in museum ethics. Together, the chapters resist a legalistic interpretation, bound by codes and common practice, to advance an ethics discourse that is richly theorized, constantly changing and contingent on diverse external factors. Contributors take stock of innovative research to articulate a new museum ethics founded on the moral agency of museums, the concept that museums have both the capacity and the responsibility to create social change.

This book is based on a special issue of "Museum Management and Curatorship."

Exam Board: SQA Level: Higher Subject: RMPS First Teaching: August 2018 First Exam: June 2019 The only resource for RMPS at Higher level, by a bestselling author and expert in the field. Completely updated with the latest SQA assessment changes. This book provides comprehensive coverage of the updated Higher in Religious, Moral and Philosophical Studies, but is also ideal for students across Scotland studying key topic areas in Morality and Belief as part of the broad general education and the senior phase of RME. - Written in a lively, accessible and engaging style that reflects real-life situations and moral issues - Highlights the importance of dealing with varieties of belief within religious traditions - Deals with up-to-date contemporary and topical issues in a highly practical manner

What happens when two intelligent and highly informed fictional college students, one strongly pro-choice and the other vigorously pro-life, are asked to put together a presentation on abortion? Their conversations over five days - friendly but lively, charitable but clear - are captured in this book. Through these dialogues, students and other interested readers are introduced to the difficult moral issues of abortion. In Chapter 1, readers learn about Roe v. Wade and other relevant legal cases. Chapter 2 covers basic, philosophical issues such as: What is a person? Are fetuses persons? Is fetal potential morally relevant? How shall we define the moral community? Chapter 3 introduces students to Don Marquis's "Why Abortion is Immoral" and also the metaphysical issues of personal identity and its relevance to abortion. Chapter 4 covers Judith Jarvis Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion", including objections and responses to the argument from bodily autonomy. Finally, Chapter 5 looks at abortion in hard cases, such as in cases of rape, fetal disability, non-viable pregnancies, and sex-selection; the chapter also includes a conversation on fathers and abortion. With a Foreword by Laurie Shrage, topics headings in the margins, and an annotated bibliography, Dialogues on the Ethics of Abortion is an easy-to-use volume and valuable resource for anyone interested in a fair and clear-headed approach to one of the most contentious moral issues of our time.

This book bridges a scholarly divide between empirical and normative theorizing about procedural justice in the context of relations of power between citizens and the state. Empirical research establishes that people's understanding of procedural justice is shaped by relational factors. A central premise of this volume is that this research is significant but needs to be complemented by normative theorizing that draws on relational theories of ethics and justice to explain the moral significance of procedures and make normative sense of people's concerns about relational factors. The chapters in Part 1 provide comprehensive reviews of empirical studies of procedural justice in policing, courts and prisons. Part 2 explores empirical and normative perspectives on procedural justice and legitimacy. Part 3 examines philosophical approaches to procedural justice. Part 4 considers the implications of a relational perspective for the design of procedures in a range of legal contexts. This collection will be of interest to a wide academic readership in philosophy, law, psychology and criminology.

This edited volume addresses the key issues of ethics, war and international relations in the post-9/11 world. There is a lively debate in contemporary international relations concerning the relationship between statist obligations to one's own political community and cosmopolitan duties to distant others. This volume contributes to this debate by investigating aspects of the ethics of national military and security and intelligence policies in the post-9/11 environment. The discursive transformation of national militaries into 'forces for good' became normalized as the Cold War subsided. While the number of humanitarian military interventions and operations rose considerably in the immediate post-Cold War period, the advent of the 'war on terror' raised questions about exactly what we mean by ethical behaviour in terms of military and security policies. This volume interrogates this key question via a focus that is both distinctive and illuminating - on national military ethics; femininities, masculinities and difference; and intelligence ethics. The key objectives are to demonstrate the important linkages between areas of international relations that are all too often treated in isolation from one another, and to investigate the growing tension between cosmopolitan and communitarian conceptions of intelligence and security and the use of armed force. This book will be of much interest to students of security studies, ethics, gender studies, intelligence studies, and international relations in general. Mark Phythian is Professor of Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Leicester. He is the author or editor/co-editor of ten books. Annika Bergman-Rosamond is Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies in Copenhagen.

Loyalty is a highly charged and important issue, often evoking strong feelings and actions. What is loyalty? Is loyalty compatible with impartiality? How do we respond to conflicts of loyalties? In a global era, should we be trying to transcend loyalties to particular political communities?

Drawing on a fascinating array of literary and cinematic examples - The Remains of the Day, No Country for Old Men, The English Patient, The Third Man, and more - Troy Jollimore expertly unravels the phenomenon of loyalty from a philosophical standpoint. He reflects on the idea that loyalty shapes our very identities, and considers both the benefits and the dangers of loyalty: on the one hand, how excessive loyalty can move us to perform immoral, even evil actions; one the other, how loyalty can expand our lives and give us a sense of meaning and belonging.

An introductory textbook, Logic for Justice covers, in full detail, the language and semantics of both propositional logic and first-order logic. It motivates the study of those logical systems by drawing on social and political issues. Basically, Logic for Justice frames propositional logic and first-order logic as two theories of the distinction between good arguments and bad arguments. And the book explains why, for the purposes of social justice and political reform, we need theories of that distinction. In addition, Logic for Justice is extremely lucid, thorough, and clear. It explains, and motivates, many different features of the formalism of propositional logic and first-order logic, always connecting those features back to real-world issues. Key Features Connects the study of logic to real-world social and political issues, drawing in students who might not otherwise be attracted to the subject. Offers extremely clear and thorough presentations of technical material, allowing students to learn directly from the book without having to rely on instructor explanations. Carefully explains the value of arguing well throughout one’s life, with several discussions about how to argue and how arguments – when done with care – can be helpful personally. Includes examples that appear throughout the entire book, allowing students to see how the ideas presented in the book build on each other. Provides a large and diverse set of problems for each chapter. Teaches logic by connecting formal languages to natural languages with which students are already familiar, making it much easier for students to learn how logic works.

First published in 1924, this book examines one of the main philosophical debates of the period. Focusing on Kant's proof of causality, A.C. Ewing promotes its validity not only for the physical but also for the "psychological" sphere. The subject is of importance, for the problem of causality for Kant constituted the crucial test of his philosophy, the most significant of the Kantian categories. The author believes that Kant's statement of his proof, while too much bound up with other parts of his particular system of philosophy, may be restated "in a form which it can stand by itself and make a good claim for acceptance on all schools of thought".

First published in 1929, this book explores the crucial, ethical question of the objects and the justification of punishment. Dr. A. C. Ewing considers both the retributive theory and the deterrent theory on the subject whilst remaining commendably unprejudiced. The book examines the views which emphasize the reformation of the offender and the education of the community as objects of punishment. It also deals with a theory of reward as a compliment to a theory of punishment. Dr. Ewing's treatment of the topics is philosophical yet he takes in to account the practical considerations that should determine the nature and the amount of the punishment to be inflicted in different types of cases. This book will be of great interest to students of philosophy, teachers and those who are interested in the concrete problems of punishment by the state. It is an original contribution to the study of a subject of great theoretical and practical importance.

First published in 1934, this book evaluates the characteristic doctrines of the idealism which dominated philosophy during the last century. It seeks to combine realism, as to epistemology and physical objects, with a greater appreciation of views which emphasize the unity and rationality of the universe. This work is not a history and does not try to compete with any histories of idealism but it instead reaches an independent conclusion on certain philosophical problems by criticising what others have said. The book considers differing arguments in order to determine their validity.

First published in Great Britain in 1948, this book examines the definition of goodness as being distinct from the question of What things are good? Although less immediately and obviously practical, Dr. Ewing argues that the former question is more fundamental since it raises the issue of whether ethics is explicable wholly in terms of something else, for example, human psychology. Ewing states in his preface that the definition of goodness needs to be confirmed before one decides on the place value is to occupy in our conception of reality or on the ultimate characteristics which make one action right and another wrong. This book discusses these issues.

This six volume backlist collection brings together an assortment of seminal works by highly influential British philosopher A. C. Ewing. This comprehensive and diverse collection encompasses a fantastic selection of his work in the field of moral philosophy and the history of philosophy; ranging from the definition of good, through to his views on punishment and a study on the work of Emmanuel Kant. Spanning more than 30 years in Professor Ewing's distinguished career, the reissued volumes in this collection, originally published between 1924 and 1959, offer a thorough and engaging insight into Professor Ewing's work.

Drawing on a wide range of anthropological case studies, this book focuses on ordinary ethics in contemporary China. The book examines the kinds of moral and ethical issues that emerge (sometimes almost unnoticed) in the flow of everyday life in Chinese communities.How are schoolchildren judged to be good or bad by their teachers and their peers - and how should a 'bad' student be dealt with? What exactly do children owe their parents, and how should this debt be repaid? Is it morally acceptable to be jealous if one's neighbours suddenly become rich? Should the wrongs of the past be forgotten, e.g. in the interests of communal harmony, or should they be dealt with now?In the case of China, such questions have obviously been shaped by the historical contexts against which they have been posed, and by the weight of various Chinese traditions. But this book approaches them on a human scale. More specifically, it approaches them from an anthropological perspective, based on participation in the flow of everyday life during ethnographic fieldwork in Chinese communities.

Death, Posthumous Harm, and Bioethics offers a highly distinctive and original approach to the metaphysics of death and applies this approach to contemporary debates in bioethics that address end-of-life and post-mortem issues. Taylor defends the controversial Epicurean view that death is not a harm to the person who dies and the neo-Epicurean thesis that persons cannot be affected by events that occur after their deaths, and hence that posthumous harms (and benefits) are impossible. He then extends this argument by asserting that the dead cannot be wronged, finally presenting a defence of revisionary views concerning posthumous organ procurement.

If we all want happiness and pleasure so much, then why are we so bad at getting it? Pleasure feels amazing! Anxiety, however, does not. The Ancient Greek Philosopher Epicurus rolled these two strikingly intuitive claims into a simple formula for happiness and well-being-pursue pleasure without causing yourself anxiety. But wait, is that even possible? Can humans achieve lasting pleasure without suffering anxiety about failure and loss? Epicurus thinks we can, at least once we learn to pursue pleasure thoughtfully. In Living for Pleasure, philosopher Emily Austin offers a lively, jargon-free tour of Epicurean strategies for diminishing anxiety, achieving satisfaction, and relishing joys. Epicurean science was famously far ahead of its time, and Austin shows that so was its ethics and psychology. Epicureanism can help us make and keep good friends, prepare for suffering, combat imposter syndrome, build trust, recognize personal limitations, value truth, cultivate healthy attitudes towards money and success, manage political anxiety, develop gratitude, savor food, and face death. Readers will walk away knowing more about an important school of philosophy, but moreover understanding how to get what they want in life-happiness-without the anxiety of striving for it.