|
|
Books > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Ethics & moral philosophy
This volume brings together fourteen mostly previously published
articles by the prominent Nietzsche scholar Maudemarie Clark.
Clark's previous two books on Nietzsche focused on his views on
truth, metaphysics, and knowledge, but she has published a great
deal on Nietzsche's views on ethics and politics in article form.
Putting those articles - many of which appeared in obscure venues -
together in book form will allow readers to see more easily how her
views fit together as a whole, exhibit important developments of
her ideas, and highlight Clark's distinctive voice in Nietzsche
studies. Clark provides an introduction tying her themes together
and placing them in their broader context.
Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics is an annual forum for new work
in normative ethical theory. Leading philosophers present original
contributions to our understanding of a wide range of moral issues
and positions, from analysis of competing approaches to normative
ethics (including moral realism, constructivism, and expressivism)
to questions of how we should act and live well. OSNE will be an
essential resource for scholars and students working in moral
philosophy.
Featuring leading scholars from philosophy and religious studies,
The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Ethics dispels the myth
that Indian thinkers and philosophers were uninterested in ethics.
This comprehensive research handbook traces Indian moral philosophy
through classical, scholastic Indian philosophy, pan-Indian
literature including the Epics, Ayurvedic medical ethics, as well
as recent, traditionalist and Neo-Hindu contributions. Contrary to
the usual myths about India (that Indians were too busy being
religious to care about ethics), moral theory constitutes the
paradigmatic differentia of formal Indian philosophy, and is
reflected richly in popular literature. Many of the papers make
this clear by an analytic explication that draws critical
comparisons and contrasts between classical Indian moral philosophy
and contemporary contributions to ethics. By critically addressing
ethics as a sub-discipline of philosophy and acknowledging the
mistaken marginalization of Indian moral philosophy, this handbook
reveals how Indian contributions can illuminate contemporary
philosophical research on ethics. Unlike previous approaches to
Indian ethics, this volume is organized in accordance with major
topics in moral philosophy. The volume contains an extended
introduction, exploring topics in moral semantics, the philosophy
of thought, (metaethical and normative) ethical theory, and the
politics of scholarship, which serve to show how the diversity of
Indian moral philosophy is a contribution to the discipline of
ethics. With an overview of Indian moral theory, and a glossary,
this is a valuable guide to understanding the past, present and
future research directions of a central component of Indian
philosophy.
Greek Heroes in and out of Hades is a study on heroism and
mortality from Homer to Plato. In a collection of thirty enjoyable
essays, Stamatia Dova combines intertextual research and
thought-provoking analysis to shed new light on concepts of the
hero in the Iliad and the Odyssey, Bacchylides 5, Plato's
Symposium, and Euripides' Alcestis. Through systematic readings of
a wide range of seemingly unrelated texts, the author offers a
cohesive picture of heroic character in a variety of literary
genres. Her characterization of Achilles, Odysseus, and Heracles is
artfully supported by a comprehensive overview of the theme of
descent to the underworld in Homer, Bacchylides, and Euripides.
Aimed at the specialist as well as the general reader, Greek Heroes
in and out of Hades brings innovative Classical scholarship and
insightful literary criticism to a wide audience.
Exploring the environmental effects of animal agriculture, fishing,
and hunting, Eating Earth exposes critical common ground between
earth and animal advocacy. The first chapter (animal agriculture)
examines greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, manure and
dead zones, freshwater depletion, deforestation, predator control,
land and useincluding the ranching industries public lands
subsidies. Chapter two first examines whether or not the
consumption of fish is healthy and outlines morally relevant
aspects of fish physiology, then scrutinizes the fishing industry,
documenting the silent collapse of ocean ecosystems and calling
attention to the indiscriminate nature of hooks and nets, including
the problem of bycatch and what this means for endangered species
and fragile seascapes. Chapter three outlines the historic link
between the U. S. Government, wildlife management, and hunters,
then systematically unravels common beliefs about sport hunting,
such as the belief that hunters are essential to wildlife
conservation, that contemporary hunting qualifies as a tradition,
and that hunting is merciful, economical, or rooted in fair chase.
At the end of each chapter, Kemmerer examines possible solutions to
problems presented, such as sustainable meats, organic and local,
grass fed, aquaculture, new fishing technologies, and enhanced
regulations. Eating Earth offers a concise examination of the
environmental effects of dietary choice, clearly presenting the
many reasons why dietary choice ought to be front and center for
environmentalists. Kemmerers writing, supported by nearly 80 graphs
and summary slides, is clear, straightforward, and punctuated with
wry humor.
Something is subject to luck if it is beyond our control. In this
book, Haji shows that luck detrimentally affects both moral
obligation and moral responsibility. He argues that factors
influencing the way we are, together with considerations that link
motivation and ability to perform intentional actions, frequently
preclude our being able to do otherwise. Since obligation requires
that we can do otherwise, luck compromises the range of what is
morally obligatory for us. This result, together with principles
that conjoin responsibility and obligation, is then exploited to
derive the further skeptical conclusion that behavior for which we
are morally responsible is limited as well. Throughout these
explorations, Haji makes extensive use of concrete cases to test
the limits of how we should understand free will moral
responsibility, blameworthiness, determinism, and luck itself.
Death has long been a pre-occupation of philosophers, and this is
especially so today. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death
collects 21 newly commissioned essays that cover current
philosophical thinking of death-related topics across the entire
range of the discipline. These include metaphysical topics-such as
the nature of death, the possibility of an afterlife, the nature of
persons, and how our thinking about time affects what we think
about death-as well as axiological topics, such as whether death is
bad for its victim, what makes it bad to die, what attitude it is
fitting to take towards death, the possibility of posthumous harm,
and the desirability of immortality. The contributors also explore
the views of ancient philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato and
Epicurus on topics related to the philosophy of death, and
questions in normative ethics, such as what makes killing wrong
when it is wrong, and whether it is wrong to kill fetuses,
non-human animals, combatants in war, and convicted murderers. With
chapters written by a wide range of experts in metaphysics, ethics,
and conceptual analysis, and designed to give the reader a
comprehensive view of recent developments in the philosophical
study of death, this Handbook will appeal to a broad audience in
philosophy, particularly in ethics and metaphysics.
The problem of free will arises from ordinary, commonsense
reflection. Shaun Nichols examines these ordinary attitudes from a
naturalistic perspective. He offers a psychological account of the
origins of the problem of free will. According to his account the
problem arises because of two naturally emerging ways of thinking
about ourselves and the world, one of which makes determinism
plausible while the other makes determinism implausible. Although
contemporary cognitive science does not settle whether choices are
determined, Nichols argues that our belief in indeterminist choice
is grounded in faulty inference and should be regarded as
unjustified. However, even if our belief in indeterminist choice is
false, it's a further substantive question whether that means that
free will doesn't exist. Nichols argues that, because of the
flexibility of reference, there is no single answer to whether free
will exists. In some contexts, it will be true to say 'free will
exists'; in other contexts, it will be false to say that. With this
substantive background in place, Bound promotes a pragmatic
approach to prescriptive issues. In some contexts, the prevailing
practical considerations suggest that we should deny the existence
of free will and moral responsibility; in other contexts the
practical considerations suggest that we should affirm free will
and moral responsibility. This allows for the possibility that in
some contexts, it is morally apt to exact retributive punishment;
in other contexts, it can be apt to take up the exonerating
attitude of hard incompatibilism.
We rely on two different conceptions of morality. On the one hand,
we think of morality as a correct action guide. Morality is
accessed by taking up a critical, reflective point of view where
our concern is with identifying the moral rules that would be the
focus of the requiring activities of persons in a hypothetical
social world whose participants were capable of accessing the
justifications for everyone's endorsing just this set of rules. On
the other hand, in doing virtually anything connected with
morality-making demands, offering excuses, justifying choices,
expressing moral attitudes, getting uptake on our resentments, and
the like-we rely on social practices of morality and shared moral
understandings that make our moral activities and attitudes
intelligible to others. This second conception of morality, unlike
the first, is not shaped by the aim of getting it right or the
contrast between correct and merely supposed moral requirements. It
is shaped by the moral aim of practicing morality with others
within an actual, not merely hypothetical, scheme of social
cooperation. If practices based on misguided moral norms seem not
to be genuine morality under the first conception, merely
hypothetical practices seem not to be the genuine article under the
second conception. The premise of this book, which collects
together nine previously published essay and a new introduction, is
that both conceptions are indispensable. But exactly how is the
moral theorist to go about working simultaneously with two such
different conceptions of morality? The book's project is not to
construct an overarching methodology for handling the two
conceptions of morality. Instead, it is to provide case studies of
that work being done.
For centuries, philosophers have addressed the ontological question
of whether God exists. Most recently, philosophers have begun to
explore the axiological question of what value impact, if any,
God's existence has (or would have) on our world. This book brings
together four prestigious philosophers, Michael Almeida, Travis
Dumsday, Perry Hendricks and Graham Oppy, to present different
views on the axiological question about God. Each contributor
expresses a position on axiology, which is then met with responses
from the remaining contributors. This structure makes for genuine
discussion and developed exploration of the key issues at stake,
and shows that the axiological question is more complicated than it
first appears. Chapters explore a range of relevant issues,
including the relationship between Judeo-Christian theism and
non-naturalist alternatives such as pantheism, polytheism, and
animism/panpsychism. Further chapters consider the attitudes and
emotions of atheists within the theism conversation, and develop
and evaluate the best arguments for doxastic pro-theism and
doxastic anti-theism. Of interest to those working on philosophy of
religion, theism and ethics, this book presents lively accounts of
an important topic in an exciting and collaborative way, offered by
renowned experts in this area.
|
|