This volume contains work by the very best young scholars working in Applied Ethics, gathering a range of new perspectives and thoughts on highly relevant topics, such as the environment, animals, computers, freedom of speech, human enhancement, war and poverty. For researchers and students working in or around this fascinating area of the discipline, the volume will provide a unique snapshot of where the cutting-edge work in the field is currently engaged and where it's headed.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) made profound contributions to many areas of philosophy and cultural understanding, and his thought and methods have inspired numerous inquirers into the forms of our religious life. D. Z. Phillips (1934-2006) pioneered the application of Wittgenstein-influenced approaches to the philosophy of religion, and emphasized the contemplative, non-dogmatic nature of the philosophical task. In "Contemplating Religious Forms of Life," Mikel Burley elucidates and critically examines the work of these two philosophers in relation to various aspects of religion, including ritual, mystical experience, faith and reason, realism and non-realism, conceptions of eternal life, and the use of literature as a resource for the contemplation of religious and non-religious beliefs. The book will be of significant value to academics, students and general readers interested in philosophy, religious studies, theology, and the interrelations between these disciplines.

In the first part about the specific Stoic doctrine on moral progress (prokop) attention is first given to the subtle view developed by the early Stoics, who categorically denied the existence of any mean between vice and virtue, and yet succeeded in giving moral progress a logical and meaningful place within their ethical thinking. Subsequently, the position of later Stoics (Panaetius, Hecato, Posidonius, Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius) is examined. Most of them appear to adopt a basically 'orthodox' view, although each one of them lays his own accents and deals with Chrysippus' tenets from his own personal perspective. Occasionally, the 'heterodox' position of Aristo of Chios proves to have remained influential too. The second part of the study deals with the polemical reception of the Stoic doctrine of moral progress in (Middle-)Platonism. The first author who is discussed is Philo of Alexandria. Philo deals with the Stoic doctrine in a very ideosyncratical way. He never explicitly attacked the Stoic view on moral progress, although it is clear from various passages in his work that he favoured the Platonic-Peripatetic position rather than the Stoic one. Next, Plutarch's position is examined, through a detailed analysis of his treatise 'De profectibus in virtute'. Finally, attention is given to two school handbooks dating from the period of Middle-Platonism (Alcinous and Apuleius). In both of them, the Stoic doctrine is rejected without many arguments, which shows that a correct (and anti-Stoic) conception of moral progress was regarded in Platonic circles as a basic knowledge for beginning students.The whole discussion is placed into a broaderphilosophical-historical perspective by the introduction (on the philosophical tradition before the Stoa) and the epilogue (about later discussions in Neo-Platonism and early Christianity).

Timeless wisdom on generosity and gratitude from the great Stoic philosopher Seneca To give and receive well may be the most human thing you can do-but it is also the closest you can come to divinity. So argues the great Roman Stoic thinker Seneca (c. 4 BCE-65 CE) in his longest and most searching moral treatise, "On Benefits" (De Beneficiis). James Romm's splendid new translation of essential selections from this work conveys the heart of Seneca's argument that generosity and gratitude are among the most important of all virtues. For Seneca, the impulse to give to others lies at the very foundation of society; without it, we are helpless creatures, worse than wild beasts. But generosity did not arise randomly or by chance. Seneca sees it as part of our desire to emulate the gods, whose creation of the earth and heavens stands as the greatest gift of all. Seneca's soaring prose captures his wonder at that gift, and expresses a profound sense of gratitude that will inspire today's readers. Complete with an enlightening introduction and the original Latin on facing pages, How to Give is a timeless guide to the profound significance of true generosity.

What is terrorism? Can it ever be the right thing to do? Who is really responsible for terrorism? Should governments never negotiate with terrorists? And how can terrorism be stopped? Terrorism: A Philosophical Analysis is a unique book on terrorism that openly, rationally and passionately delves into what underlies terrorism, what in some cases justifies it on ethical grounds, and how terrorism might be dealt with successfully. Rather than assuming from the start a particular point of view about terrorism, this book uniquely engages the reader in a series of critical discussions that unveil the ethical problems underlying terrorism. A must-read for everyone interested in understanding the depths of terrorism.

The view that persons are entitled to respect because of their moral agency is commonplace in contemporary moral theory. What exactly this respect entails, however, is far less uncontroversial. In this book, Van der Rijt argues powerfully that this respect for persons' moral agency must also encompass respect for their subjective moral judgments - even when these judgments can be shown to be fundamentally flawed. Van der Rijt scrutinises the role persons' subjective moral judgments play within the context of coercion and domination. His fresh, original analysis of Kant's third formulation of the Categorical Imperative reveals how these judgments are intimately connected to a person's dignity. The result is an insightful new account of coercion, a novel Kantian reformulation of the republican notion of non-domination and a compelling, innovative argument in favour of retributive justice. "In this admirably clear and insightful work, Van der Rijt develops an original account of coercion and dignity. On the basis of his analysis of the relation between these two concepts, he also provides an intriguing new angle on the nature of republicanism. I recommend this book to anyone interested in freedom and power and their roles in normative political theory." Ian Carter - University of Pavia "In this carefully argued and original study Jan-Willem van der Rijt offers an analysis of coercion, a broadly Kantian argument that coercion is an affront to dignity, and an illuminating contrast with Philip Pettit's republicanism. A most welcome contribution." Thomas E. Hill, Jr. - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "Jan-Willem van der Rijt has written a well argued, original book that will prove to be extremely helpful for the philosophical inquiry of the relationship between coercion and human dignity as well as for the assessment of republicanism and its consequences." Ralf Stoecker - University of Potsdam

This book provides an engaging, thorough, and inclusive history of western ethics that encompasses both classical and modern perspectives. Author Warren Ashby speaks both to students of history and ethics and to a public interested in but often perplexed by moral values in contemporary life. Ashby embraces all who are concerned with expanding human rights, finding new ways to think about moral experience, and discovering an ethical perspective appropriate for their lives. By exploring past ethical problems, we can prepare for the future's challenges. Included with the commentary on the writings of great thinkers are in-depth discussions of Greek, biblical, and Stoic ethics; Augustine, Aquinas, and medieval views; the Renaissance, the Reformation, and ethics in the age of science; as well as the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the last Western century.

The military claims to be an honourable profession, yet military torture is widespread. Why is the military violating its own values? Jessica Wolfendale argues that the prevalence of military torture is linked to military training methods that cultivate the psychological dispositions connected to crimes of obedience. While these methods are used, the military has no credible claim to professional status. Combating torture requires that we radically rethink the nature of the military profession and military training.

The author argues that there are conflicting traditions with regard to the question of what is the moral standing of animals according to Christianity. The dominant tradition maintains that animals are primarily resources but there are alternative strands of Christian thought that challenge this view.

'Reprogen-ethics and the future of gender' bring together three tightly related topics, which have so far been dealt separately in bioethics: assisted reproduction, enhancing and gender. Part one in this book targets presents policies and legislature of assisted reproduction. Part two focuses on current views of the ethics of PGD and enhancing. Part three tackles the future of gender. Part four deals with artificial wombs and ectogenesis. The aim of this book is to provide a joint perspective in order to get the big picture. Contributors include John Harris, Matti Hairy, Tuija Takala, Soren Holm, David Heyd, Daniel Callahan, James Hughes, Harriet Bradley, Ekaterina Balabanova, Roy Gilbar and others. Some chapters in this book will significantly contribute to the current discussion of the topics at stake; other chapters will start a discussion on issues that have not yet been discussed. 'Reprogen-ethics and the future of gender' will certainly appeal to readers who are interested in any of the intersecting topics of assisted reproduction, genetic enhancing and gender; bioethicists, sociologists, genetic counsellors, gynaecologists, legislators, and students of the relevant disciplines.

This companion is a cutting-edge primer to critical forms of the posthumanities and the feminist posthumanities, aimed at students and researchers who want to catch up with the recent theoretical developments in various fields in the humanities, such as new media studies, gender studies, cultural studies, science and technology studies, human animal studies, postcolonial critique, philosophy and environmental humanities. It contains a collection of nineteen new and original short chapters introducing influential concepts, ideas and approaches that have shaped and developed new materialism, inhuman theory, critical posthumanism, feminist materialism, and posthuman philosophy. A resource for students and teachers, this comprehensive volume brings together established international scholars and emerging theorists, for timely and astute definitions of a moving target - posthuman humanities and feminist posthumanities.

In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, renowned social thinker Adam Smith presents an intellectual treatise on the phenomenon-and meaning-of morality. Not just an explication of the external actions and internal conscience that influence our every decision, this is also a study of how ideas such as reward and punishment, luck, and sympathy influence an individual's self-image, behavior, and relationships. At once critical, practical, and sympathetic, this is not only a work for philosophers, but for anyone who has ever wondered what it means to be good. Scottish economist and philosopher ADAM SMITH (1723-1790) helped set standards in the fields of political economics and moral philosophy, playing a key role in the early development of the scholarship of economics. His other writings include Essays on Philosophical Subjects and the influential An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

This is the final work of the distinguished philosopher Paul Ziff, whose earlier books include Understanding Understanding, Philosophical Turnings, and Semantic Analysis. It is carefully crafted and written in numbered paragraphs rather than chapters, in style of the later Wittgenstein. The work concerns morality, rationality, symbolism and imagery.
In the words of the author: "The primary thesis of this essay is that, although there are many different and conflicting moralities, both here in America and throughout the world, some of them can be criticized and rejected on rational grounds. There are other moralities that one can personally reject, but they cannot be criticized on rational grounds. The same is true of the various values and priorities that different people have. Some are open to criticism on rational grounds; others are not open to such criticism." His conclusion is: "Symbolism and imagery constitute the real and only basis of the moralities that I have endeavored to characterize here, my own morality and that of others. But the most fundamental image of all of my morality is that which is created by an appreciation of life, all life."

Ever since Harts The Concept of Law, legal philosophers agree that the practice of law-applying officials is a fundamental aspect of law. Yet there is a huge disagreement on the nature of this practice. Is it a conventional practice? Is it like the practice that takes place, more generally, when there is a social rule in a group? Does it share the nature of collective intentional action? The book explores the main responses to these questions, and claims that they fail on two main counts: current theories do not explain officials beliefs that they are under a duty qua members of an institution, and they do not explain officials disagreement about the content of these institutional duties. Based on a particular theory of collective action, the author elaborates then an account of certain institutions, and claims that the practice is an institutional practice of sorts. This would explain officials beliefs in institutional duties, and officials disagreement about those duties.

The book should be of interest to legal philosophers, but also to those concerned with group and social action theories and, more generally, with the nature of institutions."

Originally published between 1921 and 2003, the 48 volumes in this set cover one of the most problematic areas of moral philosophy, and one which is a key component of many undergraduate philosophy degrees. The volumes in this set include volumes on all the main areas: Applied, normative, descriptive, consequentialist and metaethics and touch on the vital issues of objectivity and subjectivity, relativism and realism, reason and feeling, necessity and freedom.

Olympiodorus (AD c. 500-570), possibly the last non-Christian teacher of philosophy in Alexandria, delivered these lectures as an introduction to Plato with a biography. For us, they can serve as an accessible introduction to late Neoplatonism. Olympiodorus locates the First Alcibiades at the start of the curriculum on Plato, because it is about self-knowledge. His pupils are beginners, able to approach the hierarchy of philosophical virtues, like the aristocratic playboy Alcibiades. Alcibiades needs to know himself, at least as an individual with particular actions, before he can reach the virtues of mere civic interaction. As Olympiodorus addresses mainly Christian students, he tells them that the different words they use are often symbols of truths shared between their faiths.

Freedom of the sort implicated in acting freely or with free will is important to the truth of different sorts of moral judgment, such as judgments of moral responsibility and those of moral obligation. Little thought, however, has been invested into whether appraisals of good or evil presuppose free will. This important topic has not commanded the attention it deserves owing to what is perhaps a prevalent assumption that freedom leaves judgments concerning good and evil largely unaffected. The central aim of this book is to dispute this assumption by arguing for the relevance of free will to the truth of two sorts of such judgment: welfare-ranking judgments or judgments of personal well-being (when is one's life intrinsically good for the one who lives it?), and world-ranking judgments (when is a possible world intrinsically better than another?). The book also examines free will's impact on the truth of such judgments for central issues in moral obligation and in the free will debate. This book should be of interest to those working on intrinsic value, personal well-being, moral obligation, and free will.

For anyone who has ever wondered about the ethics of killing animals for food, this is the definitive collection of essays on the ethical debate. Written by internationally recognized scholars on both sides of the debate, the provocative articles here compiled will give vegetarians and meat-eaters a thorough grounding in all aspects of this controversial issue. After an introduction to the nature of the debate by editor Steve F. Sapontzis, Daniel Dombrowski reviews the history of vegetarianism. There follows a discussion of health issues and what anthropology has to tell us about human diet. Also included are the classic cases for vegetarianism from philosophers Peter Singer and Tom Regan, and new essays rebutting those classic positions from humanists Roger Scruton and Carl Cohen, among others. Various scholars then examine religious teachings about eating animals, which are drawn from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as Native American and Eastern traditions. Finally, Carol J. Adams, Deanne Curtin, and Val Plumwood, among other outstanding advocates, debate the ethics of eating meat in connection with feminism, environmentalism, and multiculturalism. Containing virtually a "Who's Who" of philosophers, social critics, environmentalists, feminists, and religious scholars who have participated in the vegetarianism debate over the past quarter century, this outstanding anthology of expert articles, most of them new, provides the latest thinking on a subject of increasing public interest.

These two essays by the famous 19th-century champion of Darwin's theory of evolution tackle a subject that is still a major focus of ethical debates today: the relation of science as a whole, and specifically evolutionary ideas, to ethics and morality. Written toward the end of Huxley's career when he was already famous as a persuasive lecturer and a fascinating expositor of new ideas, these essays demonstrate his rhetorical gifts and talent for explaining the importance of science to a lay audience.
"Evolution and Ethics," his last major talk delivered at Oxford in 1893, was written in response to the then fashionable "Social Darwinism" popularized by philosopher Herbert Spencer. Spencer and his followers had been labeling the poor, criminals, and other social undesirables as "unfit" and suggesting that society deal with them as harshly as nature deals with the physically unfit. Huxley found this approach both morally repugnant and a serious misapplication of Darwinian theory to the subject of ethics. Society progresses, Huxley maintained, through individuals who prove themselves to be ethically the best, not physically the most fit. Ethics is designed to curb our antisocial animal instincts and therefore must be detached from natural competition.
In "Science and Morals," written some years earlier (1886), Huxley addresses three criticisms: namely, that he and his associates refuse to take seriously anything that (1) cannot be verified by the senses, that (2) is beyond the bounds of physical science, and that (3) cannot be subjected to laboratory experimentation and chemical analysis. To all of these criticisms Huxley replies that he takes very seriously a host of mental phenomena that do not, strictly speaking, fall within these narrow physical limits: the universal law of causation, or the esthetic pleasure of the arts, or the truths of mathematics, for example. He goes on to say that he repudiates the doctrine of Materialism as much as he does that of Spiritualism, and that he coined the term "Agnostic" to apply to his own particular philosophical viewpoint. He concludes with comments on the existence of God and free will, suggesting that science does not necessarily rule out either postulate.
Students of ethics, the history of science, and the ongoing debates over evolution will welcome this new edition of two masterful essays by "Darwin's Bulldog."

The idea of human dignity is central to any reflection on the nature of human worth, and has become a key concept in international and national law, in medical ethics, and in much philosophical and political theory. However, the idea is a complex one that also takes on many different forms. This collection explores the idea of human dignity as it arises within these many different domains, opening up the possibility of a multidisciplinary conversation that illuminates the concept itself, as well as the idea of the human to which it stands in an essential relation. The book is not only an intriguing and stimulating exploration of human dignity from a range of perspectives, but also provides an important resource for those who wish to take the exploration further.

The UNESCO International Bioethics Committee is an international body that sets standards in the field of bioethics. This collection represents the contributions of the IBC to global bioethics. The IBC is a body of 36 independent experts that follows progress in the life sciences and its applications in order to ensure respect for human dignity and freedom. Currently, some of the topics of the IBC contributions have been discussed in the bioethics literature, mostly journal articles. However, this is a unique contribution by the scholars who developed these universal declarations and reports. The contributors have not only provided a scholarly up to date discussion of their research topics, but as members of the IBC they have also discussed specific practical challenges in the development of such international documents. This book will be suited to academics within bioethics, health care policy and international law.

This volume provides an in-depth discussion on the central question - how can people express and survive dissent and disagreement in confined habitats in space? The discussion is an important one because it could be that the systems of inter-dependence required to survive in space are so strong that dissent becomes impossible. John Locke originally said that people have a right to use revolution to overthrow a despotic regime. But if revolution causes violence and damage that causes depressurisation with the risk of killing many people, is it even permissible to have a revolution? How then are people to express their liberty or dissatisfaction with their rulers? The emergence of structures of dissent and disagreement is an essential part of the construction of a framework of liberty in space (revolution is just the extreme example) and thus the topic deserves in-depth and immediate attention. Even today, the way in which we assemble organisations and corporations for the government and private exploration of space must take into account the need for mechanisms to allow people to express dissent.

What effect does creativity have on individuals, groups and societies, and on the fundamental values on which they base their actions and institutions? What constitutes good and evil, right and wrong, and how does creativity disrupt these beliefs? 'The Ethics of Creativity' brings together an impressive collaboration of thinkers from several countries and disciplines to illuminate the thorny issues that arise when novel ideas and products brought forth by creativity collide with the rules and norms of what we believe to be right or good.