Frequently cited and just as often disputed, Elizabeth Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy" (1958) and "The First Person" (1975) are touchstones of twentieth-century analytic philosophy. Though the arguments Anscombe advances in these papers are familiar to philosophers, their significance remains widely misunderstood, says James Doyle. No Morality, No Self offers a fresh interpretation of Anscombe's still-controversial theses about ethical reasoning and individual identity, specifically, her argument that the term "moral" (as it occurs in such contexts as "moral obligation") is literally meaningless, and that "I" does not refer to some special entity called a "self"-a pair of claims that philosophers have responded to with deep skepticism. However unsettling Anscombe's conclusions may be, Doyle shows the underlying seriousness of the British philosopher's reasoning, exposing with clarity and concision how the counterarguments of Anscombe's detractors are based on a flawed or incomplete understanding of her ideas. Doyle zeroes in on the central conundrum Anscombe posed to the referentialist school: namely, that it is impossible to give a noncircular explanation of how "I" refers to the person who utters it. He shows where the refutations of philosophers including Lucy O'Brien, Gareth Evans, and Ian Rumfitt fall short, and throws light on why "I" developed features that make it look as if it functions as a referring expression. Reconciling seemingly incompatible points of view, Doyle argues that "I" does refer to a self, but not in a way anyone suspected-a surprising conclusion that is entirely a propos of Anscombe's provocative thought.

In The Ethics of Theory, Robert Doran offers the first broad assessment of the ethical challenges of Critical Theory across the humanities and social sciences, calling into question the sharp dichotomy typically drawn between the theoretical and the ethical, the analytical and the prescriptive. In a series of discrete but interrelated interventions, Doran exposes the ethical underpinnings of theoretical discourses that are often perceived as either oblivious to or highly skeptical of any attempt to define ethics or politics. Doran thus discusses a variety of themes related to the problematic status of ethics or the ethico-political in Theory: the persistence of existentialist ethics in structuralist, poststructuralist, and postcolonial writing; the ethical imperative of the return of the subject (self-creation versus social conformism); the intimate relation between the ethico-political and the aesthetic (including the role of literary history in Erich Auerbach and Edward Said); the political implications of a "philosophy of the present" for Continental thought (including Heidegger's Nazism); the ethical dimension of the debate between history and theory (including Hayden White's idea of the "practical past" and the question of Holocaust representation); the "ethical turn" in Foucault, Derrida, and Rorty; the post-1987 "political turn" in literary and cultural studies (especially as influenced by Said). Drawing from a broad range of Continental philosophers and cultural theorists, including many texts that have only recently become available, Doran charts a new path that recognizes the often complex motivations that underlie the critical impulse, motivations that are not always apparent or avowed.

Historically speaking, our vices, like our virtues, have come in two basic forms: intellectual and moral. One of the main purposes of this book is to analyze a set of specifically political vices that have not been given sufficient attention within political theory but that nonetheless pose enduring challenges to the sustainability of free and equitable political relationships of various kinds. Political vices like hubris, willful blindness, and recalcitrance are persistent dispositions of character and conduct that imperil both the functioning of democratic institutions and the trust that a diverse citizenry has in the ability of those institutions to secure a just political order of equal moral standing, reciprocal freedom, and human dignity. Political vices embody a repudiation of the reciprocal conditions of politics and, as a consequence of this, they represent a standing challenge to the principles and values of the mixed political regime we call liberal-democracy. Mark Button shows how political vices not only carry out discrete forms of injustice but also facilitate the habituation in and indifference toward systemic forms of social and political injustice. They do so through excesses and deficiencies in human sensory and communicative capacities relating to voice (hubris), vision (moral blindness), and listening (recalcitrance). Drawing on a wide range of intellectual resources, including ancient Greek tragedy, social psychology, moral epistemology, and democratic theory, Political Vices gives new consideration to a list of "deadly vices" that contemporary political societies can neither ignore as a matter of personal "sin" nor publicly disregard as a matter of mere bad choice, and it provides a democratic account that outlines how citizens can best contend with our most troubling political vices without undermining core commitments to liberalism or pluralism.

How do you decide what is ethically wrong and right? Few people make moral judgments by taking the theory first. Specifically written with the interests, needs, and experience of students in mind, this textbook approaches thinking ethically as you do in real life - by first encountering practical moral problems and then introducing theory to understand and integrate the issues. Built around engaging case studies from news media, court hearings, famous speeches and philosophical writings, each of the 15 chapters: - explains and defines the moral problem dealt with - provides excerpts of readings on all sides of the issue - analyses the problem, using the relevant theory The examples are recognizable ethical problems, including judgments about racism and sexism, controversial debates such as assisted suicide and the death penalty, and contemporary concerns like privacy and technology, corporate responsibility, and the environment. The mission of the book is to assist you to engage in informed, independent, critical thinking and to enable you to enter into ethical discussions in the classroom and beyond. Supported by learning features, including study questions, key quotes, handy definitions and a companion website, this book is essential for any student of moral philosophy.

Hegel's Philosophy of Right has long been recognized as the only systematic alternative to the dominant social contract tradition in modern political philosophy. Dean Moyar here takes on the difficult task of reading and representing Hegel's view of justice with the same kind of intuitive appeal that has made social contract theory, with its voluntary consent and assignment of rights and privileges, such an attractive model. Moyar argues that Hegelian justice depends on a proper understanding of Hegel's theory of value and on the model of life through which the overall conception of value, the Good, is operationalized. Closely examining key episodes in Phenomenology of Spirit and the entire Philosophy of Right, Moyar shows how Hegel develops his account of justice through an inferentialist method whereby the content of right unfolds into increasingly thick normative structures. He asserts that the theory of value that Hegel develops in tandem with the account of right relies on a productive unity of self-consciousness and life, of pure thinking and the natural drives. Moyar argues that Hegel's expressive account of the free will enables him to theorize rights not simply as abstract claims, but rather as realizations of value in social contexts of mutual recognition. Moyar shows that Hegel's account of justice is a living system of institutions centered on a close relation of the economic and political spheres and on an understanding of the law as developing through practices of public reason. Moyar defends Hegel's metaphysics of the State as an account of the sovereignty of the Good, and he shows why Hegel thought that philosophy needs to offer an account of world history and reformed religion to buttress the modern social order.

Inquiring 'whether any war can be just', Thomas Aquinas famously responded that this may hold true, provided the war is conducted by a legitimate authority, for a just cause, and with an upright intention. Virtually all accounts of just war, from the Middle Ages to the current day, make reference to this threefold formula. But due in large measure to its very succinctness, Aquinas's theory has prompted contrasting interpretations. This book sets the record straight by surveying the wide range of texts in his literary corpus that have bearing on peace and the ethics of war. Thereby emerges a coherent and nuanced picture of just war as set within his systematic moral theory. It is shown how Aquinas deftly combined elements from earlier authors, and how his teaching has fruitfully propelled inquiry on this important topic by his fellow scholastics, later legal theorists such as Grotius, and contemporary philosophers of just war.

From ancient times, philosophers, theologians, and artists have attempted to describe and categorize the defining virtues of civilization. In "Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed," renowned education authority Howard Gardner explores the meaning of the title's three virtues in an age when vast technological advancement and relativistic attitudes toward human nature have deeply shaken our moral worldview. His incisive examination reveals that although these concepts are changing faster than ever before, they are--and will remain, with our stewardship--cornerstones of our society. Designed to appeal to a wide readership, "Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed" is an approachable primer on the foundations of ethics in the modern age.