In this thought-provoking study, Jack Russell Weinstein suggests the foundations of liberalism can be found in the writings of Adam Smith (1723-1790), a pioneer of modern economic theory and a major figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. While offering an interpretive methodology for approaching Smith's two major works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations, Weinstein argues against the libertarian interpretation of Smith, emphasizing his philosophies of education and rationality. Weinstein also demonstrates that Smith should be recognized for a prescient theory of pluralism that prefigures current theories of cultural diversity.

What is a right? What, if anything, makes rights different from other features of the normative world, such as duties, standards, rules, or principles? Do all rights serve some ultimate purpose? In addition to raising these questions, philosophers and jurists have long been aware that different senses of 'a right' abound. To help make sense of this diversity, and to address the above questions, they developed two types of accounts of rights: models and theories. This book explicates rights modelling and theorising and scrutinises their methodological underpinnings. It then challenges this framework by showing why the theories ought to be abandoned. In addition to exploring structural concerns, the book also addresses the various ways that rights can be used. It clarifies important differences between rights exercise, enforcement, remedying, and vindication, and identifies forms of legal rights-claiming and rights-invoking outside of institutional contexts.

A classic work in the field of practical and professional ethics, this collection of nine essays by English philosopher and educator Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) was first published in 1898 and forms a vital complement to Sidgwick's major treatise on moral theory, The Methods of Ethics. Reissued here as Volume One in a new series sponsored by the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, the book is composed chiefly of addresses to members of two ethical societies that Sidgwick helped to found in Cambridge and London in the 1880s. Clear, taut, and lively, these essays demonstrate the compassion and calm reasonableness that Sidgwick brought to all his writings.
As Sidgwick explains in his opening essay, the societies he addressed aimed to allow academics, professionals, and others to pursue joint efforts at reaching "some results of value for practical guidance and life." Sidgwick hoped that members might discuss such questions as when, if ever, public officials might be justified in lying or in breaking promises, whether scientists could legitimately inflict suffering on animals for research purposes, when nations might have just cause in going to war, and a score of other issues of ethics in public and private life still debated a century later.
This valuable reissue returns Practical Ethics to its rightful place in Sidgwick's oeuvre. Noted ethicist Sissela Bok provides a superb Introduction, ranging over the course of Sidgwick's life and career and underscoring the relevance of Practical Ethics to contemporary debate. She writes: "Practical Ethics, the last book that Henry Sidgwick published before his death in 1900, contains the distillation of a lifetime of reflectionon ethics and on what it would take for ethical debate to be 'really of use in the solution of practical questions.'" This rich, engaging work is essential reading for all concerned with the relationship between ethical theory and. practice, and with the questions that have driven the study of professional ethics in recent years.

With the world as our classroom and each of us a student, what lessons are we learning? The status quo often shifts from honesty and integrity to the systematic economic decay and moral bankrupting of our society. Unfortunately, the consequences of our actions are now only viewed as acceptable inconveniences, and that is only when the misdeeds are discovered. Mistakes are made and our social and economic environment has provided the diversion of excuses for making the wrong decisions sufferable. One of the greatest life lessons I adopted into my everyday work ethic came from my teacher and mentor in high school, who once told me, "An excuse, no matter how valid a reason it might be, is still.an excuse." The path to ethical renewal starts with one step, one person. Learning how to think must be paramount to learning what to think, and each person must think independently. Take a moment.and consider your Ethics Everyday.

Christopher Janaway presents a full commentary on Nietzsche's most studied work, On the Genealogy of Morality, and combines close reading of key passages with an overview of Nietzsche's wider aims. Arguing that Nietzsche's goal is to pursue psychological and historical truths concerning the origins of modern moral values, Beyond Selflessness differs from other books on Nietzsche in that it emphasizes the significance of his rhetorical methods as an instrument of persuasion. Nietzsche's outlook is broadly naturalist, but he is critical of typical scientific and philosophical methods for their advocacy of impersonality and suppression of the affects. In contrast to his opponents, Schopenhauer and Paul Ree, who both account for morality in terms of selflessness, Nietzsche believes that our allegiance to a post-Christian morality that centres around selflessness, compassion, guilt, and denial of the instincts is not primarily rational but affective: underlying feelings, often ambivalent and poorly grasped in conscious thought, explain our moral beliefs. The Genealogy is designed to detach the reader from his or her allegiance to morality and prepare for the possibility of new values. In addition to examining how Nietzsche's "perspectivism" holds that one can best understand a topic such as morality through allowing as many of one's feelings as possible to speak about it, Janaway shows that Nietzsche seeks to enable us to "feel differently": his provocation of the reader's affects helps us grasp the affective origins of our attitudes and prepare the way for healthier values such as the affirmation of life (as tested by the thought of eternal return) and the self-satisfaction to be attainedby "giving style to one's character."

This book argues against the common view that there are no essential differences between Plato and the Neoplatonist philosopher, Plotinus, on the issues of mysticism, epistemology, and ethics. Beginning by examining the ways in which Plato and Plotinus claim that it is possible to have an ultimate experience that answers the most significant philosophical questions, David J. Yount provides an extended analysis of why we should interpret both philosophers as mystics. The book then moves on to demonstrate that both philosophers share a belief in non-discursive knowledge and the methods to attain it, including dialectic and recollection, and shows that they do not essentially differ on any significant views on ethics. Making extensive use of primary and secondary sources, Plato and Plotinus on Mysticism, Epistemology and Ethics shows the similarities between the thought of these two philosophers on a variety of philosophical questions, such as meditation, divination, wisdom, knowledge, truth, happiness and love.

We humans value a great variety of plant and animal species for their usefulness to us. But what is the value-if any-of a species that offers no practical use? In the face of accelerating extinctions across the globe, what ought we to do? Amid this sea of losses, what is our responsibility? How do we assess the value of nonhuman species? In this clear-spoken, passionate book, naturalist and philosopher Edward L. McCord explores urgent questions about the destruction of species and provides a new framework for appreciating and defending every form of life. The book draws insights from philosophy, ethics, law, and biology to arrive at a new way of thinking about the value of each species on earth. With meticulous reasoning, McCord demonstrates that the inherent value of species to humanity is intellectual: individual species are phenomena of such intellectual moment-so interesting in their own right-that they rise above other values and merit enduring human embrace. The author discusses the threats other species confront and delineates the challenges involved in creating any kind of public instrument to protect species. No other scholar has advocated on behalf of biodiversity with such eloquence and passion, and none provides greater inspiration to defend nonhuman forms of life.

By sending a few hundred dollars to a group like UNICEF, any well-off person can ensure that fewer poor children die, and that more live reasonably long, worthwhile lives. But even when knowing this, almost all of us send nothing and, among the contributors, most send precious little. What's the moral status of this behavior? To such common cases of letting die, our untutored response is that, while it's not very good, neither is the conduct wrong. How can we best explain this lenient intuitive assessment? In this hard-hitting new book, philosopher Peter Unger argues that, all too often, our moral intuitions about cases are generated not by the basic moral values we hold, but by psychological dispositions that prevent us from reacting in accord with our deep moral commitments. Through a detailed look at how these disorienting tendencies operate, Unger reveals that, on the good morality we already accept, our fatally unhelpful behavior is monstrously wrong. Confronting us with both arresting facts and easily followed instructions for lessening the suffering of youngsters in mortal danger, Living High and Letting Die can help us live the morally decent lives that agree with our wonderfully deep, and deeply wonderful, true moral values.

This book provides the first comparative analysis of the three major streams of contemporary narrative psychology as they have been developed in North America, Europe, and Australia and New Zealand. Interrogating the historical and cultural conditions in which this important movement in psychology has emerged, the book presents clear, well-structured comparisons and critique of the key theories of narrative psychology pioneered across the globe. Examples include Dan McAdams in the US and his followers, who have developed a distinctive approach to self and identity as a life story over the past two decades; in the Netherlands by Hubert Hermans, whose research on the 'dialogical self' has made the University of Nijmegen a centre of narrative psychological research in Europe; and in Australia and New Zealand, where the collaborative efforts of Michael White and David Epston helped to launch the narrative movement in psychotherapy in the late 1980s.

A compilation of essays dealing with ethnic challenges to the modern nation state and to modernity itself, on philosophical, political and social levels. These issues are examined theoretically and in a number of case studies encompassing three types of states: industrialized, liberal states in Western Europe, settler states in American, Africa and the Middle East, and post colonial states in Asia and Africa. Contributors come from leading universities in Israel, Europe and North America and several academic disciplines.

Michael Bratman's work has been unusually influential, with significance in disciplines as diverse as philosophy, computer science, law, and primatology. This is a collection of critical essays by some of contemporary philosophy's most distinguished figures, including Margaret Gilbert, Richard Holton, Christine Korsgaard, Alfred Mele, Elijah Milgram, Kieran Setiya, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Scott Shapiro, Michael Smith, J. David Velleman, R. Jay Wallace. It also contains an introduction by the editors, situating Bratman's work and its broader significance. The essays in this volume engage with ideas and themes prominent in Bratman's work. The volume also includes a lengthy reply by Bratman that breaks new ground and deepens our understanding of the nature of action, rationality, and social agency.

Explorations in Ethics is a collection of essays with a speculative bent. Its twelve contributors attempt to take ethics thinking in new directions. Ethics is fundamentally a speculative discipline. We sometimes lose sight of that because of our current scholarly practices, which include reliance on a set of traditional works in ethics, deferring to the scholarly literature, drawing from the evidential sources afforded us. This volume breaks the mold. It is committed, first and foremost, to exploring new ground in a methodologically sound way whilst respecting and building on the literature where needed. The contributors range from world renowned ethicists to early-career scholars. The ethical standpoints represented are various and the overall aim of this collection is to stimulate fresh thinking.

Die Bibliotheca Teubneriana, gegrundet 1849, ist die weltweit alteste, traditionsreichste und umfangreichste Editionsreihe griechischer und lateinischer Literatur von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit. Pro Jahr erscheinen 4-5 neue Editionen. Samtliche Ausgaben werden durch eine lateinische oder englische Praefatio erganzt. Die wissenschaftliche Betreuung der Reihe obliegt einem Team anerkannter Philologen: Gian Biagio Conte (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa) Marcus Deufert (Universitat Leipzig) James Diggle (University of Cambridge) Donald J. Mastronarde (University of California, Berkeley) Franco Montanari (Universita di Genova) Heinz-Gunther Nesselrath (Georg-August-Universitat Goettingen) Oliver Primavesi (Ludwig-Maximilians Universitat Munchen) Michael D. Reeve (University of Cambridge) Richard J. Tarrant (Harvard University) Vergriffene Titel werden als Print-on-Demand-Nachdrucke wieder verfugbar gemacht. Zudem werden alle Neuerscheinungen der Bibliotheca Teubneriana parallel zur gedruckten Ausgabe auch als eBook angeboten. Die alteren Bande werden sukzessive ebenfalls als eBook bereitgestellt. Falls Sie einen vergriffenen Titel bestellen moechten, der noch nicht als Print-on-Demand angeboten wird, schreiben Sie uns an: [email protected] Samtliche in der Bibliotheca Teubneriana erschienenen Editionen lateinischer Texte sind in der Datenbank BTL Online elektronisch verfugbar.

John Bricke presents a philosophical study of the theory of mind and morality that David Hume developed in his Treatise of Human Nature and other writings. The chief elements in this theory of mind are Hume's accounts of reasons for action and of the complex interrelations of desire, volition, and affection. On this basis, Professor Bricke lays out and defends Hume's thoroughgoing non-cognitivist theory of moral judgement, and shows that cognitivist and standard sentimentalist readings of Hume are unsatisfactory, as are the usual interpretations of his views on the connections between morality, justice, and convention. Hume rejects any conception of moral beliefs and moral truths. He understands morality in terms of distinctive desires and other sentiments that arise through the correction of sympathy. He represents moral desires as prior to the other moral sentiments. Morality, he holds, in part presupposes conventions for mutual interest; it is not, however, itself a matter of convention. Mind and Morality demonstrates that Hume's sophisticated moral conativism sets a challenge that recent cognitivist theories of moral judgement cannot readily meet, and his subtle treatment of the interplay of morality and convention suggests significant limitations to recent conventionalist and contractarian accounts of morality's content.

How do laws resemble rules of games, moral rules, personal rules, rules found in religious teachings, school rules, and so on? Are laws rules at all? Are they all made by human beings? And if so how should we go about interpreting them? How are they organized into systems, and what does it mean for these systems to have 'constitutions'? Should everyone want to live under a system of law? Is there a special kind of 'legal justice'? Does it consist simply in applying the law of the system? And how does it relate to the ideal of 'the rule of law'? These and other classic questions in the philosophy of law form the subject-matter of Law as a Leap of Faith. In this book John Gardner collects, revisits, and supplements fifteen years of celebrated writings on general questions about law and legal systems - writings in which he attempts, without loss of philosophical finesse or insight, to cut through some of the technicalities with which the subject has become encrusted in the late twentieth century. Taking his agenda broadly from H.L.A. Hart's The Concept of Law (1961), Gardner shows how the key ideas in that work live on, and how they have been and can still be improved in modest ways to meet important criticisms - in some cases by concession, in some cases by circumvention, and in some cases by restatement. In the process Gardner engages with key ideas of other modern giants of the subject including Kelsen, Holmes, Raz, and Dworkin. Most importantly he presents the main elements of his own unique and refreshingly direct way of thinking about law, brought together in one place for the first time.

This book offers a first rate selection of academic articles on Latin American bioethics. It covers different issues, such as vulnerability, abortion, biomedical research with human subjects, environment, exploitation, commodification, reproductive medicine, among others. Latin American bioethics has been, to an important extent, parochial and unable to meet stringent international standards of rational philosophical discussion. The new generations of bioethicists are changing this situation, and this book demonstrates that change. All articles are written from the perspective of Latin American scholars from several disciplines such as philosophy and law. Working with the tools of analytical philosophy and jurisprudence, this book defends views with rational argument, and opening for pluralistic discussion.

iLowerSecondary Global Citizenship Workbooks provide structured, yet flexible, support for schools teaching Global Citizenship in the Lower Secondary Years. Written specifically to work alongside iLowerSecondary, the Workbooks additionally provide an effective standalone resource for any school or student wanting to explore this fascinating subject. Key features: * An introduction to the week's teaching which explains what students will be learning, plus objectives and key vocabulary * An activity for every day of the week, designed for students to practise and reinforce their skills and knowledge * Written and developed by subject experts * Aligned to the iLowerSecondary Global Citizenship curriculum and progression, the Workbooks provide explicit progression towards Pearson Edexcel International GCSE Global Citizenship

This pioneering examination of the nuclear threat, written for both the interested general reader and the student of war and peace issues, blends broad philosophical/theoretical themes and themes in the peace and conflict literature with the results of the authors' extensive survey research in the United States and Europe. While never losing sight of the threat of a nuclear holocaust, authors Lisl Goodman and Lee Ann Hoff argue that it is possible to turn the tide of aggression and destruction and, in the process, create an utterly different human society. They challenge the myth of innate aggression which sees war as inevitable; present a critical examination of the psychodynamic, sociocultural, and political-economic factors which have led to current inaction in the face of the nuclear threat; and investigate the link between the insecurities of life in the nuclear age and the increasing rate of youth suicide, apathy, disengagement, and the general devaluation of life without a secure future.

Divided into three parts, the book begins by analyzing how we got to where we are today. The authors show that clinging to the outdated notion that aggression and violence are inevitable responses to human conflict has led to an abdication of individual responsibility and placed the fate of the planet in the hands of very few individuals. This abdication has led to feelings of powerlessness and desensitization as well as to a denial of the nuclear threat, a syndrome the authors label omnicidal. In Part Two, the authors present findings from several studies conducted in North America and Europe which reveal the pervasiveness of fear, denial, a fatalistic world view, and omnicidal personality patterns. The final section presents social change strategies that can be adopted at the individual, family, and sociopolitical levels to promote peace. The authors place particular emphasis on the pivotal role of childrearing and education patterns that emphasize cooperative behavior and critical thinking about global issues.

This study is an introduction to the problems of moral philosophy designed particularly for students of theology and religious studies. It offers an account of the nature and subject matter of moral reasoning and of the major types of moral theory current in contemporary moral philosophy. The account aims to bring out the major issues in moral theory, to present a clear, non-technical articulation of the structure of moral knowledge and to explore the relation between religious belief and morality.

The passions have long been condemned as a creator of disturbance and purveyor of the temporary loss of reason, but as Remo Bodei argues in Geometry of the Passions, we must abandon the perception that order and disorder are in a constant state of collision. By means of a theoretical and historical analysis, Bodei interprets the relationship between passion and reason as a conflict between two complementary logics. Geometry of the Passions investigates the paradoxical conflict-collaboration between passions and reason, and between individual and political projects. Tracing the roles passion and reason have played throughout history, including in the political agendas of Descartes, Hobbes, and the French Jacobins, Geometry of the Passions reveals how passion and reason may be used as a vehicle for affirmation rather than self-enslavement.

The Last Choice establishes that preemptive suicide in advanced age can be rational: that it can make good sense to evade age-related personal diminishment even at the cost of good time left. Criteria are provided to help determine whether soundly reasoned, cogently motivated,and prudently timed self-destruction can be in one's interests late in life. In our time suicide and assisted suicide are being increasingly tolerated as ways to escape unendurable mental or physical suffering, but it isn't widely accepted that suicide may be a rational choice before the onset of such suffering. This book's basic claim is that it can be rational to choose to die sooner as oneself than to survive as a lessened other: that judicious appropriation of one's own inevitable death can be an identity-affirming act and a fitting end to life. Discussion of preemptive suicide goes beyond contributing to current widespread debate about assisted suicide. It is a matter tightly interrelated with other right to die questions and one bound to become a national issue. If there are good arguments for escaping intolerable situations caused by age-related deteriorative conditions, most of those arguments will equally support avoidance of those conditions. If assisted suicide becomes more generally acknowledged and accepted, preemptive suicide will almost certainly follow. It is crucial, then, to examine whether preemptive suicide constitutes a rational option for reflective aging individuals.

Joshua Gert presents an original and ambitious theory of the normative. Expressivism and non-reductive realism represent two very widely separated poles in contemporary discussions of normativity. But the domain of the normative is both large and diverse; it includes, for example, the harmful, the fun, the beautiful, the wrong, and the rational. It would be extremely surprising if either expressivism or non-reductive realism managed to capture all--or even the most important--phenomena associated with all of these notions. Normative Bedrock defends a response-dependent account of the normative that accommodates the kind of variation in response that some non-reductive realists downplay or ignore, but that also allows for the sort of straightforward talk of normative properties, normative truth, and substantive normative disagreement that expressivists have had a hard time respecting.
One of the distinctive features of Gert's approach is his reliance, throughout, on an analogy between color properties and normative properties. He argues that the appropriate response to a given instance of a normative property may often depend significantly on the perspective one takes on that instance: for example, whether one views it as past or future. Another distinctive feature of Normative Bedrock is its focus on the basic normative property of practical irrationality, rather than on the notion of a normative reason or the notion of the good. This simple shift of focus allow for a more satisfying account of the link between reasons and motivation, and helps to explain why and how some reasons can justify far more than they can require, and why we therefore need two strength values to characterize the normative capacities of practical reasons.