In his collection George extends the critique of liberalism he expounded in Making Men Moral and also goes beyond it to show how contemporary natural law theory provides a superior way of thinking about basic problems of justice and political morality. It is written with the same combination of stylistic elegance and analytical rigour that distinguished his critical work. Not content merely to defend natural law from its cultural despisers, he deftly turns the tables and deploys the idea to mount a stunning attack on regnant liberal beliefs about such issues as abortion, sexuality, and the place of religion in public life.

The chapters in this volume recognize that different contexts, sites, and institutional goals will raise different sets of questions and judgements about what constitutes ethical writing instruction, ethical response to written texts, and ethical evaluation of a writers process and products. They do not aim to resolve all the ethical questions that might arise in and about composition classrooms, but they present a panoply of views, arguments, and perspectives on what it means to talk about ethics in the writing classroom and thereby encourage writing teachers to consider the ethical dimensions of their own instructional practices.

Journalistic ethics are defined, explored, and analyzed in this comprehensive and timely volume. Topic examples include confidentiality of news sources, the right to privacy, deception of news sources, freedom of the press, the role of the media in shaping public policy, news bias, whistle-blowing and the press, journalistic morality and professional competence, ethical problems in broadcast journalism, social responsibility and magazines, and journalistic ethics and computer technology. Readers can also find summaries of relevant ethical codes, for example, the American Society of Newspaper Editors Code of Ethics and the American Federation of Advertising Principles. A must-have reference source for students, teachers, journalist, and editors.

In modern democracies, existing moral pluralism conflicts with a commitment to resolve political disputes by way of moral reasoning. Given this fact, how can there be moral resolutions to political disputes and what type of reasoning is appropriate in the public sphere? Fives explores this by closely analysing the work of MacIntyre and Rawls.

This compact and elegant work (equally fitting for both academic as well as the trade audiences) provides a readily accessible and highly readable overview of Bhutan's unique opportunities and challenges; all her prominent environmental legislation, regulatory statutes, ecological customs and practices, both in historic and contemporary terms. At the same time, Bionomics places the ecological context, including a section on animal rights in Bhutan, within the nation's Buddhist spiritual and ethical setting. Historic contextualization accents the book's rich accounting of every national park and scientific reserve, as well as providing up-to-the-minute climate-change related hurdles for the country. Merging the interdisciplinary sciences, engineering and humanities data in a compelling up-to-date portrait of the country, the authors have presented this dramatic compendium against the backdrop of an urgent, global ecological time-frame. It thus becomes clear that the articulated stakes for Bhutan, like her neighboring Himalayan and Indian sub-continental countries (China, India, Bangladesh and Myanmar) are immense, as the Anthropocene epoch unfolds, affecting every living being across the planet. Because Bhutan's two most rewarding revenue streams derive from the sale of hydro-electric power and from tourism, the complexities of modern pressures facing a nation that prides herself on maintaining traditional customs in what has been a uniquely isolated nation are acute.

Like its ancient rivals, Stoic ethics was a form of virtue ethics, yet while the concept of virtue was clearly central to Stoic ethics, the concept of Stoic virtue has not yet been fully explored. Instead, the existing literature tends to impose on the Stoic material philosophically quite alien non-Aristotelian interpretations of virtue. According to Christoph Jedan, however, a thorough examination of the Stoic concept of virtue leads to a reassessment of our understanding of Stoic ethics. This book emphasises in particular the theological underpinning of Stoic ethics, which Jedan contends has been underestimated in current accounts of Stoic ethics. Jedan argues that the theological motifs in Stoic ethics are in fact pivotal to a complete understanding of Stoic ethics. The book focuses on Chrysippus, the most important of the early Stoic thinkers, suggesting that his contribution, and in particular its religious aspect, remained a key point of reference for later Stoics. This fascinating book makes a crucial contribution to the field of ancient ethics.>

This volume collects the best and most influential essays on knowledge, rationality and morality that Stephen Stich has published in the last 40 years. All of the essays are concerned, in one way or another, with the ways in which findings and theories in the cognitive sciences can contribute to, and sometimes reshape traditional philosophical conversations and debates. A central theme in the essays on epistemology and rationality is the philosophical significance of empirical work on human reasoning done by researchers in the "heuristics and biases" tradition, and by their critics in evolutionary psychology. In the essays on morality, a wide range of empirical work is explored, including studies of the psychological foundations of norms, work on the moral / conventional distinction, and empirical attempts to determine whether humans ever act on altruistic motives. Stich was one of the pioneers in the experimental philosophy movement, and work in experimental philosophy plays a prominent role in many of these essays. The volume includes a new introductory essay that offers an overview of the papers and traces the history of how they emerged.

In this wide-ranging philosophical work, Koons takes on two powerful dogmas: anti-realism and materialism. In doing so, Koons develops an efficient metaphysical system that accounts for such phenomena as information, mental representation, our knowledge of logic, mathematics and science, the structure of spacetime, the identity of physical objects, and the objectivity of values and moral norms.

While ethics has been an integral part of economics since the days of Adam Smith (if not Aristotle), many modern economists dismiss ethical concerns in favor of increasing formal mathematical and computational methods. But recent financial crises in the real world have reignited discussions of the importance of ethics to economics, including growing calls for a new approach to incorporating moral philosophy in economic theory, practice, and policy. Ironically, it is the ethics of virtue advocated by Aristotle and Adam Smith that may lead to the most promising way to developing an economics that emphasizes the virtues, character, and judgment of the agents it models. In Economics and the Virtues, editors Jennifer A. Baker and Mark D. White have brought together fifteen leading scholars in economics and philosophy to offer fresh perspectives on integrating virtue into economics. The first section covers five major thinkers and schools in the virtue tradition, tracing historical connections and suggesting new areas of cooperation. The second section applies the ethics of virtue to modern economic theory, delving into its current practices and methodology to suggest areas for integration with moral philosophy. Finally, the third section addresses specific topics such as markets, profits, and justice in the context of virtue and vice, offering valuable applications of virtue to economics. With insights that are novel as well as rooted in time-tested ethical thought, Economics and the Virtues will be of interest to economists, philosophers, and other scholars in the social sciences and humanities, as well as professionals and policymakers in the fields of economics and finance, and makes an invaluable contribution to the ongoing discussion over the role of ethics in economics.

In light of new biomedical technologies, such as artificial reproduction, stem cell research, genetic selection and design, the question of what we owe to future persons-and unborn life more generally-is as contested as ever. In A Theory of Unborn Life: From Abortion to Genetic Manipulation, author Anja J. Karnein provides a novel theory that shows how our commitments to persons can help us make sense of our obligations to unborn life. We should treat embryos that will develop into persons in anticipation of these persons. But how viable is this theory? Moreover, what does it mean to treat embryos in anticipation of the future persons they will develop into? Exploring the attractiveness of this approach for Germany and the U.S. - two countries with very different legal approaches to valuing unborn life-Karnein comes to startling conclusions to some of today's greatest ethical and legal debates. Under Karnein's theory, abortion and stem cell research are legitimate, since embryos that do not have mothers willing to continue to assist their growth have no way of developing into persons. However, Karnein also contends that where the health of embryos is threatened by third parties or even by the women carrying them, embryos need to be treated with the same care due to the children that emerge from them. In the case of genetic manipulation, it is important to respect future persons like our contemporaries, respecting their independence as individuals as well as the way they enter this world without modification. Genetic interventions are therefore only legitimate for insuring that future persons have the necessary physical and mental endowment to lead independent lives so as to be protected from being dominated by their contemporaries. Evincing polarization and dogma, Karnein's clean, philosophically-driven analysis provides a sound ethical foundation for the interpretation of any variety of legal dilemmas surrounding unborn life.

Americans deserve honest government. This text addresses the need for a comprehensive statement of ethical behavior for public officials and employees at every level of government. Recognizing the need for legal reforms that focus mainly on campaign contributions, the authors examine the broader question of how we should measure the routine, day-to-day ethics of men and women in public service. By focussing more on attitudes and practices, the authors suggest that the highest standard of both ethics and competence should be demanded of all our public servants. The book identifies situations in which officials ought to act cautiously and presents the ethical rules that should be applied to each situation.

The text presents a philosophy of public service and then moves to particular situations to which this philosophy must be applied: campaign finance; the campaign itself; behavior of elected officials, appointed officials, and public employees; the role of lobbyists; compensation for public servants; moving to and from the public and private sectors; ethical guidelines for lawyers and judges; the private lives of public servants; and enforcement of ethics. The final chapter discusses the sometimes competing forces of ethics and competency. Ethical guidelines are gathered in the appendix and serve as a useful starting point for ethics in any public service setting. The combination of persuasive and thought-provoking proposals for governmental ethics reform along with practical guidelines on how to maintain the highest possible standards of ethical conduct makes this an important text for students in ethics and government courses, as well as an imperative reading for public officials, whether elected, appointed, or career.

This book presents an answer to the question of why modern legal institutions and the idea of citizenship are important for leading a free life. The majority of views in political and legal philosophy regard the law merely as a useful instrument, employed to render our lives more secure and to enable us to engage in cooperate activities more efficiently. The view developed here defends a non-instrumentalist alternative of why the law matters. It identifies the law as a constitutive feature of our identities as citizens of modern states. The constitutivist argument rests on the (Kantian) assumption that a person's practical identity (its normative self-conception as an agent) is the result of its actions. The law co-constitutes these identities because it maintains the external conditions that are necessary for the actions performed under its authority. Modern legal institutions provide these external prerequisites for achieving a high degree of individual self-constitution and freedom. Only public principles can establish our status as individuals who pursue their life plans and actions as a matter of right and not because others contingently happen to let us do so. The book thereby provides resources for a reply to anarchist challenges to the necessity of legal ordering.

The Human Right to Democracy is the first major study to offer a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the debate. It reconstructs the relevant positions in that debate, identifies the key points of disagreement, and proposes an understanding of the human right to democracy that might form the basis of a wide consensus. The book rejects the idea of a comprehensive right to democratic institutions, and instead argues for a minimal "human right to democracy" which is best understood as an individual's right to voice. The human right to voice is a right, enjoyed by any individual independently of his or her place of residence or nationality, to be heard and supported in cases of severe injustice that is tolerated or condoned by the political community or polity of which the individual is a member. By bringing together human rights discourse and democratic theory, as well as taking into account practical politics, this study broadens the scope of the debatefrom a sometimes overly-narrow focus. The book is of interest not only to political philosophers, but also to international lawyers, diplomats, representatives of civil society, human rights activists, and specialists in development economics.

Russell Hardin presents a new explication of David Hume's moral and political theory. With Hume, he holds that our normative views can be scientifically explained but they cannot be justified as true. Hume argued for the psychological basis of such views. In particular, he argued for sympathy as the mirroring of the psychological sensations and emotions of others. By placing Hume in the developing tradition of social science, as a strong forerunner of his younger friend Adam Smith, Hardin demonstrates Hume's strong strategic sense, his nascent utilitarianism, his powerful theory of convention as a main source of social and political order, and his recognition of moral and political theory as a single enterprise.

Marchetti offers a revisionist account of James's contribution to moral thought in the light of his pragmatic conception of philosophical activity. He sketches a composite picture of a Jamesian approach to ethics revolving around the key notion and practice of a therapeutic critique of one's ordinary moral convictions and style of moral reasoning.

Our capacity to reshape the future has never been more powerful. Yet our ability to foresee the consequences of what we do has not kept pace. Is the idea that we have responsibilities to future generations therefore meaningful? This book argues that it is, with the aid of a unique reading of the care ethics tradition.

Is the way to moral truth through theory? Or do we already know what's right and wrong? Throughout modern history philosophers have tried to construct elaborate moral systems to determine what's right. Recently, however, some have revived the position that we have intuitive knowledge of right and wrong. In this book, David Kaspar introduces and explores the perspective known as 'Intuitionism'. Charting intuitionism's fall in the twentieth century and its recent resurgence, Kaspar looks at the intuitionist approach to the most important topics in ethics, from moral knowledge to intrinsically good moral action. David Kaspar defends intuitionism against criticisms from competing metaethical schools, such as moral nihilism and ethical naturalism. It also takes on normative rivals, such as utilitarianism, Kantianism, and virtue ethics. By consolidating the stronger claims of both early analytic and contemporary intuitionists, Kaspar goes on to make a robust case for a rigorously intuitionist approach to explaining morality. Intuitionism also includes chapter summaries and guides to further reading throughout to help readers explore and master this important school of contemporary ethical thought. This is an ideal resource for undergraduates and postgraduates taking courses in ethics, metaethics and moral philosophy.

This book presents a number of fundamentally challenging perspectives that have been brought to the fore by the national tests on religious education (RE) in Sweden. It particularly focuses on the content under the heading Ethics. It is common knowledge that many teachers find these parts difficult to handle within RE. Further, ethics is a field that addresses a range of moral and existential issues that are not easily treated. Many of these issues may be said to belong to the philosophical context, in which "eternal questions" are gathered and reflected upon. The first chapters highlight the concepts of ethical competence and critical thinking. In the following chapters the concept of ethical competence is analyzed with regard to teachers' objectives and to students' texts, respectively. These chapters pursue a more practice-related approach and highlight specific challenges identified from both teacher and student perspectives. Next, the book raises the issue of global responsibility. What kind of critical issues arise when handling such matters at school? Further, can contemporary moral philosophers contribute to such a discussion? In turn, the book discusses the role of statistical analyses with regard to national tests, while the closing chapters present international perspectives on the book's main themes and concluding remarks. The book's critical yet constructive approach to issues regarding assessment in ethics education makes a valuable contribution to an ongoing debate among researchers as well as to the everyday communication on testing in schools and classrooms. As such, it will appeal to scholars in ethics education and researchers in the field of assessment, as well as educators and teachers interested and engaged in the task of testing ethics in school contexts where curricular demands for valid and authoritative evaluation may provide important guidelines, but may also pose challenges of their own.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. For Hannah Arendt, friendship had political relevance and importance. The essence of friendship, she believed, consisted in discourse, and it is only through discourse, she argued, that the world is rendered humane. This book explores some of the key ideas in Hannah Arendt's work through a study of four lifelong friendships -- with Heinrich Blucher, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers and Mary McCarthy. The book draws on correspondence from both sides, illuminating our understanding of the social contexts within which Arendt's thinking developed and was clarified. It offers a cultural history of ideas: shedding light on two core ideas in Arendt - of 'plurality' and 'promise', and on how those particular ideas emerged through a particular set of relationships, at a significant moment in the history of the West. This book offers an original and accessible 'way in' to Arendt's work for students and scholars of politics, philosophy, intellectual history and literature.