This text offers a review of historical traditions of international ethical and political theory in the light of modern developments in political philosophy. McCarthy provides a defence of natural law tradition, and in response to the criticism of natural law that, along with Kantianism, it is too abstract to produce a substantive account of justice and rights, constructs an argument for basic, agency-grounded rights. Through his study, the author attacks "realism" and the modern "cosmopolitan" theories that have been too little debated.

Robert Audi here presents an ethical theory that uniquely integrates naturalistic and rationalistic elements. He develops his theory in four areas: moral epistemology, the metaphysics of ethics, moral psychology, and the foundations of ethics. Including both new and published work, he sets forth a moderate intuitionism, clarifies the relation between reason and motivation, constructs a theory of intrinsic value and its place in moral obligation, and presents a sophisticated account of moral justification. The concluding chapter articulates a new normative framework built from both Kantian and intuitionist elements.

Are there things we should value because they are, quite simply, good? If so, such things might be said to have "absolute goodness." They would be good simpliciter or full stop - not good for someone, not good of a kind, but nonetheless good (period). They might also be called "impersonal values." The reason why we ought to value such things, if there are any, would merely be the fact that they are, quite simply, good things. In the twentieth century, G. E. Moore was the great champion of absolute goodness, but he is not the only philosopher who posits the existence and importance of this property.
Against these friends of absolute goodness, Richard Kraut here builds on the argument he made in What is Good and Why, demonstrating that goodness is not a reason-giving property - in fact, there may be no such thing. It is, he holds, an insidious category of practical thought, because it can be and has been used to justify what is harmful and condemn what is beneficial. Impersonal value draws us away from what is good for persons. His strategy for opposing absolute goodness is to search for domains of practical reasoning in which it might be thought to be needed, and this leads him to an examination of a wide variety of moral phenomena: pleasure, knowledge, beauty, love, cruelty, suicide, future generations, bio-diversity, killing in self-defense, and the extinction of our species. Even persons, he proposes, should not be said to have absolute value. The special importance of human life rests instead on the great advantages that such lives normally offer.
"When one reads this, one sees the possibility of real philosophical progress. If Kraut is right, I'd be wrong to say that this book is good, period. Or even great, period. But I will say that, as a work of philosophy, and for those who read it, it is excellent indeed." --Russ Shafer-Landau, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The nine original essays collected in this volume explore the themes of philosophical progress, ultimate explanation, the metaphysics of free will, and the relation of sciences and religion. These essays exemplify Nicholas Rescher's characteristic mode of combining historical perspectives with analytical elucidation on philosophically contested issues and utilize this methodology to address some of the salient problems of the field.

The problem of education is twofold: first to know, and then to utter. Every one who lives any semblance of an inner life thinks more nobly and profoundly than he speaks; and the best of teachers can impart only broken images of the truth which they perceive. Speech which goes from one to another between two natures, and, what is worse, between two experiences, is doubly relative. The speaker buries his meaning; it is for the hearer to dig it up again; and all speech, written or spoken, is in a dead language until it finds a willing and prepared hearer. Such, moreover, is the complexity of life, that when we condescend upon details in our advice, we may be sure we condescend on error; and the best of education is to throw out some magnanimous hints. No man was ever so poor that he could express all he has in him by words, looks, or actions; his true knowledge is eternally incommu-nicable, for it is a knowledge of himself; and his best wisdom comes to him by no process of the mind, but in a supreme self-dictation, which keeps varying from hour to hour in its dictates with the variation of events and circumstances.

Beginning with the thesis that Humanism has its roots both in the Enlightenment and in Transcendentalism, this book explores the consequences of taking such a point of view. Radest criticizes the desertion of Enlightenment values such as freedom, human solidarity, and rationality, as well as the failure of Humanists to understand the subjective and emotional features of their history. Out of this exploration, which is a consequence of both personal experience and philosophic analysis, Radest concludes that Humanism, and by implication, modernism are still dynamic and relevant modes of response to the problems of human beings.

Can it be justifiable to commit oneself 'by faith' to a religious claim when its truth lacks adequate support from one's total available evidence? In Believing by Faith, John Bishop defends a version of fideism inspired by William James's 1896 lecture 'The Will to Believe'. By critiquing both 'isolationist' (Wittgensteinian) and Reformed epistemologies of religious belief, Bishop argues that anyone who accepts that our publicly available evidence is equally open to theistic and naturalist/atheistic interpretations will need to defend a modest fideist position. This modest fideism understands theistic commitment as involving 'doxastic venture' - practical commitment to propositions held to be true through 'passional' causes (causes other than the recognition of evidence of or for their truth).
While Bishop argues that concern about the justifiability of religious doxastic venture is ultimately moral concern, he accepts that faith-ventures can be morally justifiable only if they are in accord with the proper exercise of our rational epistemic capacities. Legitimate faith-ventures may thus never be counter-evidential, and, furthermore, may be made supra-evidentially only when the truth of the faith-proposition concerned necessarily cannot be settled on the basis of evidence. Bishop extends this Jamesian account by requiring that justifiable faith-ventures should also be morally acceptable both in motivation and content. Hard-line evidentialists, however, insist that all religious faith-ventures are morally wrong. Bishop thus conducts an extended debate between fideists and hard-line evidentialists, arguing that neither side can succeed in establishing the irrationality of itsopposition. He concludes by suggesting that fideism may nevertheless be morally preferable, as a less dogmatic, more self-accepting, even a more loving, position than its evidentialist rival.

This volume brings together a range of interdisciplinary perspectives on a topic of central importance, but which has otherwise tended to be approached from within just one or another disciplinary framework. Most of the essays contained here incorporate some degree of interdisciplinarity in their own approach, but the volume nevertheless divides into three main sections: Philosophical considerations; Humanities approaches; Legal, medical, and therapeutic contexts. The volume includes essays by philosophers, medical practitioners and researchers, historians, lawyers, literary, Classical, and Judaic scholars. The essays are united by a common concern with the question of the human character of suffering, and the demands that suffering, and the recognition of suffering, make upon us.

Moral philosophy is no longer being pursued from arm-chairs. Instead, ethical questions are dissected in the experimental lab. This volume enables its readers to immerse themselves into Experimental Ethics' history, its current topics and future perspectives, its methodology, and the criticism it is subject to.

This book presents an anti-intellectualist view of how the cognitive-mental dimension of human intellect is rooted in and interwoven with our embodied-internal components including emotion, perception, desire, etc., by investigating practical forms of thinking such as deliberation, planning, decision-making, etc. With many thought-provoking statements, the book revises some classical notions of rationality with new interpretation: we are "rational animals", which means we have both rational capabilities, such as calculation, evaluation, justification, etc., and more animal aspects, like desire, emotion, and the senses. According to the traditional position of rationalism, we use well-grounded reason as the fundamental basis of our actions. But this book argues that we simply perform our practical intellect intuitively and spontaneously, just like playing music. By this the author turns the dominant metaphor of "architecture" in understanding of human rationality to that of "music-playing". This book presents a groundbreaking and compelling critique of today's pervasively reflective-intellectual culture, just as Bernard Williams, Charles Taylor and other philosophers diagnose, and makes any detached notion of rationality and formalized understanding of human intellect highly problematic.Methodologically, it not only reconciles the phenomenological-hermeneutic tradition with analytical approaches, but also integrates various theories, such as moral psychology, emotional studies, action theory, decision theory, performativity studies, music philosophy, tacit knowledge, collective epistemology and media theory. Further, its use of everyday cases, metaphors, folk stories and references to movies and literature make the book easy to read and appealing for a broad readership.

This book explores the overlooked but vital theoretical relationships between R. M. Hare, Alan Gewirth, and Jurgen Habermas. The author claims their accounts of value, while failing to address classic virtue-theoretical critiques, bear the seeds of a resolution to the ultimate question "What is most valuable?" These dialectical approaches, as claimed, justify a reinterpretation of value and value judgment according to the Carnapian conception of an empirical-linguistic framework or grammar. Through a further synthesis with the work of Philippa Foot and Thomas Magnell, the author shows that "value" would be literally meaningless without four fundamental phenomena which constitute such a framework: Logical Judgment, Conceptual Synthesis, Conceptual Abstraction, and Freedom. As part of the 'grammar of goodness,' the excellence of these phenomena, in a highly concrete way, constitute the essence of the greatest good, as this book explains.

Animal Suffering: Philosophy and Culture explores how animal suffering is made meaningful within Western ramifications. It is often argued that today's culture is ambivalent in its attitudes toward non-human animals: on the one hand, many speak of the importance of 'animal welfare', and on the other, billions of animals each year are treated as little more than production units. The book gains its impetus from here, as it seeks to map out both the facts and norms related to animal suffering. It investigates themes such as animal welfare and suffering in practice, skepticism concerning the human ability to understand non-human suffering, cultural and philosophical roots of compassion, and contemporary approaches to animal ethics. At its center is the pivotal question: What is the moral significance of animal suffering? The key approach brought forward is 'intersubjectivity', via which the suffering of other animals can be understood in a fresh light.

The Roman Catholic Bishops of the Caribbean, the Antilles Episcopal Conference (AEC), have over the past forty years written statements addressed to their faithful and people in the wider Caribbean. The statements covered a wide range of issues impinging on the life and faith of Caribbean people, including political engagement, crime and violence, homosexuality, HIV-AIDS, sexuality, the environment. A key theme running through the statements is the concern with justice. This collection of critical essays and personal reflections explores the insights provided by these statements. In so doing, it presents a critical reading of the corpus with a view to presenting its relevance to the regional and global conversation on matters of human flourishing. The authors of the volume represent the diverse voices from within the Catholic Caribbean, particularly some fresh new voices. This collection brings together the voices of men and women--pastors, laity, theologians, political leaders, educators; each essayist considers a specific statement and provides a commentary and interpretation of its contents as well as a considered assessment of its impact on the life of the faithful. Academics, lay persons, pastors, policy makers and politicians will find this a useful collection.

In Moral Creativity, John Wall argues that moral life and thought are inherently and radically creative. Human beings are called by their own primordially created depths to exceed historical evil and tragedy through the ongoing creative transformation of their world. This thesis challenges ancient Greek and biblical separations of ethics and poetic image-making, as well as contemporary conceptions of moral life as grounded in abstract principles or preconstituted traditions. Taking as his point of departure the poetics of the will of Paul Ricoeur, and ranging widely into critical conversations with Continental, narrative, feminist, and liberationist ethics, Wall uncovers the profound senses in which moral practice and thought involve tension, catharsis, excess, and renewal. In the process, he draws new connections between sin and tragedy, practice and poetics, and morality and myth. Rather than proposing a complete ethics, Moral Creativity is a meta-ethical work investigating the creative capability as part of what it means, morally, to be human. This capability is explored around four dimensions of ontology, teleology, deontology, and social practice. In each case, Wall examines a traditional perspective on the relation of ethics to poetics, critiques it using resources from contemporary phenomenology, and develops a conception of a more original poetics of moral life. In the end, moral creativity is a human capability for inhabiting tensions among others and in social systems and, in the image of a Creator, creating together an ever more radically inclusive moral world.

"Ethics: The Fundamentals" explores core ideas and arguments in moral theory by introducing students to different philosophical approaches to ethics, including virtue ethics, Kantian ethics, divine command theory, and feminist ethics.
The first volume in the new Fundamentals of Philosophy series.
Presents lively, real-world examples and thoughtful discussion of key moral philosophers and their ideas.
Constitutes an excellent resource for readers coming to the subject of ethics for the first time.

How are emotions related to values? This book argues against a perceptual theory of emotions, which sees emotions as perception-like states that help us gain evaluative knowledge, and argues for a caring-based theory of emotions, which sees emotions as felt desires or desire satisfactions, both of which arise out of caring about something.

MacIntyre's project, here as elsewhere, is to put up a fight against philosophical relativism. . . . The current form is the 'incommensurability,' so-called, of differing standpoints or conceptual schemes. Mr. MacIntyre claims that different schools of philosophy must differ fundamentally about what counts as a rational way to settle intellectual differences. Reading between the lines, one can see that he has in mind nationalities as well as thinkers, and literary criticism as well as academic philosophy. More explicitly, he labels and discusses three significantly different standpoints: the encyclopedic, the genealogical and the traditional. . . . [T]he chapters on the development of Christian philosophy between Augustine and Duns Scotus are very interesting indeed. . . . [MacIntyre] must be the past, present, future, and all-time philosophical historians' historian of philosophy. -The New York Times Book Review

Are traditional notions of morality actually the means of enslaving the human spirit? This is the claim of Friedrich Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil. Nietzsche is one of the most controversial of European philosophers. His bold attacks on Christianity, and the advocacy of a fearless approach to the uncertainties of life, have earned him both criticism and praise from disparate quarters. This book embodies the author s attempt to summarize and enhance his previous work. Beyond Good and Evil is Nietzsche at his most concise and systematic, and is a good starting point for the novice.