German biologist Jakob von Uexkull focused on how an animal, through its behavioral relations, both impacts and is impacted by its own unique environment. Onto-Ethologies traces the influence of Uexkull's ideas on the thought of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Gilles Deleuze, as they explore how animal behavior might be said to approximate, but also differ from, human behavior. It is the relation between animal and environment that interests Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Deleuze, and yet it is the differences in their approach to Uexkull (and to concepts such as world, body, and affect) that prove so fascinating.

This book extends the discussion of the nature of freedom and what it means for a human to be free. This question has occupied the minds of thinkers since the Enlightenment. However, without exception, every one of these discussions has focused on the character of liberty on Earth. In this volume the authors explore how people are likely to be governed in space and how that will affect what sort of liberty they experience. Who will control oxygen? How will people maximise freedom of movement in a lethal environment? What sort of political and economic systems can be created in places that will be inherently isolated? These are just a few of the major questions that bear on the topic of extra-terrestrial liberty. During the last forty years an increasing number of nations have developed the capability of launching people into space. The USA, Europe, Russia, China and soon India have human space exploration programs. These developments raise the fundamental question of how are humans to be governed in space. This book follows from a previous volume published in this series which looked at the Meaning of Liberty Beyond the Earth and explored what sort of freedoms could exist in space in a very general way. This new volume focuses on systems of governance and how they will influence which of these sorts of freedoms will become dominant in extra-terrestrial society. The book targets a wide readership covers many groups including: Space policy makers interested in understanding how societies will develop in space and what the policy implications might be for space organisations. Space engineers interested in understanding how social developments in space might influence the way in which infrastructure and space settlements should be designed. Space scientists interested in how scientific developments might influence the social structures of settlements beyond the Earth. Social scientists (political philosophers, ethicists etc) interested in understanding how societies will develop in the future.

The purpose of the books in this series is to explore the central and unique role of organizational ethics in creating and sustaining a pluralistic, free enterprise economy. The primary goal of the research studies published here is to examine how profit seeking and not for profit organizations can be conceived and designed to satisfy legitimate human needs in an ethical and meaningful way.

A distinguished international team of scholars under the editorship of Carlo Natali have collaborated to produce a systematic, chapter-by-chapter study of one of the most influential texts in the history of moral philosophy. The seventh book of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics discusses weakness of will in its first ten chapters, then turns in the last four chapters to pleasure and its relation to the supreme human good.

This volume supports the ethical negotiations of empirical researchers and enhances understanding of the complex imbrication of ethics and knowledge in contemporary social research. It deals jointly with the role of ethics in, and the effect of ethics on, social research.

"The Ethical" is a collection of readings on ethics and the nature of morality by some of the most important contemporary philosophers in the continental tradition.

Recent attention to ethics in continental thought - often taken to be antithetical to Anglo-American moral philosophy - demonstrates how much these two traditions have in common. The essays in this volume indicate the rich history and contemporary vitality of ethics in continental philosophy. They reflect a variety of currents in continental thought, including phenomenology, genealogy, deconstruction, and discourse ethics. Topics addressed include the status of the moral agent and its constitution or formation, the priority to be assigned to the other in relation to the self, the critique of rigid models of moral reasoning, and the limits of the moral.This is the first anthology of its kind devoted to emphasizing continental ethical philosophy as an important area of study in its own right.

In this title, drawing on insights from Continental, Feminist and Religious thought, an international team of leading scholars explore alternative approaches to medical ethics. Exploring alternative approaches to medical ethics emerging from the latest research in a broad range of philosophical disciplines and traditions, "Reconceiving Medical Ethics" brings together an international team of leading scholars to explore some of the most important topics in the field. Drawing on insights from Continental, Feminist and Religious thought that are often neglected in discussions of the field, the book takes as its focus a philosophical exploration of the doctor-patient relationship that lies at the heart of any consideration of medical ethics. From this starting point the book goes on to consider such important subjects as attitudes to the body, informed consent, paternalism and the role of the law in medicine. Including discussion of case studies in each chapter, "Reconceiving Medical Ethics" opens up new avenues for discussion of this crucial topic in practical ethics today. "Continuum Studies in Philosophy" presents cutting-edge scholarship in all the major areas of research and study. The wholly original arguments, perspectives and research findings in titles in this series make it an important and stimulating resource for students and academics from a range of disciplines across the humanities and social sciences.

The use of measures of economic output to guide policymaking has been criticized for decades because of their weak ties to human well-being. Recently, many scholars and politicians have called for measures of happiness or subjective well-being to be used to guide policy in people's true interests. In The Illusion of Well-Being, Mark D. White explains why using happiness as a tool for policymaking is misguided and unethical. Happiness is too vague a term to define, and too general a concept, to measure in a way that captures people's true feelings. He extends this critique to well-being in general and concludes that no measure of well-being can do justice to people's true interests, which are complex, multifaceted, and subjective. White suggests instead that policymaking be conducted according to respect and responsiveness, promoting the true interests of citizens while addressing their real needs, and devoting government resources to where they can do the most good.

"The Blackwell Guide to Mill's Utilitarianism" volume is an ideal commentary for students on Mill's classic essay.
Contains the complete text of Utilitarianism and twelve related essays.
Essays cover the background to Mill's classic essay, analyses of the arguments, and contemporary debates within the utilitarian tradition.
Also includes a case study demonstrating the application of utilitarian theory to military or non-violent responses to terrorism.
Each contribution is an original essay written by a specialist at the cutting edge of philosophical scholarship.

A Feminist Perspective on Virtue Ethics provides of historical survey of feminist virtue ethics, and shows how the ethical theorizing of women in the past can be brought to bear on that of women in the present.

"We are entering a new era in the question of animal rights. Nowhere is this extremely important issue more cogently discussed than in "The Scalpel and the Butterfly. Those who believe, as I do, that animals have rights far beyond those that we at present accord them should arm themselves with the information in this valuable book."--Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

"Must reading for biomedical researchers and indeed for anyone concerned about the ethics of human and animal experimentation. Rudacille is fair to both camps--she exposes both the merits and the weaknesses of the animal rights advocates and of the researchers, and tellingly recounts changes in our attitudes over time that dramatically illustrate the need for open minds and the willingness to change behavior when warranted by the evidence."--Louis Lasagna, Tufts University School of Medicine

This book seeks to clarify the concept of irony and its relation to moral commitment. Frazier provides a discussion of the contrasting accounts of Richard Rorty and Soren Kierkegaard. He argues that, while Rorty's position is much more defensible and thoughtful than his detractors tend to recognize, it turns out to be surprisingly more parochial than Kierkegaard's.

Rachel Cohon offers an original interpretation of the moral philosophy of David Hume, focusing on two areas. Firstly, his metaethics. Cohon reinterprets Hume's claim that moral distinctions are not derived from reason and explains why he makes it. She finds that Hume did not actually hold three "Humean" claims: 1) that beliefs alone cannot move us to act, 2) that evaluative propositions cannot be validly inferred from purely factual propositions, or 3) that moral judgments lack truth value. According to Hume, human beings discern moral virtues and vices by means of feeling or emotion in a way rather like sensing; but this also gives the moral judge a truth-apt idea of a virtue or vice as a felt property. Secondly, Cohon examines the artificial virtues. Hume says that although many virtues are refinements of natural human tendencies, others (such as honesty) are constructed by social convention to make cooperation possible; and some of these generate paradoxes. She argues that Hume sees these traits as prosthetic virtues that compensate for deficiencies in human nature. However, their true status clashes with our common-sense conception of a virtue, and so has been concealed, giving rise to the paradoxes.

This is the first comprehensive handbook in the philosophy of criminal law. It contains seventeen original essays by leading thinkers in the field and covers the field's major topics including limits to criminalization, obscenity and hate speech, blackmail, the law of rape, attempts, accomplice liability, causation, responsibility, justification and excuse, duress, provocation and self-defense, insanity, punishment, the death penalty, mercy, and preventive detention and other alternatives to punishment. It will be an invaluable resource for scholars and students whose research and studies concern philosophical issues in criminal law and criminal law theory.

People have strong moral beliefs about right and wrong, yet commonly act contrary to those beliefs. Most of us, at some time or another, have crossed a moral line and yet still view ourselves as moral and have a clean conscience. From intimate relationships to national politics, we define ourselves in large part by how we - and our friends, family, and members of our social groups - draw moral lines around our actions, thoughts, and intentions. While philosophers have weighed in on these issues for thousands of years, social scientists often underplay social life's moral dimension. "Moral Selves, Evil "Selves highlights our individual sense of moral coherence and develops a theory of the development and maintenance of this sense in an ambiguous and complicated social world. By conceptualizing a social psychology of conscience, this book explains how we can properly include individual and societal notions of morality into understanding the self across time and situation.

Kristi A. Olson asks: What is a fair income distribution? She rejects equal income shares: equal pay undercompensates workers in dangerous and onerous jobs. The envy test, which takes both income and work into account, fares better. Yet, a distribution in which no one prefers someone else's circumstances to her own-as the envy test requires-is unlikely to exist, and even when it does exist, the normative connection between envy and fairness has not been established. After critiquing existing answers, Olson invokes the idea of mutual justifiability: when someone claims that her situation should be improved at someone else's expense, she must be able to give a reason that cannot be reasonably rejected by a free and equal individual who regards everyone else as the same. To give the answer bite, Olson distinguishes two types of envy. Reasons based on personal envy can be reasonably rejected; reasons based on impersonal envy cannot. Olson then tests the solidarity solution against the theories of Ronald Dworkin, Philippe Van Parijs, and Marc Fleurbaey and applies it directly to the concrete issues of the gender wage gap and taxation. By providing a new approach to problems of fair resource allocation, The Solidarity Solution establishes philosophical discussion as critical to today's fight to end economic injustice.

Distinguished international scholars discuss the connection between emotion and value in Kant's philosophy, from his ethics to his philosophy of mind, aesthetics, religion and politics. Through a mixture of interpretation and critical discussion, this collection demonstrates the continuing relevance of Kant's work to philosophical debates.

This book rewrites the history of Christian peace ethics. Christian reflection on reducing violence or overcoming war has roots in ancient Roman philosophy and eventually grew to influence modern international law. This historical overview begins with Cicero, the source of Christian authors like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. It is highly debatable whether Augustine had a systematic interest in just war or whether his writings were used to develop a systematic just war teaching only by the later tradition. May Christians justifiably use force to overcome disorder and achieve peace? The book traces the classical debate from Thomas Aquinas to early modern-age thinkers like Vitoria, Suarez, Martin Luther, Hugo Grotius and Immanuel Kant. It highlights the diversity of the approaches of theologians, philosophers and lawyers. Modern cosmopolitianism and international law-thinking, it shows, are rooted in the Spanish Scholastics, where Grotius and Kant each found the inspiration to inaugurate a modern peace ethic. In the 20th century the tradition has taken aim not only at reducing violence and overcoming war but at developing a constructive ethic of peace building, as is reflected in Pope John Paul II's teaching.

What are the grounds for and limits to obedience to the state?

Dorota Mokrosinska presents a fresh analysis of the most influential theories of political obligation and develops a novel approach to this foundational problem of political philosophy, an intriguing combination of the elements of natural duty and associative theories. The theory of political obligation developed in the book extends the scope of the contemporary debate on political obligation by arguing that political obligation can be binding even under the jurisdiction of unjust states. The arguments pursued in the book are illustrated with the results of sociological research concerning the reasons that governed people's attitudes to the authoritarian communist regimes in East Europe viz. communist Poland. This book provides the first detailed argument of how a theory of political obligation can apply to subjects of an unjust state.

This work begins from our Socratic ignorance of empathy. It applies four philosophical methods -- phenomenology, self psychology, language analysis, and interpretive suspicion (hermeneutics) to generating a clearing for empathy as authentic being with one another in community. In philosophical empathy, the other individual humanizes the one who, in turn, give humanity back to the other in everyday empathy. Examples of empathy in story telling, literature, self psychology, and neurology explore the scope of empathy as the foundation for the community of fellow travelers in finitude. The inquiry is initially guided by Martin Heidegger's call for a 'hermeneutic of empathy.' It is informed by Edmund Husserl's posthumous writings on empathy, and it integrates the contribution of the Anglo-American tradition of John Searle. The result is an exposure of the deep structure of empathy as a fundamentally human capability for creating possibilities of community and human relations.

This book argues that the institutions of law, and the structures of legal thought, are to be understood by reference to a moral ideal. The idea of law is an ideal of freedom, or independence from the power of others. The moral value and justificatory force of law are not contingent upon circumstance, but intrinsic to its character as law. Doctrinal legal arguments are shaped by rival conceptions of the conditions for realisation of the idea of law. In making these claims, the author rejects the viewpoint of much contemporary legal theory, and seeks to move jurisprudence closer to an older tradition of philosophical reflection upon law, exemplified by Hobbes and Kant. Modern analytical jurisprudence has tended to view these older philosophies as confused precisely in so far as they equate an understanding of law's nature with a revelation of its moral basis. According to most contemporary legal theorists, the understanding and analysis of existing institutions is quite distinct from any enterprise of moral reflection. But the relationship between ideals and practices is much more intimate than this approach would suggest. Some institutions can be properly understood only when they are viewed as imperfect attempts to realise moral or political ideals; and some ideals can be conceived only by reference to their expression in institutions.