Addressing the perennial question: why should we be moral? this book argues that we can only give a truly and morally satisfying answer to that question by radically reconfiguring our conception of the self and the way it relates to others.

The end of the Cold War and the onset of globalization have brought the study of international politics face-to-face with issues such as human rights, humanitarian interventions, environmental concerns, global social movements, and health issues such as HIV/AIDS. The contributors to this volume re-examine existing approaches and formulate new ethical perspectives for the 21st Century. This volume challenges the status quo in international relations and provides an opening for an alternative theoretical debate for those who are interested in international political theory.

Pollution, deforestation, elimination of species, greenhouse gases and depletion of the ozone layer. These results of human activity are, as most people would agree, undesirable. But what is the value of the natural world that would be lost if the environment were destroyed or seriously degraded? This is the central question of environmental ethics and the focus of this book. It argues that to properly understand how and why nature can have value requires a radical revision of the way philosophy is understood and practised, and an equally radical restructuring of the concepts and categories upon which modern philosophy has been based.

Comparing the liberal Jewish ethics of the German-Jewish philosophers Ernst Cassirer and Hannah Arendt, this book argues that both espoused a diasporic, worldly conception of Jewish identity that was anchored in a pluralist and politically engaged interpretation of Jewish history and an abiding interest in the complex lived reality of modern Jews. Arendt's indebtedness to liberal Jewish thinkers such as Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham Geiger, Hermann Cohen, and Ernst Cassirer has been obscured by her modernist posture and caustic critique of the assimilationism of her German-Jewish forebears. By reorienting our conception of Arendt as a profoundly secular thinker anchored in twentieth century political debates, we are led to rethink the philosophical, political, and ethical legacy of liberal Jewish discourse.

The digital era has redefined our understanding of ethics as a multi-disciplinary phenomenon. The newness of the internet means it is still highly unregulated, which allows for rampant problems encountered by countless internet users. In order to establish a framework to protect digital citizenship, an academic understanding of online ethics is required. Multidisciplinary Approaches to Ethics in the Digital Era examines the concept of ethics in the digital environment through the framework of digitalization. Covering a broad range of topics including ethics in art, organizational ethics, and civil engineering ethics, this book is ideally designed for media professionals, sociologists, programmers, policymakers, government officials, academicians, researchers, and students.

Metaethics occupies a central place in analytical philosophy, and the last forty years has seen an upsurge of interest in questions about the nature and practice of morality. This collection presents original and ground-breaking research on metaethical issues from some of the very best of a new generation of philosophers working in this field.

Moral expectation is a concept with which all of us are well acquainted. Already as children we learn that certain courses of action are expected of us. We are expected to perform certain actions, and we are expected to refrain from other actions. Furthermore, we learn that something is morally wrong with the failure to do what we are morally expected to do. A central theme of this book is that moral expectation should not be confused with moral obligation. While we are morally expected to do everything we are obligated to do, a person can be morally expected to do some things that he or she is not morally obligated to do. Although moral expectation is a familiar notion, it has not been the object of investigation in its own right. In the early chapters Mellema attempts to provide a philosophical account of this familiar notion, distinguish it from other types of expectations, and show how it is possible to form false moral expectations. Subsequent chapters explore the role of moral expectation in agreements between people, analyze ways that people avoid moral expectation, illustrate how groups can have moral expectations, and view moral expectation in the context of our relationship with divine beings. The final chapter provides insight into how moral expectation operates in people's professional lives.

Animal suffering constitutes perhaps the greatest challenge to rational belief in the existence of God. Considerations that render human suffering theologically intelligible seem inapplicable to animal suffering. In this book, Dougherty defends radical possibilities for animal afterlife that allow a soul-making theodicy to apply to their case.

This volume is an edited collection of original papers on the theme of "Values, Rational Choice, and the Will." The editor is a Stanford-trained moral philosopher, and the organizer of a conference held on April 1-3, 2004. The conference succeeded in bringing together a wide range of essays that dealt with most of the central questions of moral philosophy today, in both normative ethics and meta-ethics, theoretical and applied ethics, and especially in moral psychology.

In this book Uwe Steinhoff describes and explains the basic tenets of just war theory and gives a precise, succinct and highly critical account of its present status and of the most important and controversial current debates surrounding it. Rejecting certain in effect medieval assumptions of traditional just war theory and advancing a liberal outlook, Steinhoff argues that every single individual is a legitimate authority and has under certain circumstances the right to declare war on others or the state. He also argues that the just cause cannot be established independently of the other criteria of jus ad bellum (the justification of entering a war), except for right intention, which he interprets more leniently than the tradition does. Turning to jus in bello (which governs the conduct of a war) he criticises the Doctrine of Double Effect and concludes that insofar as wars kill innocents, and be it as "collateral damage", they cannot be just but at best justified as the lesser evil. Steinhoff gives particular attention to the question why soldiers, allegedly, are legitimate targets and civilians not. Discussing four approaches to the explanation of the difference he argues that the four principles underlying them all need to be taken into account and outlines how their weighing can proceed if applied to concrete cases. The resulting approach does not square the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate targets with the distinction between soldiers and civilians, which has extremely important consequences for the conduct of war. Finally, Steinhoff analyses the concept of terrorism and argues that some forms of "terrorism" are actually no terrorism at all and that even terrorism proper can under certain circumstances be justified. This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War.

"Fatal Freedom" is an eloquent defense of every individual's right to choose a voluntary death. The author, a renowned psychiatrist, believes that we can speak about suicide calmly and rationally, as he does in this book, and that we can ultimately accept suicide as part of the human condition. By maintaining statutes that determine that voluntary death is not legal, our society is forfeiting one of its basic freedoms and causing the psychiatric/medical establishment to treat individuals in a manner that is disturbingly inhumane according to Dr. Szasz. His important work asks and points to clear, intelligent answers to some of the most significant ethical questions of our time:

Is suicide a voluntary act?

Should physicians be permitted to prevent it?

Should they be authorized to abet it?

The author's thoughtful analysis of these questions consistently holds forth patient autonomy as paramount; therefore, he argues, patients should not be prevented from exercising their free will, nor should physicians be permitted to enter the process by prescribing or providing the means for voluntary death.

Dr. Szasz predicts that we will look back at our present prohibitory policies toward suicide with the same amazed disapproval with which we regard past policies toward homosexuality, masturbation, and birth control. This comparison with other practices that started as sins, became crimes, then were regarded as mental illnesses, and are now becoming more widely accepted, opens up the discussion and understanding of suicide in a historical context. The book explores attitudes toward suicide held by the ancient Greeks and Romans, through early Christianity and the Reformation, to the advent of modern psychiatry and contemporary society as a whole. Our tendency to define disapproved behaviors as diseases has created a psychiatric establishment that exerts far too much influence over how and when we choose to die. Just as we have come to accept the individual's right to birth control, so too must we accept his right to death control before we can call our society humane or free.

This work contributes to the development of a theoretical context of the politics of truth about animals. By applying and extending Foucault's theory of power, this work uncovers dominant and subjugated discourses about animals and describes power-knowledge associated with statements about animals that are understood to convey true things.

When this seminal collection of essays was first published in 1978, the philosophical 'problem' of obligations to fixture generations was not widely recognised. But as the contributors point out, the theories that have constituted the stock-in-trade of moral philosophers for the past two hundred years often produce weird and counter-intuitive results when they are extended to try to include those who are as yet unborn. Utilitarianism can appear to recommend practically unlimited population increase, with quantity of life taking precedence over quality; theories based on a social contract present difficulties involving reciprocity - we can affect the lives of future people while they apparently cannot affect ours; while the idea of rights seems difficult to apply to those whose future existence may depend on our present choice of action - do 'potential' people have a 'right' to be born? On its original publication, the journal Ethics devoted 30 pages to a review of Obligations to Future Generations, and the book is still frequently and extensively cited and discussed. The philosophical questions raised here centre around 'whether and to what degree it can be morally incumbent on us to make sacrifices to bring happy people into the world or to avoid preventing them being brought into the world'. The implications surrounding this central question are becoming ever more urgent in the light of increasing concerns over dwindling resources, population growth, globalisation and environmental risk. This collection is essential reading for students of ethics and social policy, and for anyone concerned with the relation between the present choices and future chances of humanity.

Biological and philosophical anthropologies of the 20th century keep emphasising the "Sonderstellung" of humans among the realm of living beings. However, it is not clear how this particular role should be characterised, how it should be reconciled with biological findings, and which theoretical and practical conclusions should be drawn from it. Partly in opposition to these anthropological views on humankind biological disciplines underline the extensive similarities and common characteristics between humans and other species. Apparently, these biological findings concur with the criticism of anthropocentrism, which is expressed in Western philosophy of nature and by ethicists. To discuss these issues the Europaische Akademie organized the conference "The Uniqueness of Humankind Uber die Sonderstellung des Menschen." The proceedings of the conference documented in this volume approached the theoretical and practical concept of the "Sonderstellung" against the background of present day knowledge in biosciences. Furthermore, by interdisciplinary efforts, an attempt was made to clarify those conceptual problems that arise with the idea of the uniqueness of humankind. The present volume partly takes up and further develops topics that have been raised by volume 15, On Human Nature, that was published in this series in 2002."

According to Adam Smith, vanity is a vice that contains a promise: a vain person is much more likely than a person with low self-esteem to accomplish great things. Problematic as it may be from a moral perspective, vanity makes a person more likely to succeed in business, politics and other public pursuits. "The great secret of education," Smith writes, "is to direct vanity to proper objects:" this peculiar vice can serve as a stepping-stone to virtue. How can this transformation be accomplished and what might go wrong along the way? What exactly is vanity and how does it factor into our personal and professional lives, for better and for worse? This book brings Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments into conversation with William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair to offer an analysis of vanity and the objects (proper and otherwise) to which it may be directed. Leading the way through the literary case study presented here is Becky Sharp, the ambitious and cunning protagonist of Thackeray's novel. Becky is joined by a number of other 19th Century literary heroines - drawn from the novels of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot - whose feminine (and feminist) perspectives complement Smith's astute observations and complicate his account of vanity. The fictional characters featured in this volume enrich and deepen our understanding of Smith's work and disclose parts of our own experience in a fresh way, revealing the dark and at times ridiculous aspects of life in Vanity Fair, today as in the past.

Degradation, dehumanization, instrumentalization, humiliation, and nonrecognition - these concepts point to ways in which we understand human beings to be violated in their dignity. Violations of human dignity are brought about by concrete practices and conditions; some commonly acknowledged, such as torture and rape, and others more contested, such as poverty and exclusion. This volume collates reflections on such concepts and a range of practices, deepening our understanding of human dignity and its violation, bringing to the surface interrelationships and commonalities, and pointing to the values that are thereby shown to be in danger. In presenting a streamlined discussion from a negative perspective, complemented by conclusions for a positive account of human dignity, the book is at once a contribution to the body of literature on what dignity is and how it should be protected as well as constituting an alternative, fresh and focused perspective relevant to this significant recurring debate. As the concept of human dignity itself crosses disciplinary boundaries, this is mirrored in the unique range of perspectives brought by the book's European and American contributors - in philosophy and ethics, law, human rights, literature, cultural studies and interdisciplinary research. This volume will be of interest to social and moral philosophers, legal and human rights theorists, practitioners and students.

The book questions the concept of "the enemy," beginning with Carl Schmitt's famous notion that politics is the relationship of friend and enemy and that humanity is not a political concept. This book deconstructs this notion and views humanity at the center of a type of politics based on ethics.

View the Table of Contents.
Read the Introduction.

"Susan Carle has done an extraordinary service. Her collection is sophisticated, challenging, and desperately needed. The legal academy is often sadly prone to treat the ethics of lawyering as an afterthought or a necessary nuisance. This smart collection of critical essays gives the subject the serious attention it deserves."
--Peggy Cooper Davis, New York University School of Law

"Carle has put together an important collection of readings. This book will be a valuable addition to any course on the legal profession."
--David Wilkins, Harvard Law School

"Susan Carle's book brings together the best writings on the more visionary and justice-seeking goals of the legal profession. Lawyers should serve society, clients at large, as well as clients in need. This book will be assigned reading in courses devoted to lawyering and social justice--it should be required reading for all legal professionals."
--Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Georgetown University Law Center

"Lawyers and law students alike will benefit from this volume's strong and persuasive reminder that traditional 'good' lawyering and a moral commitment to social justice can walk hand in hand. Teachers who want to remind students of why they came to law school--to leave the world a better place than they found it--will find this book a great asset."
--Richard Zitrin, author of "Legal Ethics in the Practice of Law"

Legal ethics should be far more than a set of rules on professional responsibility; they can serve as a means for changing power relations, empowering the disenfranchised, and advocating progressive social change. Lawyers' Ethics and the Pursuitof Social Justice broadens the discussion on legal ethics by first introducing the historical and theoretical background and then connecting it to real world issues while addressing lawyers' ethical obligations to work for social justice.

The reader features differing critical approaches and opens up new avenues of ethical debate. While the literature included is diverse and interdisciplinary, it shares a vision of legal ethical inquiry as a means for changing power relations, empowering the disenfranchised, and advocating progressive social change. Through a combination of provocative selections, lively writing, concrete examples of cases and social movements, and incisive editorial commentary, Lawyersa Ethics and the Pursuit of Social Justice defines the emergence of an exciting new field of critical legal ethics scholarship.

Restoring the historicity and plurality of archaeological ethics is a task to which this book is devoted; its emphasis on praxis mends the historical condition of ethics. In doing so, it shows that nowadays a multicultural (sometimes also called "public") ethic looms large in the discipline. By engaging communities "differently," archaeology has explicitly adopted an ethical outlook, purportedly striving to overcome its colonial ontology and metaphysics. In this new scenario, respect for other historical systems/worldviews and social accountability appear to be prominent. Being ethical in archaeological terms in the multicultural context has become mandatory, so much that most professional, international and national archaeological associations have ethical principles as guiding forces behind their openness towards social sectors traditionally ignored or marginalized by their practices. This powerful new ethics-its newness is based, to a large extent, in that it is the first time that archaeological ethics is explicitly stated, as if it didn't exist before-emanates from metropolitan centers, only to be adopted elsewhere. In this regard, it is worth probing the very nature of the dominant multicultural ethics in disciplinary practices because (a) it is at least suspicious that at the same time archaeology has tuned up with postmodern capitalist/market needs, and (b) the discipline (along with its ethical principles) is contested worldwide by grass-roots organizations and social movements. Can archaeology have socially committed ethical principles at the same time that it strengthens its relationship with the market and capitalism? Is this coincidence just merely haphazard or does it obey more structural rules? The papers in this book try to answer these two questions by examining praxis-based contexts in which archaeological ethics unfolds.

First published in 2000. This is Volume I of six in the Library of Philosophy series on Ethics and Political Philosophy. Written in 1952, this is a selection of essays from public lectures and articles on the biographies on Sir Issac Newton and John Locke, sections on the philosophy of science, and ethics.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Questions shape the Holocaust's legacy. 'What happened to ethics during the Holocaust? What should ethics be, and what can it do after the Holocaust?' loom large among them. Absent the overriding or moral sensibilities, if not the collapse or collaboration of ethical traditions, the Holocaust could not have happened. Its devastation may have deepened conviction that there is a crucial difference between right and wrong; its destruction may have renewed awareness about the importance of ethical standards and conduct. But Birkenau, the main killing center at Auschwitz, also continues to cast a disturbing shadow over basic beliefs concerning right and wrong, human rights, and the hope that human beings will learn from the past. This book explores those realities and the issues they contain. It does so not to discourage but to encourage, not to deepen darkness and despair but to face those realities honestly and in a way that can make post-Holocaust ethics more credible and realistic. The book's thesis is that nothing human, natural or divine guarantees respect for the ethical values and commitments that are most needed in contemporary human existence, but nothing is more important than our commitment to defend them, for they remain as fundamental as they are fragile, as precious as they are endangered.

This book explores the theoretical basis of our ethical obligations to others as self-knowing beings - this task being envisaged as an essential supplement to a traditional ethic of respect for persons. Authoritative knowledge of others brings with it certain obligations, which are reflected in (inter alia) the moral and legal safeguards designed to ensure that certain information is 'put out of play' for job selection purposes etc. However, the theoretical basis for such obligations has never been fully clarified. This book begins by identifying a distinctive class of 'interpretive' moral wrongs (including stereotyping, discrimination and objectification). It then shows how our obligations in respect of these wrongs can be understood, drawing on insights from the tradition of philosophical reflection on "recognition." The book will be of interest to anyone concerned with the adequacy of a modern ethic of respect for persons - particularly in applied and professional ethics.