We rely on two different conceptions of morality. On the one hand, we think of morality as a correct action guide. Morality is accessed by taking up a critical, reflective point of view where our concern is with identifying the moral rules that would be the focus of the requiring activities of persons in a hypothetical social world whose participants were capable of accessing the justifications for everyone's endorsing just this set of rules. On the other hand, in doing virtually anything connected with morality-making demands, offering excuses, justifying choices, expressing moral attitudes, getting uptake on our resentments, and the like-we rely on social practices of morality and shared moral understandings that make our moral activities and attitudes intelligible to others. This second conception of morality, unlike the first, is not shaped by the aim of getting it right or the contrast between correct and merely supposed moral requirements. It is shaped by the moral aim of practicing morality with others within an actual, not merely hypothetical, scheme of social cooperation. If practices based on misguided moral norms seem not to be genuine morality under the first conception, merely hypothetical practices seem not to be the genuine article under the second conception. The premise of this book, which collects together nine previously published essay and a new introduction, is that both conceptions are indispensable. But exactly how is the moral theorist to go about working simultaneously with two such different conceptions of morality? The book's project is not to construct an overarching methodology for handling the two conceptions of morality. Instead, it is to provide case studies of that work being done.

How has feminism failed lesbianism? What issues belong at the top of a lesbian and gay political agenda? This book answers both questions by examining what lesbian and gay subordination really amounts to. Calhoun argues that lesbians and gays aren't just socially and politically disadvantaged. The closet displaces lesbians and gays from visible citizenship, and both law and cultural norms deny lesbians and gay men a private sphere of romance, marriage, and the family.

Doing Valuable Time explores the human concern with expending our life's time well. We pursue what we take to be valuable, strive to live meaningfully, judge whether our present circumstances are good enough, and have standards for what we are willing to take an interest in. Doing valuable time, however, is not an easy task. Expending time on big, important life-projects often entails lots of little time expenditures on the seemingly meaningless, and our ability to take an interest in our own futures is fragile. our present circumstances often leaves us with endless opportunities for discontent-too much spare time, too much of the same thing all of the time, or too much time stuck in stalled projects. Doing Valuable Time is a book about the difficulties we face in achieving valuable time and the interest-and disinterest-we take in our own present and future. Professor Cheshire Calhoun explores the implications of using time well in order to achieve the unachievable: living a meaningful life. Through seven chapters of rigorous philosophical inquiry and compelling practical insights, Calhoun explains the motivating interest we take in our future, and how hope sustains activities that are likely to fail. Doing Valuable Time shows the value of committing ourselves to having a particular future, and the possibilities for finding contentment with the imperfect present.

This book brings together 19 women moral philosophers who have contributed to re-setting the compass of moral philosophy over the past two decades. This collection makes visible women moral philosophers' varied conceptions of the proper subjects, audiences, and purposes of moral philosophy.