A splendid edition. Schneewind's illuminating introduction succinctly situates the Enquiry in its historical context, clarifying its relationship to Calvinism, to Newtonian science, and to earlier moral philosophers, and providing a persuasive account of Hume's ethical naturalism. --Martha C. Nussbaum, Brown University

How should we live? What do we owe to other people? In "Goodness and Advice," the eminent philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson explores how we should go about answering such fundamental questions. In doing so, she makes major advances in moral philosophy, pointing to some deep problems for influential moral theories and describing the structure of a new and much more promising theory.

Thomson begins by lamenting the prevalence of the idea that there is an unbridgeable gap between fact and value--that to say something is good, for example, is not to state a fact, but to do something more like expressing an attitude or feeling. She sets out to challenge this view, first by assessing the apparently powerful claims of Consequentialism. Thomson makes the striking argument that this familiar theory must ultimately fail because its basic requirement--that people should act to bring about the "most good"--is meaningless. It rests on an incoherent conception of goodness, and supplies, not mistaken advice, but no advice at all.

Thomson then outlines the theory that she thinks we should opt for instead. This theory says that no acts are, simply, good: an act can at most be good in one or another way--as, for example, good for Smith or for Jones. What we ought to do is, most importantly, to avoid injustice; and whether an act is unjust is a function both of the rights of those affected, including the agent, and of how good or bad the act is for them. The book, which originated in the Tanner lectures that Thomson delivered at Princeton University's Center for Human Values in 1999, includes two chapters by Thomson ("Goodness" and "Advice"), provocative comments by four prominent scholars--Martha Nussbaum, Jerome Schneewind, Philip Fisher, and Barbara Herrnstein Smith--and replies by Thomson to those comments.

A splendid edition. Schneewind's illuminating introduction succinctly situates the Enquiry in its historical context, clarifying its relationship to Calvinism, to Newtonian science, and to earlier moral philosophers, and providing a persuasive account of Hume's ethical naturalism. --Martha C. Nussbaum, Brown University

Originally issued as a two-volume edition in 1990, the anthology is now re-issued (with a new foreword) as a one-volume anthology. It is a companion to Schneewind's highly successful history of modern ethics, The Invention of Autonomy. The anthology provides many of the sources discussed in The Invention of Autonomy. The combined two volumes are an invaluable resource for the teaching of the history of modern moral philosophy. This volume contains excerpts from some thirty-two important seventeenth and eighteenth century moral philosophers. As well as well-known thinkers such as Hobbes, Hume, and Kant, there are excerpts from a wide-range of philosophers never previously assembled in one text, such as Grotius, Pufendorf, Nicole, Clarke, Leibniz, Malebranche, Holbach and Paley. Including a substantial introduction and extensive bibliographies, it facilitates the study and teaching of early modern moral philosophy in its crucial formative period.

This volume contains four versions of the lecture notes taken by Kant's students of his university courses in ethics given regularly over a period of some thirty years. The notes are very complete and expound not only Kant's views on ethics but many of his opinions on life and human nature. Much of this material has never before been translated into English. As with other volumes in the series, there are copious linguistic and explanatory notes and a glossary of key terms.

Henry Sidgwick's The Methods of Ethics challenges comparison, as no other work in moral philosophy, with Aristotle's Ethics in the depth of its understanding of practical rationality, and in its architectural coherence it rivals the work of Kant. In this historical, rather than critical study, Professor Schneewind shows how Sidgwick's arguments and conclusions represent rational developments of the work of Sidgwick's predecessors, and brings out the nature and structure of the reasoning underlying his position.

Originally issued as a two-volume edition in 1990, the anthology is now re-issued (with a new foreword) as a one-volume anthology. It is a companion to Schneewind's highly successful history of modern ethics, The Invention of Autonomy. The anthology provides many of the sources discussed in The Invention of Autonomy. The combined two volumes are an invaluable resource for the teaching of the history of modern moral philosophy. This volume contains excerpts from some thirty-two important seventeenth and eighteenth century moral philosophers. As well as well-known thinkers such as Hobbes, Hume, and Kant, there are excerpts from a wide-range of philosophers never previously assembled in one text, such as Grotius, Pufendorf, Nicole, Clarke, Leibniz, Malebranche, Holbach and Paley. Including a substantial introduction and extensive bibliographies, it facilitates the study and teaching of early modern moral philosophy in its crucial formative period.

This volume contains four versions of the lecture notes taken by Kant's students of his university courses in ethics given regularly over a period of some thirty years. The notes are very complete and expound not only Kant's views on ethics but many of his opinions on life and human nature. Much of this material has never before been translated into English. As with other volumes in the series, there are copious linguistic and explanatory notes and a glossary of key terms.