British Ethical Theorists from Sidgwick to Ewing

British Ethical Theorists from Sidgwick to Ewing
Author: Thomas Hurka
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2014-11-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191038539

Thomas Hurka presents the first full historical study of an important strand in the development of modern moral philosophy. His subject is a series of British ethical theorists from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, who shared key assumptions that made them a unified and distinctive school. The best-known of them are Henry Sidgwick, G. E. Moore, and W. D. Ross; others include Hastings Rashdall, H. A. Prichard, C. D. Broad, and A. C. Ewing. They disagreed on some important topics, especially in normative ethics. Thus some were consequentialists and others deontologists: Sidgwick thought only pleasure is good while others emphasized perfectionist goods such as knowledge, aesthetic appreciation, and virtue. But all were non-naturalists and intuitionists in metaethics, holding that moral judgements can be objectively true, have a distinctive subject-matter, and are known by direct insight. They also had similar views about how ethical theory should proceed and what are relevant arguments in it; their disagreements therefore took place on common ground. Hurka recovers the history of this under-appreciated group by showing what its members thought, how they influenced each other, and how their ideas changed through time. He also identifies the shared assumptions that made their school unified and distinctive, and assesses their contributions critically, both when they debated each other and when they agreed. One of his themes is that that their general approach to ethics was more fruitful philosophically than many better-known ones of both earlier and later times.

The Quality of Life

The Quality of Life
Author: Richard Kraut
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2018-08-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0192563963

The Quality of Life: Aristotle Revised presents a philosophical theory about the constituents of human well-being. The principal idea is that what Aristotle calls 'external goods' - wealth, reputation, power - have at most an indirect bearing on the quality of our lives. Starting with Aristotle's thoughts about this topic, Kraut increasingly modifies (and occasionally rejects) that stance. He argues that the way in which we experience the world is what well-being consists in. A good internal life comprises, in part, pleasure but far more valuable is the quality of our emotional, intellectual, social, and perceptual experiences. These offer the potential for a richer and deeper quality of life than that which is available to many other animals. A good human life is immeasurably better than that of a simple creature that feels only the pleasures of nourishment; even if it felt pleasure for millions of years, human life would be superior. In opposition to contemporary discussions of well-being, which often appeal to a thought experiment devised by Robert Nozick, Kraut concludes that the quality of our lives consists entirely in the quality of our experiences. While others hold that we must live in 'the real world' to live well and that one's interior life has little or no value on its own, Kraut's interpretation of this thought experiment supports the opposite conclusion.

Sidgwick's the Methods of Ethics

Sidgwick's the Methods of Ethics
Author: David Phillips
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2022-05-13
Genre: Ethics
ISBN: 0197539610

Author David Phillips has produced a clear, concise guide to Henry Sidgwick's masterpiece of classical utilitarian thought, The Methods of Ethics, setting it in its intellectual and cultural context while drawing out its main insights into a variety of fields.

Who Should Die?

Who Should Die?
Author: Ryan C. Jenkins
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2018
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0190495650

This volume collects influential and groundbreaking philosophical work on killing in war. A "who's who" of contemporary scholars, this volume serves as a convenient and authoritative collection uniquely suited for university-level teaching and as a reference for ethicists, policymakers, stakeholders, and any student of the morality of war.

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being
Author: Guy Fletcher
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 546
Release: 2015-07-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317402650

The concept of well-being is one of the oldest and most important topics in philosophy and ethics, going back to ancient Greek philosophy. Following the boom in happiness studies in the last few years it has moved to centre stage, grabbing media headlines and the attention of scientists, psychologists and economists. Yet little is actually known about well-being and it is an idea that is often poorly articulated. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being provides a comprehensive, outstanding guide and reference source to the key topics and debates in this exciting subject. Comprising over 40 chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into six parts: well-being in the history of philosophy current theories of well-being, including hedonism and perfectionism examples of well-being and its opposites, including friendship and virtue and pain and death theoretical issues, such as well-being and value, harm, identity and well-being and children well-being in moral and political philosophy well-being and related subjects, including law, economics and medicine. Essential reading for students and researchers in ethics and political philosophy, it is also an invaluable resource for those in related disciplines such as psychology, politics and sociology.

The Routledge Guidebook to Moore's Principia Ethica

The Routledge Guidebook to Moore's Principia Ethica
Author: Susana Nuccetelli
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2021-11-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000453405

G.E. Moore’s Principia Ethica is a landmark publication in twentieth-century moral philosophy. Through focusing on the origin and evolution of his main doctrines, this guidebook makes it clear that Moore was an innovator whose provocative take on traditional philosophical problems ignited heated debates among philosophers. Principia Ethica is an important text for those attempting to understand and engage with some major philosophical debates in ethics today. The Routledge Guidebook to Moore's Principia Ethica provides a comprehensive introduction to this historic text, examining key Moorean themes including: ethical non-naturalism the naturalistic fallacy the Open Question Argument moral ontology and epistemology ideal utilitarianism vindictive punishment and organicity moral intuition for epistemic justification in ethics theory of value Ideal for anyone wanting to understand and gain perspective on Moore’s seminal work, the book is essential reading for students of moral philosophy, metaethics, normative ethics, philosophical analysis, and related fields.

Happiness and Utility

Happiness and Utility
Author: Georgios Varouxakis
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2019-07-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1787350487

Happiness and Utility brings together experts on utilitarianism to explore the concept of happiness within the utilitarian tradition, situating it in earlier eighteenth-century thinkers and working through some of its developments at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Drawing on a range of philosophical and historical approaches to the study of the central idea of utilitarianism, the chapters provide a rich set of insights into a founding component of ethics and modern political and economic thought, as well as political and economic practice. In doing so, the chapters examine the multiple dimensions of utilitarianism and the contested interpretations of this standard for judgement in morality and public policy.

Rossian Ethics

Rossian Ethics
Author: David Phillips
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2019-06-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190602198

W.D. Ross (1877-1971) was the most important opponent of utilitarianism and consequentialism in British moral philosophy between 1861 and 1939. In Rossian Ethics, David Phillips offers the first monograph devoted exclusively to Ross's seminal contribution to moral philosophy. The book has two connected aims. The first is to interpret and evaluate Ross's moral theory, focusing on its three key elements: his introduction of the concept of prima facie duty, his limited pluralism about the right, and his limited pluralism about the good. The metaethical and epistemological framework within which Ross develops his moral theory is the subject of the fifth and final chapter of the book. The second aim is to articulate a distinctive view intermediate between consequentialism and absolutist deontology, which Phillips calls "classical deontology." According to classical deontology the most fundamental normative principles are principles of prima facie duty, principles which specify general kinds of reasons. Consequentialists are right to think that reasons always derive from goods; ideal utilitarians are right, contra hedonistic utilitarians, to think that there are a small number of distinct kinds of intrinsic goods. But consequentialists are wrong to think that all reasons have the same weight for all agents. Instead there are a small number of distinct kinds of agent-relative intensifiers: features that increase the importance of certain goods for certain agents. Phillips claims that classical deontology combines the best elements of the moral theories of Ross and of Sidgwick, ultimately arguing that Ross is best interpreted as a classical deontologist.