The Radical Choice and Moral Theory


Book Description

In a crisp, original style the author approaches the crucial question of moral theory, the `is--ought' problem via communicative argumentation. Moving to the end of Habermas's conception of the communicative action, he introduces the concept of `radical choice' as the key to the transition from the descriptive to the normative. Phenomenological subjectivity of the intersubjective life-world is being vindicated as the `arch-value' of all derivative values, or the first principle for all normative precepts. With exceptional acumen and mastery of the philosophical argument, the author -- a young native Chinese lately trained in a Western university -- delineates a fascinating route along which the philosophical question of justification raised in the analytic tradition can be answered on the basis of phenomenology. A noteworthy contribution to the interplay between the Anglo--American and Continental schools of philosophy.




Philosophical Papers: Volume 1, Human Agency and Language


Book Description

Philosophical Papers will interest a very wide range of philosophers and students of the human sciences.




Kantian Moral Theory And The Destruction Of The Self


Book Description

This book explains Kantian morality against an interrelated set of criticisms that constitute the most influential contemporary critique of Kantian morality. It demonstrates that a theory which emphasizes the guidance of impartial moral principles does not threaten a person's feelings of attachment.




Radical Virtues


Book Description

What is a good life? What does it mean to be a good person? Richard White answers these questions by considering aspects of moral goodness through the virtues: courage, temperance, justice, compassion, and wisdom. White explores how moral virtues affect and support social movements such as pacifism, environmentalism, multiculturalism, and animal rights. Drawing on the classics, White includes historical and cross-cultural analysis and examines the lives of Socrates, Buddha, and Gandhi, who lived virtuous lives, to help the reader understand and acquire moral wisdom. Book jacket.




No Morality, No Self


Book Description

Elizabeth Anscombe’s “Modern Moral Philosophy” and “The First Person” have become touchstones of analytic philosophy but their significance remains controversial or misunderstood. James Doyle offers a fresh interpretation of Anscombe’s theses about ethical reasoning and individual identity that reconciles seemingly incompatible points of view.







Moral Dilemmas and Moral Theory


Book Description

Do moral dilemmas truly exist? What counts as a moral dilemma? Can an adequate moral theory admit the possibility of genuine conflicts of moral obligations? In this book, twelve prominent moral theorists examine these and other questions from a wide variety of philosophical perspectives. Concerned throughout with the implications of moral dilemmas for moral theory, this collection of essays captures in striking fashion the full scope and vitality of the current moral dilemmas debate. Including both realist and anti-realist meta-ethical positions, and Kantian and consequentialist normative views, Moral Dilemmas and Moral Theory sheds new light on several standing controversies in moral philosophy while raising a fresh set of challenging issues. Contributors include Simon Blackburn, Ruth Barcan Marcus, Alan Donagan, Terrance McConnell, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Mary Mothersill, Norman Dahl, David Brink, Peter Railton, Thomas E. Hill, Jr., Christopher Gowans, and H.E. Mason.




The Visible and the Invisible in the Interplay between Philosophy, Literature and Reality


Book Description

Merleau-Ponty's categories of the visible and the invisible are investigated afresh and with originality in this penetrating collection of literary and philosophical inquiries. Going beyond the traditional and current references to the mental and the sensory, mind and body, perceptual content and the abstract ideas conveyed in language, etc., these studies range from the `hidden spheres of reality', to the play of the visible and the invisible left as traces in works of human genius, the origins of intellect and language, the real and the imaginary in literature, and the `hidden realities' in the philosophy of the everyday world. These literary and philosophical probings collectively reveal the role of this disjoined/conjoined pairing in the ontopoietic establishment of reality, that is, in the manifestation of the logos of life. In tandem they bring to light the hidden play of the visible and the invisible in the emergence of our vital, societal, intimate, intellectual, and creative involvements.




Methodology and Moral Philosophy


Book Description

Many ethicists either accept the reflective equilibrium method or think that anything goes in ethical theorizing as long as the results are plausible. The aim of this book is to advance methodological thinking in ethics beyond these common attitudes and to raise new methodological questions about how moral philosophy should be done. What are we entitled to assume as the starting-point of our ethical inquiry? What is the role of empirical sciences in ethics? Is there just one general method for doing moral philosophy or should different questions in moral philosophy be answered in different ways? Are there argumentative structures and strategies that we should be encouraged to use or typical argumentative patterns that we should avoid? This volume brings together leading moral philosophers to consider these questions. The chapters investigate the prospects of empirical ethics, outline new methods of ethics, evaluate recent methodological advances, and explore whether different areas of moral philosophy are methodologically continuous or independent of one another. The aim of Methodology and Moral Philosophy is to make moral philosophers more self-aware and reflective of the way in which they do moral philosophy and also to encourage them to take part in methodological debates.




Kierkegaard After MacIntyre


Book Description

In his extraordinarily influential book on ethics, After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre maintained that Kierkegaard's notion of "choosing" to interpret one's choices in ethical terms implies an arbitrary and irrational leap. MacIntyre's critique of Kierkegaard has become the focal point for several new interpretations of Kierkegaard that seek to answer MacIntyre. Kierkegaard After MacIntyre brings together both new and already published articles in this vein, with a new reply by Professor MacIntyre. Kierkegaard After MacIntyre reflects the emergence of a new consensus in Kierkegaard scholarship. This consensus is strongly anti-irrationalist and contemporary neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics, clarifying their common ground as well as their differences. In responding to MacIntyre's 'irrationalist' objection, the authors clarify the sense in which Kierkegaard's own conception of freedom is teleological and suggest that his understanding of the development of ethical personality involves a quest for narrative unity, a commitment to practices involving social values, and a self-understanding conditioned by historical reality—all of which are also central themes in MacIntyre's work on virtue ethics. Despite MacIntyre's diagnosis of Kierkegaard's existential approach to ethics as unsuccessful, some of Kierkegaard's insights may support MacIntyre's own theses. "Kierkegaard After MacIntyre is an outstanding book which brings Kierkegaard into direct conversation with one of the most important contemporary philosophers. The conversation contains both lively disagreements and illuminating analyses, all focused on issues of fundamental importance for human life." —C. Stephen Evans, Calvin College ". . . this wonderfully edifying collection of essays." —Timothy P. Jackson, Emory University "In addressing MacIntyre's charge that for Kierkegaard the adoption of the ethical can only be a 'cirterionless choice,' this stimulating set of essays by well-known Kierkegaard scholars provides a welcome addition to the literature on Kierkegaardian ethics. Kierkegaard After MacIntyre provides a valuable exploration of the role of reasoning, will, and passion in moral life, as well as of the relation between aesthetic and ethical dimensions of life." —M. Jamie Ferreira, University of Virginia