Bøker i Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory-serien

By bringing together influential critics of neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics with some of the strongest defenders of an Aristotelian approach, this collection provides a fresh assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of Aristotelian virtue ethics and its contemporary interpretations. Contributors critically discuss and re-assess the neo-Aristotelian paradigm which has been predominant in the philosophical discourse on virtue for the past 30 years.

This is a highly original and radical critique of contemporary moral theory. Paul Johnston skillfully demonstrates how much of recent moral philosophy runs aground on the issue of whether we can make correct judgements.

This book honours the pioneering work of Cora Diamond, one of the most important living moral philosophers. It develops and deepens a picture of moral philosophy by carrying out new work in what Diamond has called the realistic spirit.

This book features essays from leading scholars who, rather than taking a strictly exegetical approach, show how discussions in moral philosophy can benefit from Wittgenstein¿s later philosophical work.

This volume presents new research on the role narrative plays in the cultivation of virtue. The chapters demonstrate how recent work from the philosophy of mind and action concerning our understanding of the self can shed new light on the nature of practical wisdom and human flourishing.

As champions of deontology and consequentialism respectively, Kant and Sidgwick disagree on many important issues. However, close examination reveals a surprising amount of consensus on various topics including moral psychology, moral epistemology, and moral theology.

This book offers a new account of what it is to act for a normative reason and clarifies the relation between the normative reason that an agent acts for and his or her motivating reasons.

This volume aims to establish a new cultivation of the self strand within contemporary moral philosophy. It offers a fresh approach to the eudaimonic tradition: instead of conditions for rightness of actions, it focuses on conceptions of human life that are best for the one living it.

This collection sheds light on precisely how virtues and reasons are related to each other and what can be learned by exploring this relationship. The first section analyzes how the virtues may be related to, or linked with, normative reasons in ways that improve our understanding of what constitutes virtuous character and ethical agency. The second section explores the reasons moral agents have for cultivating the virtues of character and how the virtues impact moral responsiveness or development. The final section examines how reasons can be employed in understanding the nature of virtue, and how specific virtues, like modesty and practical wisdom, interact with reasons.

This book brings together new essays that explore the connection between love and reasons. Love, Reason and Morality will be of interest to philosophers working on issues of normativity, meta-ethics and moral psychology, and especially those interested in the source of practical reasons and the role of emotions in practical deliberation.

Why save endangered species without clear aesthetic, economic, or ecosystemic value? This book takes on this challenging question through an account of the intrinsic goods of species.

This collection provides a focused and comprehensive discussion of the the moral demandingness objection, the principle "ought implies can," and the ways these two ideas relate to one another, while also taking a closer look at the consequences for the limits of moral normativity in general. Chapters engage with contemporary discussions surrounding "ought implies can" as well as current debates on moral demandingness, and argue that applying the moral demandingness objection to the entire range of normative ethical theories also calls for an analysis of its (metaethical) presuppositions.

The original essays in this volume present a timely response to the proliferation of mass and random violence that troubles contemporary society, making a case for the importance of moral sensitivity based on interdisciplinary work framed by traditional philosophical reasoning and informed by psychological research.

The way an individual's psychology is intertwined with their morality is the subject of this book.

We are often pressed to forgive or in need of forgiveness: Wrongdoing is common. Even after a perpetrator has been taken to court and punished, forgiveness still has a role to play. How should a victim and a perpetrator relate to each other outside the courtroom, and how should others relate to them? Communicating about forgiveness is particularly urgent in cases of civil war and crimes against humanity inside a community where, if there were no forgiveness, the community would fall apart.Forgiveness is governed by social and, in particular, by moral norms. Do those who ask to be forgiven have to fulfil certain conditions for being granted forgiveness? And what does the granting of forgiveness consist in? We may feel like refusing to forgive those perpetrators who have committed the most horrendous crimes. But is such a refusal justified even if they repent their crimes? Could there be a duty for the victim to forgive? Can forgiveness be granted by a third party? Under which conditions may we forgive ourselves?The papers collected in this volume address all these questions, exploring the practice of forgiveness and its normative constraints. Topics include the ancient Chinese and the Christian traditions of forgiveness, the impact of forgiveness on the moral dignity and self-respect of the victim, self-forgiveness, the narrative of forgiveness, as well as the limits of forgiveness. Such limits may arise from the personal, historical, or political conditions of wrongdoing or from the emotional constraints of the victims.

Taking up the general challenge of situationism ¿ that philosophers should pay attention to empirical psychology ¿ this interdisciplinary volume presents new essays from empirically informed perspectives by philosophers and psychologists on western as well as eastern conceptions of character, virtue, and happiness, and related issues such as personality, emotion and cognition, attitudes and automaticity.

This volume works to connect issues in environmental ethics with the best work in contemporary normative theory. In particular, the contributors use consequentialist theory to address central questions in environmental ethics, such as questions about what kinds of things have value; about decision-making in light of the long-term, intergenerational nature of environmental issues; and about the role that a state's being natural should play in ethical deliberation.