Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 14, no. 2 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Ethics: The Key Thinkers (2nd edition)
Ethics: The Key Thinkers (2nd edition), 2023
third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.
Journal of Moral Philosophy, 2013
We are inundated with Companions, Handbooks, and Encyclopedias of every shape, format, and range of content, but not, alas, of every size. Perhaps because of the nature of the beast, none is less than massive, and this volume is no exception, at 850 pages long. There is, of course, much worth reading in this new addition to the growing corpus. There are many excellent and illuminating pieces by experts in their field. It is no criticism of their work to ask, however, what the purpose of such books, as well as of this particular book, is. The general question is raised by the accessibility ofso much useful material on the internet; in particular, the comprehensive and frequently updated Stanford Encyclopedia. Why pay good money for a bulky volume that will take up rather a lot of shelf space when you can surf the Internet for free? Maybe such books are intended primarily to be purchased by libraries. To what purpose? Are professors going to trek to the library to consult it? Are they going to tell their students to do so? No doubt for any given ethics course there will be one or two individual articles that might be relevant, but is it likely that students will make the effort to use the library in this way when so much, and of such high quality, is available online? Things would be considerably improved if Routledge were to make this volume available as an e-book, or online, as they have with their truly comprehensive online Encyclopedia. (Though 1 notice that Amazon offer a Kindle version at less than the paperback price-quite a bargain.) The more specific question is raised by its scope. The editor describes it, quite correctly, as 'comprehensive'. It contains 68 chapters, divided into six sections: history; meta-ethics, impact of social sciences on ethics; ethical theories; moral concepts; applied ethics. Comprehensiveness brings in its train, however, some risks and disadvantages. Chapters have to be kept reasonably short, and though many writers do an excellent Job in clearly conveying a lot of information in a short space, sometimes material is too brief or perfunctory to be helpful, or even comprehensible. This is especially true of chapters that attempt to cover whole movements, or periods of thought. Take, for example, the two pieces on Natural Law Theory, in its early modem and contemporary garbs. Both authors are immensely knowledgeable in their fields, but both felt constrained to cover too much territory in their small compass. The eleven page entry on early modern versions of Natural Law theory discussed Grotius, Hobbes, Spinoza, Cumberland, Locke, Pufendorf, Leibniz, Wolff, and a number of enlightenment thinkers. In cases like this, the only person who can really understand the summary article is one who is already expert in the area. But she is unlikely to have much use for so skeletal an oudine of her area of expertise. For wider audiences, such as the students of philosophy for whom this collection is primarily intended, less comprehensiveness and more depth would have been preferable. The intelligibility of these chapters is not helped by the fact that there is no entry on Aquinas. To discuss natural law theory without discussion of Aquinas is like staging Hamlet without the prince. (Skorupski
Bloomsbury Academic, 2012
From Plato to MacIntyre, my edited collection surveys the history of Western moral philosophy by guiding students new to the subject through the work and ideas of the field's most important figures. With entries written by leading contemporary scholars, the book covers such thinkers as: Plato [by myself]; Aristotle; Thomas Aquinas; David Hume; Immanuel Kant; J.S. Mill ; Friedrich Nietzsche; The book explores the contributions of each thinker individually, while also building a picture of how ethical thought has developed through their interactions. The book includes guides to the latest further reading on each thinker.
ETHICS.pdf [Review/Essay of "COMPANION TO ETHICS" by Peter Singer (1991)
This personal essay attempts to create a new view of the Rules for Personal and Social Behavior that have been classified in philosophy under the subject of Ethics, or ‘Moral-Philosophy’. It does not attempt to present a new set of universal rules, as has been the tradition of philosophers since Plato, and it is not a complete History or overview of the subject. Rather, it a critique of the main-stream ethical systems made by some major thinkers. It also attempts to position the author’s views in this area, recently analyzed in a companion essay entitled “VALUES”. This essay will locate this approach [not Ethical egoism] in the sub-area called ‘Subjectivism’ and often confused with ‘Relativism’, which were briefly covered by two modern philosophers in Singer’s strongly recommended book. In contrast to the usual Top-Down survey normally followed in approaching this subject, this viewpoint will adopt a Bottom-Up view, more in line with modern experience. Readers will notice an explicit and strong appreciation of the ideas of David Hume, whose life was summarized in another of this author’s essays entitled “HUME”. A historical sequence is adopted in sampling from some of the major philosophers, who have written classics on this subject for those readers that have not formally studied this major area of philosophy. Professional philosophers may wish to read this sketch to judge how fair the author has been to his predecessors. Here, a very deliberate distinction is introduced between Morality and Ethics that have usually been conflated into a single approach, or synonyms, in the Top-Down tradition. Here, whenever Morality (behavioral rules of the individual) is separated off for from the composite (averaged) rules of a society then we will deliberately denominate them as Values (since there is no neologism for this larger viewpoint). Although like Hume, the author has been inspired by a biological aspect, and in contrast to Singer’s focus on the human treatment of animals, this essay will limit itself to intra-human actions. The historical review will limit itself to European philosophers due to limited time and the reviewer’s restricted knowledge (this is not to belittle other cultural traditions but to be realistic about the readers’ time and my own ignorance). Singer’s book contains a special section (II) that contains essays on the rest of the world’s ethical systems, covering Indian, Buddhist, Islamic, Chinese and Jewish ethics. As this is a theoretical approach (‘Meta-Ethics’), it will only touch briefly on Applied Ethics (interested readers should consult Singer’s book, section V). This perspective will end up setting these ideas closest to the those sometimes called “Evolutionary Ethics” that has been developing since Darwin’s 1859’s radical proposals in his famous (but mistitled) book “The Origin of Species”.
Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics_ A History of Moral Philosophy from the Homeric Age to the Twentieth Century (1997, Routledge)