Overview

This book is a selective historical and critical study of moral philosophy in the Socratic tradition, with special attention to Aristotelian naturalism. It discusses the main topics of moral philosophy as they have developed historically, including: the human good, human nature, justice, friendship, and morality; the methods of moral inquiry; the virtues and their connexions; will, freedom, and responsibility; reason and emotion; relativism, subjectivism, and realism; the theological aspect of morality. The first volume discusses ancient and mediaeval moral philosophy. The second volume examines early modern moral philosophy from the 16th to the 18th century. This third volume continues the story up to Rawls's Theory of Justice.A comparison between the Kantian and the Aristotelian outlook is one central theme of the third volume. The chapters on Kant compare Kant both with his rationalist and empiricist predecessors and with the Aristotelian naturalist tradition. Reactions to Kant are traced through Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard. Utilitarian and idealist approaches to Kantian and Aristotelian views are traced through Sidgwick, Bradley, and Green. Mill and Sidgwick provide a link between 18th-century rationalism and sentimentalism and the 20th-century debates in the metaphysics and epistemology of morality. These debates are explored in Moore, Ross, Stevenson, Hare, C.I. Lewis, Heidegger, and in some more recent meta-ethical discussion. This volume concludes with a discussion of Rawls, with special emphasis on a comparison of his position with utilitarianism, intuitionism, Kantianism, naturalism, and idealism. Since this book seeks to be not only descriptive and exegetical, but also philosophical, it discusses the comparative merits of different views, the difficulties that they raise, and how some of the difficulties might be resolved. It presents the leading moral philosophers of the past as participants in a rational discussion in which the contemporary reader can participate.

Full Product Details

Author:   Terence Irwin (University of Oxford)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 17.60cm , Height: 5.10cm , Length: 24.60cm
Weight:   1.548kg
ISBN:  

9780199693870

ISBN 10:   0199693870
Pages:   1050
Publication Date:   11 August 2011
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
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Table of Contents

66: Kant: Practical Laws 67: Kant: From Practical Laws to Morality 68: Kant: Some objections and replies 69: Kant: Freedom 70: Kant: From Freedom to Morality 71: Kant: Morality and the good 72: Kant: Meta-ethical questions 73: Hegel: History and Theory 74: Hegel: Morality and beyond 75: Marx and Idealist Moral Theory 76: Schopenhauer 77: Kierkegaard 78: Nietzsche 79: Mill: Earlier Utilitarianism and its Critics 80: Mill: A revised version of utilitarianism 81: Sidgwick: Methods and Sources 82: Sidgwick: The Examination of Methods 83: Sidgwick's Axioms of Morality 84: Bradley 85: Green 86: Moore 87: Ross 88: Logical Empiricism and Emotivism 89: Lewis 90: Hare: A defence of non-cognitivism 91: Existentialism 92: Revivals of Non-Cognitivism 93: Objectivity and its Critics 94: Versions of Naturalism 95: Rawls: The just, the fair, and the right 96: Rawls: The right and the good

Reviews

For it truly is a great book, and I doubt that we will see a history of ethics similar in scope and ambition for some time to come. -- Ethics

Author Information

Terence Irwin is Professor of Ancient Philosophy in the University of Oxford, and Fellow of Keble College.

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