v. 1. Editorial introduction -- v. 2. The English and Latin texts (i) -- v. 3. The English and Latin texts (ii).

This is a new revised version of Dr. Laslett's standard edition of Two Treatises. First published in 1960, and based on an analysis of the whole body of Locke's publications, writings, and papers. The Introduction and text have been revised to incorporate references to recent scholarship since the second edition and the bibliography has been updated.

Normative ethics concerns the criticism and justification of morality, law, and other systems of norms. This book develops a normative ethical theory based on individuals and offers a third way beyond the dominant paradigms of Kantianism and Utilitarianism. This theory can assist us in answering concrete ethical questions. The book discusses, for example, the existence of duties to oneself, the permissibility of paternalistic decisions for others, and the status of supererogatory actions. It also considers various problems in bioethics. Key features: (...) Development of a new normative ethical theory Up-to-date overview of the topic Written in clear and comprehensible style Provides answers to concrete ethical problems Also of interest for doctors, lawyers, and economists ". (shrink)

Reissued here in its corrected second edition of 1864, this essay by John Stuart Mill argues for a utilitarian theory of morality. Originally printed as a series of three articles in Fraser's Magazine in 1861, the work sought to refine the 'greatest happiness' principle that had been championed by Jeremy Bentham, defending it from common criticisms, and offering a justification of its validity. Following Bentham, Mill holds that actions can be judged as right or wrong depending on whether they promote (...) happiness or 'the reverse of happiness'. Although attracted by Bentham's consequentialist framework based on empirical evidence rather than intuition, Mill separates happiness into 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures, arguing for a weighted system of measurement when making and judging decisions. Dissected and debated since its first appearance, the essay is Mill's key discussion on the topic and remains a fundamental text in the study of ethics. (shrink)

Winner of the 1975 National Book Award, this brilliant and widely acclaimed book is a powerful philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age--liberal, socialist, and conservative.

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition. This reissue makes the first edition once again available for scholars and serious students of Rawls's work.

This is the first publication of these ideas in book form. 'It is a rare treat--important, original philosophy that is also a pleasure to read.

In this book, T. M. Scanlon offers new answers to these questions, as they apply to the central part of morality that concerns what we owe to each other.

John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism is one of the most important, controversial, and suggestive works of moral philosophy ever written. Mill defends the view that all human action should produce the greatest happiness overall, and that happiness itself is to be understood as consisting in "higher" and "lower" pleasures. This volume uses the 1871 edition of the text, the last to be published in Mill's lifetime. The text is preceded by a comprehensive introduction assessing Mill's philosophy and the alternatives to utilitarianism, (...) and discussing some of the specific issues Mill raises in Utilitarianism. (shrink)

Review text: "... ist diese Einführung als solche uneingeschränkt zu empfehlen, da sie ihrem "analytischen? Charakter im besten Sinne des Wortes gerecht wird."Werner Wolbert in: Salzburger Theologische Zeitschrift 2/2008.

Normative theories of obligation, moral and nonmoral value, and meta-ethical issues and theories are considered.

By the time of his death in 2003, Bernard Williams was one of the greatest philosophers of his generation. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy is not only widely acknowledged to be his most important book, but also hailed a contemporary classic of moral philosophy. Presenting a sustained critique of moral theory from Kant onwards, Williams reorients ethical theory towards ‘truth, truthfulness and the meaning of an individual life’. He explores and reflects upon the most difficult problems in contemporary philosophy (...) and identifies new ideas about central issues such as relativism, objectivity and the possibility of ethical knowledge. This edition also includes a new commentary on the text by A.W.Moore and a foreword by Jonathan Lear. (shrink)

Plural and conflicting values are often held to be conceptually problematic, threatening the very possibility of ethics, or at least rational ethics. Rejecting this view, Stocker first demonstrates why it is so important to understand the issues raised by plural and conflicting values, focusing on Aristotle's treatment of them. He then shows that plurality and conflict are commonplace and generally unproblematic features of our everyday choice and action, and that they do allow for a sound and rational ethics.

Ranging over central issues of morals and politics and the nature of freedom and authority, this study examines the role of value-neutrality, rights, equality, ...

Vernunftigerweise tut man das, was die besten Folgen hat. Diese scheinbar trivial richtige These ist falsch. Warum sie falsch ist, zeigt dieses Buch.".

In this work, the author has fashioned out of the logical and linguistic theses of his earlier books a full-scale but readily intelligible account of moral argument.

Is morality rational? In this book Gauthier argues that moral principles are principles of rational choice. He proposes a principle whereby choice is made on an agreed basis of cooperation, rather than according to what would give an individual the greatest expectation of value. He shows that such a principle not only ensures mutual benefit and fairness, thus satisfying the standards of morality, but also that each person may actually expect greater utility by adhering to morality, even though the choice (...) did not have that end primarily in view. In resolving what may appear to be a paradox, the author establishes morals on the firm foundation of reason. Gauthier's argument includes an account of value, linking it to preference and utility; a discussion of the curcumstances in which morality is unnecessary; and an application of morals by agreement to relations between peoples at different levels of development and different generations. Finally, he reflects on the assumptions about individuality and community made by his account of rationality and morality. (shrink)

In this much-anticipated book, Jonathan Dancy offers the only available full-scale treatment of particularism in ethics, a view with which he has been associated for twenty years. Dancy now presents particularism as the view that the possibility of moral thought and judgement does not in any way depend on an adequate supply of principles. He grounds this claim on a form of reasons-holism, holding that what is a reason in one case need not be any reason in another, and maintaining (...) that moral reasons are no different in this respect from others. Ethics Without Principles offers detailed treatment and criticism of opposing positions of all sorts, with useful summaries. It also contains three chapters on the nature of what Dancy calls 'contributory' reasons, which, though the topic of much interest at the moment, are not often discussed in anything like the detail given here. And it offers a distinctive form of value-holism to go with the holism of reasons. As Dancy's definitive statement on particularism, the book will be required reading for all those working on moral philosophy and ethical theory. (shrink)

This book is a good idea, well-executed. The setup of the book mirrors one way of dividing up normative ethics. We divide theorists into Kantians, consequentialists and virtue theorists on the assumption that these are distinct and incompatible approaches to ethics. Each position is represented by one of the co-authors with Baron representing Kantians, Pettit consequentialists and Slote virtue theorists. What emerges is that each approach has virtues, but also that the division is neither neat nor exhaustive. As Pettit notes, (...) the issue that divides consequentialists from non-consequentialists is whether it is always right to promote agent-neutral value. While Kantians answer no where the consequentialists answer yes, a consequentialist can agree with Kantians about many other issues. And while Kantians are often portrayed as being exclusively interested in the rightness of actions, their actual emphasis on motivation and reasons for action make it difficult to distinguish their views from virtue theories that focus on the way an agent’s character and practical wisdom is reflected in her choices. The complexity of the positions defended by the authors highlight these difficulties for the standard division of the terrain. (shrink)

This is the third volume of Joel Feinberg's highly regarded The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, a four-volume series in which Feinberg skillfully addresses a complex question: What kinds of conduct may the state make criminal without infringing on the moral autonomy of individual citizens? In Harm to Self, Feinberg offers insightful commentary into various notions attached to self-inflicted harm, covering such topics as legal paternalism, personal sovereignty and its boundaries, voluntariness and assumptions of risk, consent and its counterfeits, (...) coercive force, incapacity, and choice of death. (shrink)

Introduction to one of the most important, controversial, and suggestive works of moral philosophy ever written.

Bd. 1. Sprachanalytik, Semiotik, Hermeneutik. Bd. 2. Das Apriori der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft.

Metaphysische Anfangsgrunde der Rechtslehre ist ein unveranderter, hochwertiger Nachdruck der Originalausgabe aus dem Jahr 1797. Hansebooks ist Herausgeber von Literatur zu unterschiedlichen Themengebieten wie Forschung und Wissenschaft, Reisen und Expeditionen, Kochen und Ernahrung, Medizin und weiteren Genres.Der Schwerpunkt des Verlages liegt auf dem Erhalt historischer Literatur.Viele Werke historischer Schriftsteller und Wissenschaftler sind heute nur noch als Antiquitaten erhaltlich. Hansebooks verlegt diese Bucher neu und tragt damit zum Erhalt selten gewordener Literatur und historischem Wissen auch fur die Zukunft bei.".

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Moral philosophy has long been dominated by the aim of understanding morality and the virtues in terms of principles. However, the underlying assumption that this is the best approach has received almost no defence, and has been attacked by particularists, who argue that the traditional link between morality and principles is little more than an unwarranted prejudice. In Principled Ethics, Michael Ridge and Sean McKeever meet the particularist challenge head-on, and defend a distinctive view they call "generalism as a regulative (...) ideal.". (shrink)

For thirty years, Peter Singer's Practical Ethics has been the classic introduction to applied ethics. For this third edition, the author has revised and updated all the chapters and added a new chapter addressing climate change, one of the most important ethical challenges of our generation. Some of the questions discussed in this book concern our daily lives. Is it ethical to buy luxuries when others do not have enough to eat? Should we buy meat from intensively reared animals? Am (...) I doing something wrong if my carbon footprint is above the global average? Other questions confront us as concerned citizens: equality and discrimination on the grounds of race or sex; abortion, the use of embryos for research and euthanasia; political violence and terrorism; and the preservation of our planet's environment. This book's lucid style and provocative arguments make it an ideal text for university courses and for anyone willing to think about how she or he ought to live. (shrink)

This remarkable book is the most comprehensive study ever written of the history of moral philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its aim is to set Kant's still influential ethics in its historical context by showing in detail what the central questions in moral philosophy were for him and how he arrived at his own distinctive ethical views. The book is organised into four main sections, each exploring moral philosophy by discussing the work of many influential philosophers of the (...) seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In an epilogue the author discusses Kant's view of his own historicity, and of the aims of moral philosophy. In its range, in its analyses of many philosophers not discussed elsewhere, and in revealing the subtle interweaving of religious and political thought with moral philosophy, this is an unprecedented account of the evolution of Kant's ethics. (shrink)

Alle Entscheidungen sind in letzter Instanz durch den Bezug auf die betroffenen Individuen zu rechtfertigen – so lautet die zentrale Annahme des normativen Individualismus. Der Beitrag entfaltet, präzisiert und begründet diese These für den Bereich der politischen Ethik. Den Abschluß bildet eine Skizze von Realisationen des normativen Individualismus im deutschen Recht.

Eine Analyse der Politischen Philosophie der Neuzeit kann – soll sie nicht lediglich einzelne Autoren oder Werke reihen – zwei methodische Wege einschlagen. Sie kann zum einen mit einer detaillierten Werkinterpretation wichtiger Denker wie Hobbes, Locke oder Kant beginnen und quasiinduktiv den historischen Fortgang der Hauptdiskussionen zu rekonstruieren suchen. Sie kann aber auch wesentliche abstrakte Verlaufskategorien vorschlagen, mit deren Hilfe dann umgekehrt in einem quasideduktiven Konkretionsschritt die Beiträge eminenter Denker möglichst gut verstanden, eingeordnet und gewürdigt werden.Der vorliegende Text wird zum (...) Zweck der Beurteilung dieser beiden großen Alternativen zunächst einige Anforderungen vorschlagen, die derartige abstrakte begriffliche Kategorien erfüllen sollten, um zum Verständnis der Ideengeschichte der neuzeitlichen Politischen Philosophie beitragen zu können . In einem zweiten Schritt werden die beiden soeben genannten Gegensatzpaare an Hand dieser Anforderungen beurteilt . Diese Beurteilung wird zu dem Ergebnis führen, daß beide Gegensatzpaare zwar unabdingbar notwendig sind, um wesentliche Autoren der Politischen Philosophie der Neuzeit würdigen zu können. Für die Erfassung des Verlaufs der grundlegenden Auseinandersetzung in der neuzeitlichen Politischen Philosophie reichen sie aber nicht aus. Deshalb wird drittens das schon im Titel dieses Beitrags genannte Kategorienpaar „Normativer Individualismus versus normativer Kollektivismus" vorgeschlagen . Mit Hilfe dieses Gegensatzpaares und einiger Ergänzungen wird dann viertens die Grundlinie der Auseinandersetzung in der neuzeitlichen Politischen Philosophie skizziert werden . Diese Skizze soll schließlich zu einem besseren Verständnis der gegenwärtigen Diskussionslage führen. (shrink)