The success of Discourse Ethics is premised on the discovery and use of shared values. If this is true what type of negotiation style, especially when used in an intercultural setting, is best suited to make use of shared values. Research focusing on moral arguments between Germans and Americans uncovered an array of shared values. But the existence of shared values, by itself, was not an adequate predictor of a negotiation's success. What did prove to be a predictor of (...) success was the use of a Constructivist style of negotiation by both parties. (shrink)

Peter French examines the world of the western, one in which death is annihilation, the culmination of life, and there is nothing else. In that world he finds alternatives to Judeo-Christian traditions that dominate our ethical theories, alternatives that also attack the views of the most prominent ethicists of the past three centuries.

This comprehensive and ecumenical bibliography of titles related to Scripture and and ethics includes both books and periodicals in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Many entries contain brief annotations which indicate their scope or thesis.

Economics is often believed to be a `value-free' discipline, and even an `a-moral' one. My aim is to demonstrate that homo œconomicus can recover his ethical nature if the philosophical roots of contemporary economics are laid bare. This, however, requires us to look for an alternative foundation for the idea of `social order,' a foundation which economics is ill-equipped to provide because of its exclusive focus on calculative rationality. But a new ethical perspective on homo œconomicus and on the manner (...) in which he chooses his actions is possible. My aim here is to make this new perspective explicit.Two claims lie at the heart of this paper. The first claim is that economics as practised nowadays — that is, as a discipline concerned with the analysis of the interactions between individual decisions and the collective effects of these interactions — is a particular form of metaphysics, based on a particular articulation between self-centredness and other-centredness. The second claim is that, unbeknownst to the vast majority of economists, the basic principle of individual optimization contains the seed of a radical reformulation of what the emergence of `social order' is all about. More specifically, economics will be claimed to be a specific metaphysical discipline based on the monadological worldview inherited from Leibniz and re-arranged to fit the empiricist bias of 18th-century thinkers, and the principle of individual optimization will be claimed to be compatible with a very different metaphysical view of the human subject, a view which `turns subjectivity inside out', so to speak, and treats optimizing calculation as a response rather than as an initiative.The first claim is rather general, and not completely new — it has been hinted at, for example, by Jon Elster in an early book written in French, but it has received precious little attention among economists so far, with the result that economics has become increasingly blind to the philosophical roots of its most fundamental views on individual decision and on social order. The second claim applies to economics and homo œconomicus a general suggestion coming from Alain Renaut, that we ought to make good use of the accusations of incoherence voiced against the monadological scheme in order to re-think the way in which human subjectivity works. Renaut, however, remains at the level of the history of the philosophical concept of subjectivity. Although he does, in passing, make some mention of possible implications for the social sciences, he never goes into the full analysis of what the critique of monadological metaphysics implies for modern theories of society, and for economics in particular. One of my main goals here is to fill this gap.Let me now be more specific about the steps of my analysis. Defending my two claims will require, first of all, a rigorous understanding of the basic methodological stance adopted by economics, namely the idea that social order `emanates' from a bunch of self-centred subjectivities making separate optimizing decisions. Accordingly, in Section 2, I will trace out the analogy that exists between Leibnizian monadology and modern-day economics. The aim there will be to show that economics, unwittingly but for nevertheless deep ethical reasons, has remained `stuck' in a very specific metaphysical position which virtually no contemporary philosophy of subjectivity any longer acknowledges. Section 3, then, will show how the combination of monadology and empiricism which still prevails in contemporary economics can be overcome by entering an altogether distinct philosophical domain characterized by the primacy of Other over Self.While this alternative philosophical stance has experienced a surge of interest in recent decades, it has left the social sciences, and particularly economics, completely untouched. The reason is, I will claim, that this strand of philosophy adopts a form of methodological altruism which stands in contrast both to the methodological individualism of economics and to the methodological holism of various strands of post-Durkheimian sociology. In Section 4, then, I analyze some of the far-reaching consequences for economics which would flow from taking into account `non-I' motives which are not `We' motives, i.e., motives for action which are neither mere holist pastings onto individualism nor mere individualist mitigations of holism.The principle of choice of action through individual optimization will appear as the `hinge' between two worlds: although initially anchored within a worldview where social coexistence is a by-product of individual calculations, the idea of optimization will be seen to be compatible with a very different, and indeed almost reversed worldview, one where individual calculations emerge as by-products of social coexistence — the term `social' being itself radically re-thought in a non-holistic direction.The aim of my analysis, ultimately, is to formulate a challenge for contemporary economics and its implicit view of the interaction between individual and society: Can the combination of monadological and empiricist thinking so strongly ingrained in economics be overcome in the direction of a radically `other-oriented' view of the human subject? Many economists will doubtless believe it cannot; however, they will now, at least, have to explain why they hold to the older view and hence they will have to uncover their often hidden ethical and metaphysical presuppositions. I view this not as an undue disturbance or as mere conceptual hair-splitting, but as a timely opportunity to clarify some deep philosophical issues which haunt economics. (shrink)

The constitutional provision for the separation of the Church and the State has been in existence for over 200 years. They are now referring to it, no longer remembering how it came about. The fact is that the French Revolution of 1789 was anti-feudal and anticlerical. It separated the affairs of the state from the ecclesiastical so that bishops and cardinals would govern the Church, not the state. The 1917 revolution in Russia also tore the triumvirate of "statehood, orthodoxy, nationality." (...) The state and the Church should have existed separately. The Bolsheviks rejected the old state and the Church, but in their legislation in 1919 the Decree recorded the separation of the Church from the state and the school from the Church. Because they disregarded law, morality and religion and absolutized the state, the state, and especially its punitive organs, trampled on morality, ethics, religion, clergy and their defenders... (shrink)

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) type 1 is a genetic neuromuscular disease in children that leads to degeneration of spinal cord motor neurons. This sometimes results in severe muscular paralysis requiring mechanical ventilation to sustain the child’s life. The onset of SMA type 1, the most severe form of the disease, is during the first year of life. These children become severely paralysed, but retain their intellectual capacity. Ethical concerns arise when mechanical ventilation becomes necessary for survival. When professionals assess the (...) resulting life for the child and family, they sometimes fear it will result in unreasonably excessive care. The aim of this article is to present an analysis of ethical arguments that could support or oppose the provision of invasive ventilation in this population. This examination is particularly relevant as France is one of the few countries performing tracheotomies and mechanical ventilation for this condition. (shrink)

This paper investigates a manner for taking a stand against the current naturalistic tendencies within the current form of globalized capitalism that see it merely as the logical expression of triumphant market forces working upon productive assets. Taking a cue from the French concept of alter-mondalisme, as opposed to the English syntagma anti-globalism, this paper argues that our current form of globalised capitalism is simply a form having no specific ontological necessity – i.e., globalism as it now is, is not (...) the inevitable result of natural forces, but is rather a complex emergent entity. Cosmopolitical citizenship, characterized by critical global citizens, means principled refusal to accept this entity as determining the possible and the impossible. Instead of being the creature of simply naturalistic, neo-liberal economics, capital is a cultural system, a social relationship based on a particular political power structure. Thinking otherwise makes issues of social justice meaningless within capitalism. The current concentration of economic power tends to spread certain behavioral norms that sustain it, which is a systemic phenomenon that can be called the cultural system of capitalism, a shared ideology.Viewing it such, we can move from an ethical study of the rational foundations of moral norms to a political reflection on the democratic construction of social norms. Hence, democratic experimentalism can arise, in which various possibilities and norms of one subset or region of capitalist interaction are played off against each other subset or region in a subversive attempt at forming new possibilities for organizing economic and political processes. This will also protect the plurality of ways of life from overweening global capitalism: another world is possible. (shrink)

This original translation, by Edward H. Flannery, brings you one of Maritain s most eye-opening studies of Christianity. Although not his most famous work, Maritain s An Essay on Christian Philosophy provides readers with an in-depth analysis and careful philosophical approach to the study of theology and, at the time of original publication, was considered to be the definitive statement of the Thomistic position. Discover his theses for yourself as Maritain considers the nature of philosophy, morality, and their relations (...) to Christianity with clarity and a scholarly attention to detail. Flannery provides English readers with a glossary of terms to bring further understanding to Maritain s original words. Jacques Maritain was a French Catholic philosopher and political thinker. He was born in Paris in 1882, where he spent most of his life. His father was a prominent lawyer and his mother the daughter of a statesman. He attended the Sorbonne to study philosophy and natural science, and after marrying, he and his wife converted to Catholicism. It was after this he became a well-known scholar of St. Thomas Aquinas and Thomistic philosophy. He published widely on philosophical and political thought, and by the 1930s, he was an established thinker in the Catholic community. After the outbreak of WWII, Maritain relocated to the United States, where he taught at Princeton University and Columbia University. Later in life, he and his wife returned to France, where he continued to write and study Catholic scholarship until his death in 1973. (shrink)

Written by a distinguished international team of contributors, this volume explores Shakespeare's vivid depictions of moral deliberation and individual choice in light of Renaissance debates about ethics. Examining the intellectual context of Shakespeare's plays, the essays illuminate Shakespeare's engagement with the most pressing moral questions of his time, considering the competing claims of politics, Christian ethics and classical moral philosophy, as well as new perspectives on controversial topics such as conscience, prayer, revenge and suicide. Looking at Shakespeare's (...) responses to emerging schools of thought such as Calvinism and Epicureanism, and assessing comparisons between Shakespeare and his French contemporary Montaigne, the collection addresses questions such as: when does laughter become cruel? How does style reflect moral perspective? Does shame lead to self-awareness? This book is of great interest to scholars and students of Shakespeare studies, Renaissance studies and the history of ethics. (shrink)

My paper concerns a rather extraordinary generation which arose in France in the 1930s, reacting against Action française which had long infected French Catholic political and social thought. Action française was a line of thought — and a political movement — inspired by Charles Maurras, himself an agnostic, basing his political thinking on a form of naturalism and positivism which clearly divorced politics from religion and ethics. Pope Pius XI forbade the participation of Catholics in that movement in 1926, (...) which was quite a blow and provoked quite an uproar since the majority of Catholic intellectuals were from Action française.The great Thomists of the time in particular and the bishops were reluctant in following the Pope's condemnation. Already the following year however, Jacques Maritain, who had sided with Action française for a long time, rallied to Rome. He contributed to a famous book Rome has spoken . Many followed him. He subsequently changed his basic views, fought for an integration of politics with morality as well as for a certain integration of politics and the Christian message, under the name Humanisme intégral, the title of one of his books. Jacques Maritain was born in 1882, died in 1975. The decisive years of his work are clearly the '30s and early '40s. (shrink)

On ne compte plus les articles, les revues, les livres, les colloques, les émissions de radio et de télévision qui traitent des questions éthiques. Cet engouement a profité naturellement à la théologie morale. On pourrait même dire qu'elle est la seule discipline théologique à avoir acquis un droit de parole dans la cité séculière. Pour les meilleures raisons, et aussi les moins bonnes, l'attention des chrétiens, des spécialistes et de ceux qui cherchent simplement un sens à leur vie, ne retient (...) qu'elle dans le message délivré par l'Eglise. Etonnant retournement! La conscience contemporaine s'inquiète, en effet, des développements technologiques qui précèdent toute recherche de sens et récusent toute limitation. Le progrès tient lieu de règle. Pour la première fois depuis longtemps, cette même conscience admet que les problèmes posés à nos sociétés, analysés jusque-là en termes strictement techniques, sont en réalité des défis moraux. En réponse, il convient de repenser la morale chrétienne comme une éthique de construction de soi, comme un style de vie. La tâche est immense. La première étape nous impose de visiter notre mémoire. Ce dictionnaire n'a d'autre ambition que de fournir les repères facilitant cet inventaire. Il pare au plus pressé : les interrogations actuelles portent davantage sur les fondements de la morale catholique et sur ses applications personnelles. Ce livre limite donc son propos à la morale fondamentale, personnelle et familiale. Edité pour la première fois en 1991, ce dictionnaire s'est rapidement épuisé. Des mots nouveaux font leur apparition dans cette seconde édition, tandis que d'autres ont vu leur présentation renouvelée. Une nouvelle introduction met en perspective ce travail vis-à-vis du Catéchisme de l'Eglise catholique et de Veritatis Splendor. (shrink)

La Règle d'or Tout ce que vous voulez que les hommes fassent pour vous, faites-le vous-mêmes pour eux : voilà la Loi et les Prophètes. Jésus. " La vie éthique ou morale est une exigence d'humanité. Elle naît du désir des personnes de donner sens à leurs actes et d'agir en vue du bien. Composée de règles d'action, de normes, de valeurs, de vertus, de représentations du bien ou de ce qui est sensé, elle vise à rendre la vie plus (...) humaine, et met en oeuvre la liberté des personnes dans leur relation avec les autres, avec elles-mêmes, avec la nature et avec Dieu. On appelle généralement "éthique" la science des comportements moraux humains ". Avec quelque 200 articles rédigés par plus de 100 spécialistes venus de divers horizons, ce Dictionnaire encyclopédique d'éthique chrétienne embrasse l'ensemble des différentes notions liées à l'éthique et à la réflexion morale chrétienne. Par son approche historique, interdisciplinaire et oecuménique, il offre une meilleure compréhension des débats sociétaux actuels. Sont aussi traitées des notions fondamentales du christianisme comme la grâce, la joie, l'amour, l'espérance, la foi... Tout lecteur, initié ou non, tirera profit de la consultation de cet ouvrage d'une ampleur sans précédent. (shrink)

This paper addresses the claim that the social orders of Western civilization operate on the basis of the law’s presumed sovereignty over life. I demonstrate how the respective works of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben and French phenomenologist Michel Henry are joined in their concern over this issue, and in their shared belief that life can be made sovereign over the law through a communal life based upon habit. At the same time, I argue that their respective conceptions of this communal (...) life are flawed, and that they would benefit from being brought into a productive dialogue with one another. More specifically, I show that Henry’s account of a Christian communal life based upon the habitual practice of love moves at least some way toward addressing Agamben’s account of a coming community that is decidedly abstract and lacking in a substantial ethic. However, I maintain that Henry’s own account of this community is founded upon a problematic conception of potentiality that would benefit from Agamben’s study of the matter. By bringing these two figures together and drawing out the lessons that can be learnt from each of them, this work provides a more concrete and substantial account of how a coming Christian community can play a role in making life sovereign over the force of the law. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas has proven a major figure in twentieth-century phenomenology and ethics, and his work has influenced not only Jewish but also Christian ethical thought. However, Levinas has recently been the subject of trenchant critique by his fellow French philosopher, Jean-Yves Lacoste. Lacoste objects to Levinas’s construal of intersubjectivity as fundamentally ethical: essentially, that we only instantiate our humanity when we take responsibility for the Other. This smacks for Lacoste of ‘unworldliness’, and is thus phenomenologically inadequate, since it (...) extirpates from the domain of elementary experiences everything that does not constitute morality. This raises key questions: how best to interpret Lacoste’s challenge; how successful that challenge is, i.e. whether anything in Levinas’s project survive it; and, if so, how best to understand Levinas’s relevance for Christian ethics. I will address all these issues, contending that, contra Lacoste, Levinas’s position does stand up to inspection at one key juncture. I claim, on phenomenological grounds, that it tells us something of vital importance about some special experiences of obligation, some range of moral encounters: that which arises when the subject, as moral agent, finds himself in an immediate, unbidden, dyadic encounter with the other person. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Good of Recognition: Phenomenology, Ethics, and Religion in the Thought of Lévinas and Ricœur by Michael SohnLevi CheckettsThe Good of Recognition: Phenomenology, Ethics, and Religion in the Thought of Lévinas and Ricœur Michael Sohn WACO, TX: BAYLOR UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2014. 172 PP. $69.95Michael Sohn's book The Good of Recognition: Phenomenology, Ethics, and Religion in the Thought of Lévinas and Ricœur explores the philosophical and (...) religious writings of two of twentieth-century France's most significant thinkers, Paul Ricœur and Emmanuel Lévinas, "to gain, by thinking with and through them, an insight into the phenomenon of recognition" (128). Recognition, to these authors, is not merely an act of re-cognition (identifying something one already knows), nor is it simple cognition (consciousness of something). For Lévinas, to whom Ricœur is indebted for his own work, recognition precedes ontological identification and is a "sensation of the infinite" in the Other (29). Recognition entails "a primordial ethical claim by the other" (57), up to and including self-sacrifice. For Ricœur, on the other hand, recognition of the other is situated in the "loving struggle for existence" between people seeking mutual recognition (72) and presents itself as "one among many sources of value and motivation" [End Page 207] for moral decision (81). In other words, while recognition of the other is a central concept in both authors' ethical writings, Sohn notes that "Lévinas' phenomenological description of recognition emerges out of a fundamental project to uncover the principle of all principles," while "Ricœur's attention to the locus of will integrates passivity and activity as it is taken up within the dialectic of the voluntary and the involuntary," making recognition one value among others (127).In highlighting the different positions of each of these authors, Sohn structures his writing in a highly systematized and clear way. He first divides the book broadly by author, then for each author devotes a chapter each to philosophical and religious approaches to recognition. Within each chapter, he outlines the intellectual influences for the given author, then articulates in turn the phenomenon, the ethics, and the politics of recognition. This tactic serves as a helpful reference for readers interested in Sohn's comparative project, though it sometimes leads to repetition insofar as there are overlaps in how different thinkers, philosophical schools, or principles function for each area. The overall project is framed by an introductory chapter that briefly outlines the main points of discussion throughout the book and a conclusion that summarizes, compares, and contextualizes the significance of the project. Sohn offers this text as a clarifying study of the phenomenon of recognition, a term the application of which "touches upon a broad spectrum of issues ranging from battles over multiculturalism to questions of national sovereignty and from matters of international human rights to social movements within feminism and human rights" (135). With such a broad range of applications, this relatively short examination of two pivotal thinkers' works on recognition is highly valuable.This work will be of interest to ethicists hoping to use the works of Ricœur or Lévinas, or to philosophers and historians interested in the development of recognitionbased ethics. Sohn provides thorough citations from the broad corpuses of both authors, giving students of either philosopher a helpful resource both for summarizing ideas and for carrying out research. Sohn also provides deep intellectual genealogies for each author, noting how thinkers such as Edmund Husserl, Karl Jaspers, Karl Barth, G.W.F. Hegel, Immanuel Kant, and their interpreters influenced Lévinas and Ricœur; he downplays the influence of thinkers like Martin Heidegger, Martin Buber, and Gabriel Marcel. This book does offer useful and clear summaries of the main ideas discussed, but it may be difficult for newer students unfamiliar with French language or philosophical concepts. Overall, this book is a valuable reference tool for Lévinas and Ricœur studies, especially those that focus on the phenomenology, religious thought, ethics, or politics of these two men. [End Page 208]Levi CheckettsGraduate Theological UnionCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Jacques Maritain is widely recognized as one of the foremost Catholic philosophers of modern times. He wrote groundbreaking works in all branches of philosophy. For a period of about 10 years, beginning in 1933, he discussed matters relating to war and ethics. Writing initially about Gandhi, whose strategy of non-violence he sought to incorporate within a Christian conception of political action, Maritain proceeded to comment more specifically on the religious aspects of armed force in “On Holy War,” an (...) essay about the civil war then ongoing in Spain. After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Maritain penned a series of essays that sought to explain why the Anglo–French declarations of war were warranted on Christian just war principles. While the secondary literature on Maritain’s thought is extensive, thus far there has been little systematic exploration of his writings on war. In what follows I seek to remedy this lacuna, by examining how he conceptualized just war in the three phases outlined above. (shrink)

Applied Christian Ethics addresses selected themes in Christian social ethics. Part one shows the roots of contributors in the realist school; part two focuses on different levels of the significance of economics for social justice; and part three deals with both existential experience and government policy in war and peace issues.

How should you decide what to do when you’re uncertain about basic normative principles? A natural suggestion is to follow some "second-order:" norm: e.g., obey the most probable norm or maximize expected choiceworthiness. But what if you’re uncertain about second-order norms too—must you then invoke some third-order norm? If so, any norm-guided response to normative uncertainty appears doomed to a vicious regress. This paper aims to rescue second-order norms from the threat of regress. I first elaborate and defend the claim (...) some philosophers have made that the regress problem forces us to accept normative externalism, the view that at least one norm is incumbent on all agents regardless of their normative beliefs. But, I then argue, we need not accept externalism about first-order norms, thus closing off any question of how agents should respond to normative uncertainty. Rather, we can head off the threat of regress by ascribing external force to a single second-order norm: the enkratic principle. (shrink)

The classic programme of conceptual engineering (Cappelen, Herman. 2018. Fixing Language: An Essay on Conceptual Engineering. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Eklund, Matti. 2021. “Conceptual Engineering.” In The Routledge Handbook of Social and Political Philosophy of Language, edited by Justin Khoo, and Rachel Sterken, 15–30. London: Routledge) envisages a two-stage ameliorating process. First, we assess ‘F’ and determine what the term should express. Second, we bring it about that ‘F’ expresses what it should express. The second stage gives rise to a (...) practical challenge: the implementation challenge. Engineering advocates need to explain by what means they can implement specific conceptual changes in the natural language shared by a community – a feat Herman Cappelen (2018. Fixing Language: An Essay on Conceptual Engineering. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020; “Conceptual Engineering: The Master Argument.” In Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics, edited by Alexis Burgess, Herman Cappelen, and David Plunkett, 132–151. Oxford: Oxford University Press) argues to be beyond our understanding and control both on an externalist and on an internalist meta-semantics. I devise a new answer to the implementation challenge. Enlisting the influential theory of social norms by Cristina Bicchieri, I argue that engineering social norms in Bicchieri’s technical sense amounts to an effective, specific, and feasible means to implement specific conceptual change, at least on internalist premises. I also argue that Bicchieri’s social norms are an essential addition to the more familiar conventions and moral norms when it comes to conceptual engineering. (shrink)

To read literature is to read the way literature reads. René Girard’s immense body of work supports this thesis bountifully. Whether engaging the European novel, ancient Greek tragedy, Shakespeare’s plays, or Jewish and Christian scripture, Girard teaches us to read prophetically, not by offering a method he has developed, but by presenting the methodologies they have developed, the interpretative readings already available within (and constitutive of) such bodies of classical writing. In The Prophetic Law, literary scholar, theorist, and critic (...) Sandor Goodhart divides his essays on René Girard since 1983 into four groupings. In three, he addresses Girardian concerns with Biblical scripture (Genesis and Exodus), literature (the European novel and Shakespeare), and philosophy and religious studies issues (especially ethical and Jewish subject matters). In a fourth section, he reproduces some of the polemical exchanges in which he has participated with others—including René Girard himself—as part of what could justly be deemed Jewish-Christian dialogue. The twelve texts that make up the heart of this captivating volume constitute the bulk of the author’s writings to date on Girard outside of his three previous books on Girardian topics. Taken together, they offer a comprehensive engagement with Girard’s sharpest and most original literary, anthropological, and scriptural insights. (shrink)

We provide a general argument against value incomparability, based on a new style of impossibility result. In particular, we show that, against plausible background assumptions, value incomparability creates an incompatibility between two very plausible principles for ranking lotteries: a weak "negative dominance" principle (to the effect that Lottery 1 can be better than Lottery 2 only if some possible outcome of Lottery 1 is better than some possible outcome of Lottery 2) and a weak form of ex ante Pareto (to (...) the effect that, if Lottery 1 gives an unambiguously better prospect to some individuals than Lottery 2, and equally good prospects to everyone else, then Lottery 1 is better than Lottery 2). After spelling out our results, and the arguments based on them, we consider which principle the proponent of incomparability ought to reject. (shrink)

ABSTRACT We have previously argued that there are forms of greenhouse gas offsetting for which, when one emits and offsets, one imposes no risk. Orri Stefansson objects that our argument fails to distinguish properly between the people who stand to be harmed by one’s emissions and the people who stand to be benefited by one’s offsetting. We reply by emphasizing the difference between acting with a probability of making a difference to the distribution of harm and acting in a way (...) that worsen’s someone’s prospect. (shrink)

Defenders of deontological constraints in normative ethics face a challenge: how should an agent decide what to do when she is uncertain whether some course of action would violate a constraint? The most common response to this challenge has been to defend a threshold principle on which it is subjectively permissible to act iff the agent's credence that her action would be constraint-violating is below some threshold t. But the threshold approach seems arbitrary and unmotivated: what would possibly determine (...) where the threshold should be set, and why should there be any precise threshold at all? Threshold views also seem to violate ought agglomeration, since a pair of actions each of which is below the threshold for acceptable moral risk can, in combination, exceed that threshold. In this paper, I argue that stochastic dominance reasoning can vindicate and lend rigor to the threshold approach: given characteristically deontological assumptions about the moral value of acts, it turns out that morally safe options will stochastically dominate morally risky alternatives when and only when the likelihood that the risky option violates a moral constraint is greater than some precisely definable threshold (in the simplest case, .5). I also show how, in combination with the observation that deontological moral evaluation is relativized to particular choice situations, this approach can overcome the agglomeration problem. This allows the deontologist to give a precise and well-motivated response to the problem of uncertainty. (shrink)

In much of the written work on Christian or religious business ethics, a holistic framework is assumed but not argued for practicallyor supported philosophically. In this article I 1) outline a position of ethical holism, explaining its logic, motives, and consequences; 2)attack the ethical dualism of Carr, Friedman, and French; and 3) defend my theory against five possible objections. My basic thesisis that if a corporation wishes to hire employees who will act in compliance with ethical codes of (...) the corporation, employees who both have a deeply rooted personal ethic that parallels that of the corporation and who see their business practices to be an extension of their personal ethic will be better suited candidates simply because they are more likely to be compliant. In other words, personalconvictions and values are relevant to hiring practices, and a view that holds personal and business ethics to be separate affairs (Carr,Friedman, French) is misguided. (shrink)

Contemporary ‘realists’ attack the Kantian influence on political philosophy. A main charge is that Kantians fail to understand the specificity of politics and neglect to develop a ‘distinctively political thought’ that differs from moral philosophy. Instead, the critics say, Kantians are guilty of an ‘ethics-first approach to politics,’ in which political theory is a mere application of moral principles. But what does this ethics-first approach have to do with Kant himself? Very little. This article shows how Kant’s approach (...) to political theory at a fundamental level includes political institutions, power, and coercion as well as disagreement, security, and coordination problems. In contrast to realists, Kant has a fundamental principle, which can explain why and guide how we ought to approach the political question, namely the norm of equal freedom. Yet, Kant’s theory does not take the form of a moralistic ought addressed to the isolated individual, but concerns a problem that we share as interdependent beings and that requires common institutions. The fruitfulness of the Kantian approach, then, is that it can take the political question seriously without being uncritical of actual politics and power, and that it can be normative without being moralistic. (shrink)

Decision-making under normative uncertainty requires an agent to aggregate the assessments of options given by rival normative theories into a single assessment that tells her what to do in light of her uncertainty. But what if the assessments of rival theories differ not just in their content but in their structure -- e.g., some are merely ordinal while others are cardinal? This paper describes and evaluates three general approaches to this "problem of structural diversity": structural enrichment, structural depletion, and multi-stage (...) aggregation. All three approaches have notable drawbacks, but I tentatively defend multi-stage aggregation as least bad of the three. (shrink)

The central virtue at issue in recent philosophical discussions of the empirical adequacy of virtue ethics has been the virtue of compassion. Opponents of virtue ethics such as Gilbert Harman and John Doris argue that experimental results from social psychology concerning helping behavior are best explained not by appealing to so-called ‘global’ character traits like compassion, but rather by appealing to external situational forces or, at best, to highly individualized ‘local’ character traits. In response, a number of philosophers (...) have argued that virtue ethics can accommodate the empirical results in question. My own view is that neither side of this debate is looking in the right direction. For there is an impressive array of evidence from the social psychology literature which suggests that many people do possess one or more robust global character traits pertaining to helping others in need. But at the same time, such traits are noticeably different from a traditional virtue like compassion. (shrink)

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1905 Edition.

The Humean theory of motivation remains the default position in much of the contemporary literature in meta-ethics, moral psychology, and action theory. Yet despite its widespread support, the theory is implausible as a view about what motivates agents to act. More specifically, my reasons for dissatisfaction with the Humean theory stem from its incompatibility with what I take to be a compelling model of the role of motivating reasons in first-person practical deliberation and third-person action explanations. So after first (...) introducing some assumptions about the nature of agency in section one, I will turn to articulating and defending this account of motivating reasons in sections two through four of the paper. Section five then provides some background on the Humean theory before I argue directly against it in section six and critically examine the leading arguments for the view in section seven. Given limitations of space, however, I save the task of developing a positive anti-Humean view for another occasion. (shrink)

The Euthyphro Dilemma is named after a particular exchange between Socrates and Euthyphro in Plato‟s dialogue Euthyphro. In a famous passage, Socrates asks, “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?” (Plato 1981: 10a), and proceeds to advance arguments which clearly favor the first of these two options (see PLATO). The primary interest in the Euthyphro Dilemma over the years, however, has primarily concerned the relationship between (...) God and morality in the monotheistic religious tradition, where God is taken to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, having created the universe initially and still actively involved in it today. But as we will see at the end of this entry, there has also been a recent surge of interest in a version of the Dilemma which applies to so-called response-dependent accounts of normative properties in meta-ethics. (shrink)

Josiah Royce was undoubtedly one of the most interesting thinkers of classical American philosophy in the transition from the 19th to the 20th century. His works cover a wide range of subjects from psychology and issues of social philosophy to metaphysics. Surrounded by philosophers such as William James or Charles Sanders Peirce, Royce developed a concept of pragmatism which he himself called "absolute pragmatism" and which was centred around a theory of community. The essays in this edited volume deal with (...) this pragmatistic approach in his work and discuss it from various points of view. Among other things, they explore Royce's relationship to German idealism, the foundation of his ethics as well as his philosophical doctrine of God and his philosophy of religion. This results in rather divergent assessments of his philosophy, each of which is evidence of the enduring relevance of his thinking for the world of today. (shrink)

This chapter pursues the question of naturalism in the context of non-Western philosophical contributions to ethics and philosophy of mind: First, what conception of naturalism, if any, is best suited to capture the scope of Buddhist Reductionism? Second, can such a conception still accommodate the distinctive features of phenomenal consciousness (e.g., subjectivity, intentionality, first-person givenness, etc.). The first section reviews dominant conceptions of naturalism, and their applicability to the Buddhist project. In the second section, the author provides an example (...) of problematic issues more stringent conceptions of naturalism under the guise of neurophysicalism confront, and evaluate Flanagan’s response to these issues. The third section considers briefly the reflexivity thesis (the thesis that consciousness consists in conscious mental states being implicitly self-aware), specifically as articulated by Dignaga, Dharmakirti and their followers, and uses this thesis to articulate a conception of minimal agency as mineness that, the author argues, further challenges Flanagan’s neurophysicalism stance and his compatibilist account of moral agency. The paper concludes, in the fourth section, by suggesting a way in which no-ownership conceptions of reflexive self-consciousness can help us both to get the structure of phenomenal consciousness right and to ground our conceptions of agency, intentionality, and moral responsibility. (shrink)

The principle that rational agents should maximize expected utility or choiceworthiness is intuitively plausible in many ordinary cases of decision-making under uncertainty. But it is less plausible in cases of extreme, low-probability risk (like Pascal's Mugging), and intolerably paradoxical in cases like the St. Petersburg and Pasadena games. In this paper I show that, under certain conditions, stochastic dominance reasoning can capture most of the plausible implications of expectational reasoning while avoiding most of its pitfalls. Specifically, given sufficient background uncertainty (...) about the choiceworthiness of one's options, many expectation-maximizing gambles that do not stochastically dominate their alternatives "in a vacuum" become stochastically dominant in virtue of that background uncertainty. But, even under these conditions, stochastic dominance will not require agents to accept options whose expectational superiority depends on sufficiently small probabilities of extreme payoffs. The sort of background uncertainty on which these results depend looks unavoidable for any agent who measures the choiceworthiness of her options in part by the total amount of value in the resulting world. At least for such agents, then, stochastic dominance offers a plausible general principle of choice under uncertainty that can explain more of the apparent rational constraints on such choices than has previously been recognized. (shrink)

I first argue that there are many true claims of the form: Φ-ing would be morally required, if anything is. I then explain why the following conditional-type is true: If φ-ing would be morally required, if anything is, then anything is actually morally required. These results allow us to construct valid proofs for the existence of some substantive moral facts—proofs that some particular acts really are morally required. Most importantly, none of my argumentation presupposes any substantive moral claim; I use (...) only plausible claims that most moral skeptics and error theorists can and do accept. The final section diagnoses why my arguments work. Here, I offer an explanation for the supervenience of the moral on the non-moral that may help those worried that the strategy is a sophisticated trick. I conclude by considering two objections. In replying to these objections, I explain why the strategy may allow us to demonstrate more than “obvious” moral truths, and why it may also address a stronger version of error theory, according to which, moral truths are not possible. (shrink)

Corruption continues to represent a tenacious challenge to internationally active companies. According to prevailing international anti-corruption standards, a company can be held criminally liable if it does not put all necessary and reasonable organizational measures in place to prevent corruption. The regular training of employees is considered one of the most effective ways to prevent corruption. Employee training is considered helpful in efforts to minimize the risk of employees becoming involved in corrupt behavior. With this idea in mind and building (...) on the fraud triangle model and neutralization theory, this paper examines whether business professionals who have undergone anti-corruption training are more likely to reject prevailing justifications of corrupt practices than are those who have not undergone such training. The empirical analysis in this paper is based on regression models using data obtained from a unique dataset that includes 200 business professionals. The findings provide evidence that training is positively linked to the likelihood of rejecting justifications of corruption. However, the research also suggests that methods of training must become more specific in order to tackle challenging questions regarding the gray areas of ethics and compliance. (shrink)

I argue that the use of a social discount rate to assess the consequences of climate policy is unhelpful and misleading. I consider two lines of justification for discounting: (i) ethical arguments for a "pure rate of time preference" and (ii) economic arguments that take time as a proxy for economic growth and the diminishing marginal utility of consumption. In both cases I conclude that, given the long time horizons, distinctive uncertainties, and particular costs and benefits at stake in the (...) climate context, discount rates are at best a poor proxy for the normative considerations they are meant to represent. (shrink)

The principles of biomedical ethics – autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice – are of paradigmatic importance for framing ethical problems in medicine and for teaching ethics to medical students and professionals. In order to underline this significance, Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress base the principles in the common morality, i.e. they claim that the principles represent basic moral values shared by all persons committed to morality and are thus grounded in human moral psychology. We empirically investigated (...) the relationship of the principles to other moral and non-moral values that provide orientations in medicine. By way of comparison, we performed a similar analysis for the business & finance domain. (shrink)

The focus of this special issue is on moral psychology and the goals of moral education. My focus will be considerably narrower in addressing the following question: In light of the situationist movement in psychology and philosophy, what should be the goal(s) of character education? The main conclusion will be that the central goal of character education should be modified in a certain way to make it more empirically informed. But not to worry, as this modification should be amenable to (...) most contemporary supporters of character education. (shrink)

Questions concerning the parent/ patient’s autonomy are seen as one of the most important reasons for requesting Ethics Consultations. Respecting parent/ patient’s autonomy also means respecting the patient’s wishes. But those wishes may be controversial and sometimes even go beyond legal requirements. The objective of this case series of 32 ECs was to illustrate ethically challenging parent / patients’ wishes during the first stages of life and how the principle of patient’s autonomy was handled. The case series has a (...) qualitative retrospective approach. A documentary sheet was designed de novo and information was gained from EC minutes and medical charts. The cases originate from the following specialties: reproductive medicine, obstetrics and neonatology as well as two interdisciplinary cases. Through the structured EC minutes aspects of patient / parents’ wishes could be identified explicitly. Overall the patient / parents’ wishes were not supported in 61% of the cases. Central reasons for rejection of patient / parent wishes were mainly the protection of the best interest of the unborn / new-born child as well as the rejection of clinical approaches that were regarded as being substandard treatment. The study shows that treatment decisions in reproductive medicine, obstetrics and neonatology raise substantial ethical questions leading to the request for ethics consultation. The systematic case series presented here gives insight into the ethical reflection carried out to support the clinicians in their decision-making and counselling. It shows that clinicians, after using ethics consultation, make deliberate decisions that do not “automatically” fulfil the treatment requests of the patients and parents. (shrink)

In contrast to the conventional view of Ludwig Feuerbach as a left-wing Young Hegelian, this article argues that his primary contribution to philosophy is to be found in his later ethics, the basis of which may be discerned in his earlier writings. Over and above recent work on Feuerbach's aesthetics, his relation to Herder, and the relationship between aesthetics and ‘theological politics’ in his thought, Feuerbach's philosophy can re-evaluated, in relation to Epicurus and the French libertin tradition, as articulating (...) an ethics of hedonism. In The Essence of Christianity (1841), the Nachlass fragment ‘Elementary Aesthetics’ (1843), and his Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1843) Feuerbach moves towards the vitalist materialist position that culminates in his (proto-Nietzschean) insight in ‘Against the Dualism of Body and Soul, Flesh and Spirit’ (1846) into the world as an ‘aesthetic phenomenon’, thus laying the foundations for his recognition of the centrality of sensuous pleasure to the ethical life. (shrink)

BackgroundAt the start of 2021, oncologists lacked the necessary scientific knowledge to adapt their clinical practices optimally when faced with cancer patients refusing or reluctant to be vaccinated against COVID-19, despite the marked vulnerability of these patients to severe, and even fatal forms of this new viral infectious disease. Oncologists at Foch Hospital were confronted with this phenomenon, which was observed worldwide, in both the general population and the population of cancer patients.MethodsBetween April and November 2021, the Ethics and (...) Oncology Departments of Foch Hospital decided to investigate this subject, through an empirical and interdisciplinary study in bioethics. Our scientific objective was to try to identify and resolve the principal bio-ethical issues, with a view to improving clinical practices in oncology during future major pandemics of this kind, from a highly specific bio-ethical standpoint. We used a mainly qualitative methodological approach based on questionnaires and interviews.ResultsIn April 2021, 29 cancer patients refused or were reluctant to be vaccinated. Seventeen of these patients said that making vaccination mandatory would have helped them to accept vaccination. In October 2021, only 10 cancer patients continued to maintain their refusal. One of the main reasons for the decrease in refusals was probably the introduction of the “pass sanitaire” in July 2021, which rendered vaccination indispensable for many activities. However, even this was not sufficient to convince these 10 cancer patients.ConclusionWe identified a key bio-ethical issue, which we then tried to resolve: vaccination policy. We characterized a major tension between “the recommendation of anti-COVID-19 vaccination” and “free will”, and the duty to “protect each other”. Mandatory vaccination, at least in France, could resolve this tension, with positive effects on quality of life, or survival, in cancer patients initially refusing or reluctant to be vaccinated, but only if collective and individual scales are clearly distinguished. (shrink)

While promoting population health has been the classic goal of public health practice and policy, in recent decades, new objectives in terms of autonomy and equality have been introduced. These different goals are analysed, and it is demonstrated how they may conflict severly in several ways, leaving serious unclarities both regarding the normative issue of what goal should be pursued by public health, what that implies in practical terms, and the descriptive issue of what goal that actually is pursued in (...) different contexts. A basic conflict of perspective is handled by integrating the ideas of public health striving for health-related autonomy and equality, resulting in a prioritarian oriented population approach to health-related autonomy. This integrated goal is demonstrated to constrain itself in several ways attractive from the point of view of the classic goal, but several serious problems remain. For this reason, a model where all of the three goals are integrated into one coherent structure where they can be assigned varying degrees of importance relative to the level of population health is described. It is argued that this model avoids the problems set out earlier, and is actually normatively preferable to the classic goal alone. It is furthermore argued that the model may be employed as a useful tool for descriptive ethics, as well as a vehicle for international harmonisation of public health policies. A number of practical implications regarding, e.g., the importance of respecting autonomy and the allocation of public health resources are noted, as are a battery of questions for further research. (shrink)

Thanks largely to the work of Robert Adams and Philip Quinn, the second half of the twentieth century witnessed a resurgence of interest in divine command theory as a viable position in normative theory and meta-ethics. More recently, however, there has been some dissatisfaction with divine command theory even among those philosophers who claim that normative properties are grounded in God, and as a result alternative views have begun to emerge, most notably divine intention theory (Murphy, Quinn) and divine (...) motivation theory (Zagzebski). My goal here is to outline a distinct theory, divine desire theory, and suggest that, even if it is not clearly superior to these extant views, it is at least worthy of serious consideration.1 As far as this paper is concerned, the discussion will be limited just to the deontic status of actions (obligatory, permissible, forbidden), and so no attempt will be made to also account for axiological properties such as goodness or evil. In order to get oriented to the range of deontological views in this area, consider the following three rough characterizations. (shrink)

The papyri transmit a part of the testimonia relevant to pre-Socratic philosophy. The ʼCorpus dei Papiri Filosofici‛ takes this material only partly into account. In this volume, a team of specialists discusses some of the most important papyrological texts that are major instruments for reconstructing pre-Socratic philosophy and doxography. Furthermore, these texts help to increase our knowledge of how pre-Socratic thought – through contributions to physics, cosmology, ethics, ontology, theology, anthropology, hermeneutics, and aesthetics – paved the way for the (...) canonic scientific fields of European culture. More specifically, each paper tackles papyrological texts concerning the Orphics, the Milesians, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, the early Atomists, and the Sophists. For the first time in the field of pre-Socratics studies, several papers are devoted to the Herculanean sources, along with others concerning the Graeco-Egyptian papyri and the Derveni Papyrus. (shrink)

More than a decade ago, Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen first suggested that we were now living in the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch in which human dominance of biological, chemical and geological processes on Earth was already an undeniable reality. Crutzen's ideas inspired Christian Schwagerl to do further documentation and to write this stimulating book. Well-equipped to take on such a task, Schwagerl has been a political, science and environmental journalist for more than 20 years. He first (...) studied biology at the University of Berlin, completing his Master of Science degree at the University of Reading (UK). He is a past winner of the Georg von Holtzbrinck Prize for Science Journalism, the IUCN-Reuters Media Awards for excellence in Environmental Reporting (Category Europe, together with Philip Bethge and Rafaela von Bredow) and the Econsense Journalism Award for sustainability. (shrink)

This book tells the story of modern ethics, namely the story of a discourse that, after the Renaissance, went through a methodological revolution giving birth to Grotius’s and Pufendorf’s new science of natural law, leaving room for two centuries of explorations of the possible developments and implications of this new paradigm, up to the crisis of the Eighties of the eighteenth century, a crisis that carried a kind of mitosis, the act of birth of both basic paradigms of the (...) two following centuries: Kantian ethics and utilitarianism. The new science of natural law carried a fresh start for ethics, resulting from a mixture of the Old and the New. It was, as suggested by Schneewind, an attempt at rescuing the content of Scholastic and Stoic doctrines on a new methodological basis. The former was the claim of existence of objective and universal moral laws; the latter was the self-aware attempt at justifying a minimal kernel of such laws facing skeptical doubt. What Bentham and Kant did was precisely carrying this strategy further on, even if restructuring it each of them around one out of two alternative basic claims. The nineteenth- and twentieth-century critics of the Enlightenment attacked both not on their alleged failure in carrying out their own projects, but precisely on having adopted Grotius’s and Pufendorf’s project. What counter-enlightenment has been unable to spell out is which alternative project could be carried out facing the modern condition of pluralism, while on the contrary, if we takes a closer look at developments in twentieth-century ethics or at on-going discussions on practical issues, we might feel inclined to believe that Grotius’s and Pufendorf’s project is as up-to-date as ever. -/- Table of Contents -/- Preface I. Fathers of the Reformation and Schoolmen 1.1. Luther: passive justice and the good deeds; 1.2. Calvin: voluntarism and predestination; 1.3. Baroque Scholasticism; 1.4. Casuistry and Institutiones morales -/- II Neo-Platonists, neo-Stoics, neo-Sceptics 2.1. Aristotelian, neo-Platonic, neo-Epicurean and neo-Cynic Humanists; 2.2. Oeconomica and the art of living; 2.3. Neo-Stoics; 2.4. Neo-Sceptics; 2.5. Moralistic literature -/- III Neo-Augustinians 3.l. The Jansenists on natura lapsa, sufficient grace, pure love; 3.2. Nicole on the impossibility of self-knowledge; 3.3. Nicole on self-love and charity; 3.4. Nicole against civic virtue, for Christian civility; 3.5. Malebranche on general laws and necessary evil; 3.6. Malebranche on Neo-Augustinianism and Platonism. -/- IV Grotius, Pufendorf and the new moral science 4.1. Grotius against Aristotle and the sceptics; 4.2. Mersenne and Gassendi; 4.3. Descartes on ethics as the last branch of philosophy’s tree; 4.4. Hobbes on scepticism and the new moral science; 4.5. Spinoza on the new moral science as a descriptive science;4.6. Locke on voluntarism and probabilism; 4.7. Pufendorf on natural law as an exact science; 4.8. Pufendorf on physical and moral entities; 10. Pufendorf on self-preservation -/- V The empiricist version of the new moral science: from Cumberland to Paley 5.1. Cumberland against Hobbesian voluntarism; 5.2. Cumberland and theological consequentialism; 5.3. Cumberland on universal benevolence and self-love; 5.4. Shaftesbury on the moral sense; 5.5. Hutcheson on natural law and moral faculties; 5.6. Gay, Brown, Paley and theological consequentialism. -/- VI The rationalist version of the new moral science: from Cudworth to Price 6.1. The Cambridge Platonists; 6.2. Shaftesbury on the moral sense; 6.3. Butler and a third way between voluntarism and scepticism; 6.4. Price and the rational character of moral truths; -/- VII Leibniz’s compromise between the new moral science and Aristotelianism 1.Leibniz against voluntarism; 2.Leibniz against the division between the physical and the moral good; 3.Leibniz on la place d’autrui and theological consequentialism; 4.Thomasius, Wolff, Crusius -/- VIII French eighteenth-century philosophers without the new moral science 8.1. The genealogy of our ideas of virtue and vice; 8.2. Maupertuis and moral arithmetic 8.3. The philosophes and the harmony of interests; 8.4. Rousseau on corruption, self-love, and virtue; 8.5. Sade on the merits of vice -/- IX Experimental moral science: Hume and Adam Smith 9.1. Mandeville’s paradox; 9.2. Hutcheson on the law of nature and moral faculties; 9.3. Hume on experimental moral philosophy and the intermediate principles; 9.4. Hume’s Law; 9.5. Hume on the fellow-feeling; 9.6. Hume on natural and artificial virtues and disinterested pleasure for utility; 9.7. Adam Smith’s anti-realist metaethics; 9.8. Adam Smith on self-deception and the paradox of happiness; 9.9. Adam Smith on sympathy and the impartial spectator; 9.10. Adam Smith on the twofold criterion for moral judgement and its paradox; 9.11. Reid on the refutation of scepticism and the self-evidence of duty -/- X Kantian ethics 10.1. Kantian metaethics: moral epistemology; 10.2. Kantian metaethics: moral ontology; 10.3. Kantian metaethics: moral psychology; 10.4. Kantian normative ethics; 10.5. Kant on the impracticability of applied ethics; 10.6. Kantian moral anthropology; 10.7. Civilisation and moralisation; 10.8. Theology on a moral basis and the origins of evil; 10.9. Fichte and the transformation of theoretical philosophy into practical philosophy XI Bentham and utilitarianism 11.1. Bentham’s linguistic theory; 11.2. Bentham’s moral ontology, psychology, and theory of action; 11.3. The principle of greatest happiness; 11.4. The critique of religious ethics; 11.5. The new morality; 11.6. Interest and duty; 11.7. Virtues; 11.8. Private ethics and legislation -/- XII Followers of the Enlightenment: liberal Judaism and Liberal Theology 12.1. Mendelssohn; 12.2. Salomon Maimon; 12.3. Haskalā and liberal Judaism; 12.4. Liberal Theology. -/- XIII Counter-Enlighteners 13.1.Romanticism and the fulfilment of individuality as the Summum Bonum; 13.2. Hegel on history as the making of liberty; 13.3. Hegel on the unhappy consciousness and the beautiful soul; 13.4. Hegel on Morality and Sittlichkeit; 13.5. Marx on ideology, alienation, and praxis; 13.6. Schopenhauer on compassion; 13.7. Kierkegaard on faith beyond ethics. -/- XIV Followers of the Enlightenment: intuitionists and utilitarian 14.1 Whewell‘s criticism of utilitarianism; 14.2 Whewell on morality and the philosophy of morality; 14.3 Whewell on the Supreme Norm; 14.4 Whewell on the conflict between duties; 14.5 Mill and the proof of the principle of utility; 14.6 Mill’s eudemonistic utilitarianism; 14.7 Mill on rules -/- XV Followers of the Enlightenment: neo-Kantians and positivists 15.1. French spiritualism; 15.2. Neo-Kantians: the Marburg school; 15.3. Neo-Kantians: the Marburg school; 15.4. Comte’s positivism and the invention of altruism; 15.5. Social Darwinism; 15.6. Wundt and an ethic of humankind -/- XVI Post-enlighteners: Sidgwick 16.1. Criticism of intuitionism; 16.2. On ethical egoism; 16.3. Criticism of utilitarianism -/- XVII Post-enlighteners: Durkheim 17.1. Sociology as physics of customs; 17.2. Morality as physics of customs and as practical science; 17.3. On Kantian ethics and utilitarianism; 17.4. The variability of moralities;17.5. Social solidarity as end and justification of morality; 17.6. Secular morality as “sociodicy”; XVIII Post-enlighteners: Nietzsche 18.1. On the Dionysian; 18.2. On the deconstruction of the world of values 18.3 On the twofold genealogy of moralities; 18.4. On ascetics and nihilism; 18.5. Normative ethics of self-fulfilment -/- Bibliography / Index of names / Index of concepts -/- . (shrink)

T. J. Kasperbauer presents an analysis of the ethics of de-extinction that is fairly distinctive in its focus on the welfare of individual animals. But while he is right to express concerns about individual animal well-being, individualism may not be the most important lens through which to view this issue. If one examines more closely what is at issue in de-extinction technologies in relation to species, additional problems appear that cast doubt both on the legitimacy of de-extinction projects, and (...) on the limited defense of them that Kasperbauer offers. (shrink)