One of the most influential of the Victorian philosophers, Henry Sidgwick was the author of the masterpiece of utilitarianism, The Methods of Ethics. He also made important contributions to fields such as economics, political theory, and classics. An active champion of higher education for women, he founded Cambridge's Newnham College in 1871. He attended Rugby School and then Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained his whole career. In 1859 he accepted a lectureship in classics, and held this post for (...) ten years. He then changed direction and in 1869 took up a lectureship in moral philosophy. In this book, published in 1886, Sidgwick gives an objective summary of ethical philosophies throughout history. He considers general issues in ethics and then gives a detailed critique of the work of major philosophers from early Greek thinkers through to his nineteenth-century contemporaries. (shrink)

A Short History of Ethics has over the past thirty years become a key philosophical contribution to studies on morality and ethics. Alasdair MacIntyre writes a new preface for this second edition which looks at the book 'thirty years on' and considers its impact. A Short History of Ethics guides the reader through the history of moral philosophy from the Greeks to contemporary times. MacIntyre emphasises the importance of a historical context to moral concepts (...) and ideas showing the relevance of philosophical queries on moral concepts and the importance of a historical account of ethics. A Short History of Ethics is an important contribution written by one of the most important living philosophers. Ideal for all philosophy students interested in ethics and morality. (shrink)

Philosophical ethics consists in the human endeavour to answer rationally the fundamental question of how we should live. The Oxford Handbook of the History of Ethics explores the history of philosophical ethics in the western tradition from Homer until the present day. It provides a broad overview of the views of many of the main thinkers, schools, and periods, and includes in addition essays on topics such as autonomy and impartiality. The authors are international leaders (...) in their field, and use their expertise and specialist knowledge to illuminate the relevance of their work to discussions in contemporary ethics. The essays are specially written for this volume, and in each case introduce the reader to the main lines of interpretation and criticism that have arisen in the professional history of philosophy over the past two or three decades. (shrink)

CHAPTER I GENERAL ACCOUNT OF THE SUBJECT THERE is some difficulty in defining the subject of Ethics in a manner which can fairly claim general acceptance ...

v. I. Graeco-Roman to early modern ethics -- v. 2. Modern and contemporary ethics.

"The work of a master in the subject, who in a few pregnant pages has sketched out skillfully and judicially the history of Greek, of medieval, and of English reflections on the aims and laws of human conduct." --William Wallace.

Is there an objective moral standard that applies to all our actions? To what extent should I sacrifice my own interests for the sake of others? How might philosophers of the past help us think about contemporary ethical problems? As the most recent addition to the Blackwell Readings in Philosophy series, History of Ethics: Essential Readings with Commentary brings together rich and varied excerpts of canonical work and contemporary scholarship to span the history of Western moral philosophy (...) in one volume. Editors Star and Crisp, noted scholars in their fields, expertly introduce the readings to illuminate the main philosophical ideas and arguments in each selection, and connect them to broader themes. These detailed and incisive editorial commentaries make the primary source texts accessible to students while guiding them chronologically through the history of Western ethics. Structured around a thematic table of contents divided into three distinct sections, History of Ethics charts patterns in the development of ethical thought across time to highlight connections between intellectual movements. Selections range from the work of well-known figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, and Mill to the work of philosophers often overlooked by such anthologies, including Butler, Smith, Sidgwick, Anscombe, Foot, and Frankena. Star and Crisp skillfully arrange the collection to connect readings to contemporary issues and interests by featuring examples such as Aquinas on self-defense and the doctrine of double effect, Kant on virtue, and Mill’s The Subjection of Women. Written for students and scholars of ethics, History of Ethics is a comprehensive collection of readings with expert editorial commentary that curates the most important and influential work in the history of ethics in the Western world. (shrink)

The essays in this volume offer an approach to the history of moral and political philosophy that takes its inspiration from John Rawls. All the contributors are philosophers who have studied with Rawls and they offer this collection in his honour. The distinctive feature of this approach is to address substantive normative questions in moral and political philosophy through an analysis of the texts and theories of major figures in the history of the subject: Aristotle, Hobbes, Hume, Rousseau, (...) Kant and Marx. By reconstructing the core of these theories in a way that is informed by contemporary theoretical concerns, the contributors show how the history of the subject is a resource for understanding present and perennial problems in moral and political philosophy. This outstanding collection will be of particular interest to historians of moral and political philosophy, historians of ideas, and political scientists. (shrink)

Finally, the two last essays in the volume talk about ethical thought during the last half of the twentieth century and the first few years of the twenty-first, ...

terence irwin’s monumental three-volume The Development of Ethics is a masterful reconstruction and assessment of figures, traditions, and ideas in the history of ethics in the Western tradition from Socrates through John Rawls.1, 2 The three volumes weigh in at over 11 pounds and span 96 substantial chapters and over 2,700 densely formatted pages (large pages, small margins, and small font). The Development of Ethics covers not only familiar figures, such as Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Aquinas, (...) Hobbes, Locke, Hutcheson, Butler, Hume, Smith, Reid, Kant, Hegel, Mill, Green, and Sidgwick, but also a rich variety of ancient sources (including the Cynics, Cyrenaics, Skeptics, and Church Fathers, including .. (shrink)

J. B. Schneewind's "The Invention of Autonomy" has been hailed as a major interpretation of modern moral thought. Schneewind's narrative, however, elides several serious interpretive issues, particularly in the transition from late medieval to early modern thought. This results in potentially distorted accounts of Thomas Aquinas, Hugo Grotius, and G. W. Leibniz. Since these thinkers play a crucial role in Schneewind's argument, uncertainty over their work calls into question at least some of Schneewind's larger agenda for the history of (...) ethics. (shrink)

Some ninety years ago, Sidgwick wrote his Outlines of the History of Ethics for English Readers The work was precisely what the title claimed: a series of outlines running from the pre-Socratics to J S Mill and beyond. Sidgwick had no doctrinal axe to grind. His object was to inform, and in this object he was highly successful. He had a gift for clear unhurried exposition, and the Outlines remains to this day a masterpiece of its kind.

In this book Michael Slote discusses the history of ethics from a sentimentalist perspective. It can be read in two ways: first, as a tribute to great thinkers whose contributions have helped shape contemporary ethics, and second, as a defense of a sentimentalist virtue theory. This review centers on the two chapters most relevant to sentimentalist virtue theory: chapter 1, in which Slote defines and defends elevationism, and chapter 5, in which he offers a defense of sentimentalism. (...) The first essay distinguishes between three theories about the relationship between virtue and well-being. Dualist theories, like Kantianism, contend that virtue and well-being are distinct concepts. Reductionist theories .. (shrink)

The history of ethical reasoning in Slovakia1 dates back to the beginning of the 16th century, a period when ethics and morals came to the fore of intellectual and philosophical thinking––owing to the influence of the humanism that prevailed during the Reformation2. This cultural and intellectual climate led to the revival of ancient culture, education, philosophy, and ethics, while a focus on purgation encouraged writers to ponder over the questions traditionally raised in ancient ethics: How should (...) we live? How can we live well or have a proper life? (shrink)

"Ashby includes the great thinkers and periods that have shaped Western ethics: the Greeks, the Hebrew prophets, the Roman Stoics, St. Augustine, the medieval ethicists, the Renaissance and Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Romantics, and the radical revolutions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the period from 1850 to 1920, Ashby notes, the transformations wrought by the four great modern thinkers - Darwim, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud - both extended and significantly challenged the traditional core beliefs of (...) the West and, as a result, bestowed upon us a profound moral crisis, one that we have not yet successfully met. Consequently, as we stand at the brink of the twenty-first century, with its further technological breakthroughs and social upheavals, how will we deal with the moral uncertainties that await us? In his final chapter Ashby contends that while remaining alive to our Western ethical heritage, we will have no choice but to confront its basic presuppositions as we move into a more pluralistic society, for he asserts that the ideology of the future cannot be exclusively Western; future history cannot be purely Western history. So, while this history of ethics cannot tell us how to live, it can offer to the reader what is prerequisite to a more satisfying life: an insightful and inclusive history of where our own ethical beliefs have come from and a sense of the challenges that await us all.". (shrink)

Christian Wolff's 1721 "Discourse on the Practical Philosophy of the Chinese" is generally read as championing the autonomy of ethics from religion. This is too simple: Wolff's ethics was an antivoluntarist "religious" ethics. The example of the Chinese confirmed for Wolff that revelation is not necessary for knowledge or practice of genuine virtue, though he held that the Chinese achieve only the first of three "degrees of virtue." (Most Christians, including the Pietists who drove Wolff from Halle (...) shortly after he delivered the "Discourse," did not, in his judgment, achieve even that.) China's being perceived as outside of Western (and sacred) history made it a congenial example for the ethics and moral anthropology that, in Wolff's time, were struggling against the voluntarism of a Christian ethics premised on original sin. (shrink)

The ‘modern’ natural law philosophers of the seventeenth century believed that conflict was an unavoidable concomitant of human intercourse, rooted in our nature. They understood the normative laws of nature as serving the purpose of setting the limits within which conflict is compatible with lasting social cooperation, thus showing, in effect, how warfare can be turned into competition. The natural lawyers were interested primarily in legal and political problems, not in ethics. But in order to provide reasoned approaches to (...) immediate practical issues, they had to move to a level of abstract theorizing at which philosophical claims about morality were unavoidable. Natural law theory with its understanding of the central underlying problem of human sociability dominated seventeenth-century practical philosophy, and the solutions its various proponents offered generated many of the central concerns of what we know as moral philosophy. (shrink)

Kant was not a very knowledgeable historian of philosophy. He came to the study of philosophy from natural science, and later the fields of ethics, aesthetics, politics and religion came to occupy his central concerns, but his approach to philosophical issues never came by way of reflection on their history. He was well acquainted, of course, with the recent tradition of German philosophy: Leibniz, Wolff, Baumgarten and Crusius, and he seems also to have had knowledge of eighteenth century (...) French philosophy, and of as much of Anglophone philosophy as had been translated into either French or German. But like many modern philosophers, he had an inadequate appreciation of the scholastic tradition, and his knowledge of classical Greek philosophy was mostly at second hand. (shrink)

How should we look back on the history and the origins of our ethical outlook and our way of life? We know that in the past, strange and appalling ethical views and practices have enjoyed widespread and sincere support. Yet we do not regard our contemporary outlook – to the extent that we do, at the present, have a common outlook – as one option among many. However bemused we may feel in ethical matters, at least on some issues (...) we claim to have reasons that are good . If we do not object to the use of the predicate ‘true’ in ethics, we may say that we are confronted with the truth of an outlook. Or, to echo a provocative expression of David Wiggins, we claim that ‘there is nothing else to think’. (shrink)

Moral concern with food intake is as old asmorality itself. In the course of history, however,several ways of critically examining practices of foodproduction and food intake have been developed.Whereas ancient Greek food ethics concentrated on theproblem of temperance, and ancient Jewish ethics onthe distinction between legitimate and illicit foodproducts, early Christian morality simply refused toattach any moral significance to food intake. Yet,during the middle ages food became one of theprinciple objects of monastic programs for moralexercise (askesis). During (...) the seventeenth andeighteenth century, food ethics was transformed interms of the increasing scientific interest in foodintake, while in the nineteenth century the socialdimension of food ethics was discovered, with theresult that more and more attention was given to theproduction and distribution of food products. Becauseof the increasing distance between the production andconsumption of food products ever since, theoutstanding feature of contemporary food ethics is itreliance and dependence on labeling practices. (shrink)

This volume is for Rawls rather than about him or his philosophy. It collects essays by some of his students, testifying in endnotes to his inspiration as a teacher, but generally not reflecting on his major works. If the volume is about anything, it is about Kant’s moral philosophy, since eight of the fourteen essays address some aspect of it. But two have to do with Hobbes, two are on Rousseau, one on Aristotle, and one on Marx. The book shows (...) yet again how the whole can be less than the sum of its parts. There are many fine essays here, but there is too little in the way of thematic unity, and, in one or two cases, there is the sort of scholarly backing and filling that, in the absence of supporting structure, is best left in the journals. Yet, most philosophical readers will find essays to relish. (shrink)

This festschrift offers an impressive picture of the flourishing end-of-millennium Harvardtrained writing in the history of moral philosophy. The contributing authors each offer John Rawls the high scholarly compliment of emulating his rigorous critical and exegetical standards of historical philosophical investigation.

Digital ethics, also known as computer ethics or information ethics, is now a lively field that draws a lot of attention, but how did it come about and what were the developments that lead to its existence? What are the traditions, the concerns, the technological and social developments that pushed digital ethics? How did ethical issues change with digitalisation of human life? How did the traditional discipline of philosophy respond? The article provides an overview, proposing historical (...) epochs: ‘pre-modernity’ prior to digital computation over data, via the ‘modernity’ of digital data processing to our present ‘post-modernity’ when not only the data is digital, but our lives themselves are largely digital. In each section, the situation in technology and society is sketched, and then the developments in digital ethics are explained. Finally, a brief outlook is provided. (shrink)

Ethics in the axial age -- Some aspects of rabbinic ethics -- Medieval philosophical ethics -- Medieval rabbinic and kabbalistic ethics -- Modern Jewish ethics.