Moral Concepts and their History

Moral Concepts and their History PDF Author: Edward Skidelsky
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000529274
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
This edited volume is devoted to the history of moral concepts, including shame, contempt, happiness, conscience, cleanliness and 'the brick'. The chapters in this book are written from the diverse perspectives of the philosopher, theologian, linguist and historian of ideas. However, they are united in the conviction that these concepts are illuminated by being treated historically; or even, more strongly, that we cannot fully understand what they are now without knowing the history of how they have come to be. Viewed in this way, the history of moral concepts is a crucial preliminary to moral self-understanding, as well as an interesting enquiry in its own right. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the History of European Ideas.

Moral Concepts and their History

Moral Concepts and their History PDF Author: Edward Skidelsky
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000529274
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Get Book Here

Book Description
This edited volume is devoted to the history of moral concepts, including shame, contempt, happiness, conscience, cleanliness and 'the brick'. The chapters in this book are written from the diverse perspectives of the philosopher, theologian, linguist and historian of ideas. However, they are united in the conviction that these concepts are illuminated by being treated historically; or even, more strongly, that we cannot fully understand what they are now without knowing the history of how they have come to be. Viewed in this way, the history of moral concepts is a crucial preliminary to moral self-understanding, as well as an interesting enquiry in its own right. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the History of European Ideas.

The Structure of Moral Revolutions

The Structure of Moral Revolutions PDF Author: Robert Baker
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262043084
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
A theoretical account of moral revolutions, illustrated by historical cases that include the criminalization and decriminalization of abortion and the patient rebellion against medical paternalism. We live in an age of moral revolutions in which the once morally outrageous has become morally acceptable, and the formerly acceptable is now regarded as reprehensible. Attitudes toward same-sex love, for example, and the proper role of women, have undergone paradigm shifts over the last several decades. In this book, Robert Baker argues that these inversions are the product of moral revolutions that follow a pattern similar to that of the scientific revolutions analyzed by Thomas Kuhn in his influential book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. After laying out the theoretical terrain, Baker develops his argument with examples of moral reversals from the recent and distant past. He describes the revolution, led by the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, that transformed the postmortem dissection of human bodies from punitive desecration to civic virtue; the criminalization of abortion in the nineteenth century and its decriminalization in the twentieth century; and the invention of a new bioethics paradigm in the 1970s and 1980s, supporting a patient-led rebellion against medical paternalism. Finally, Baker reflects on moral relativism, arguing that the acceptance of “absolute” moral truths denies us the diversity of moral perspectives that permit us to alter our morality in response to changing environments.

A Short History of Ethics

A Short History of Ethics PDF Author: Alasdair MacIntyre
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 0268161283
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
A Short History of Ethics is a significant contribution written by one of the most important living philosophers. For the second edition Alasdair MacIntyre has included a new preface in which he examines his book “thirty years on” and considers its impact. It remains an important work, ideal for all students interested in ethics and morality.

Essays on the History of Moral Philosophy

Essays on the History of Moral Philosophy PDF Author: J. B. Schneewind
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199563012
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
J.B. Schneewind presents a selection of his published essays on ethics, the history of ethics and moral psychology, together with a new piece offering an intellectual autobiography. The essays range across the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, with a particular focus on Kant and his relation to earlier thinkers.

The Moral Background

The Moral Background PDF Author: Gabriel Abend
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691171122
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 413

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Book Description
In recent years, many disciplines have become interested in the scientific study of morality. However, a conceptual framework for this work is still lacking. In The Moral Background, Gabriel Abend develops just such a framework and uses it to investigate the history of business ethics in the United States from the 1850s to the 1930s. According to Abend, morality consists of three levels: moral and immoral behavior, or the behavioral level; moral understandings and norms, or the normative level; and the moral background, which includes what moral concepts exist in a society, what moral methods can be used, what reasons can be given, and what objects can be morally evaluated at all. This background underlies the behavioral and normative levels; it supports, facilitates, and enables them. Through this perspective, Abend historically examines the work of numerous business ethicists and organizations—such as Protestant ministers, business associations, and business schools—and identifies two types of moral background. "Standards of Practice" is characterized by its scientific worldview, moral relativism, and emphasis on individuals' actions and decisions. The "Christian Merchant" type is characterized by its Christian worldview, moral objectivism, and conception of a person's life as a unity. The Moral Background offers both an original account of the history of business ethics and a novel framework for understanding and investigating morality in general.

Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy

Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy PDF Author: John Rawls
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674042565
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
Constantly revised and refined over three decades, Rawls's lectures on various historical figures reflect his developing and changing views on the history of liberalism and democracy. With its careful analyses of the doctrine of the social contract, utilitarianism, and socialism, this volume has a critical place in the traditions it expounds.

The Cambridge History of Moral Philosophy

The Cambridge History of Moral Philosophy PDF Author: Sacha Golob
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108206107
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
With fifty-four chapters charting the development of moral philosophy in the Western world, this volume examines the key thinkers and texts and their influence on the history of moral thought from the pre-Socratics to the present day. Topics including Epicureanism, humanism, Jewish and Arabic thought, perfectionism, pragmatism, idealism and intuitionism are all explored, as are figures including Aristotle, Boethius, Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Mill, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre and Rawls, as well as numerous key ideas and schools of thought. Chapters are written by leading experts in the field, drawing on the latest research to offer rigorous analysis of the canonical figures and movements of this branch of philosophy. The volume provides a comprehensive yet philosophically advanced resource for students and teachers alike as they approach, and refine their understanding of, the central issues in moral thought.

The Evolution of Morality

The Evolution of Morality PDF Author: Richard Joyce
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262263254
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Moral thinking pervades our practical lives, but where did this way of thinking come from, and what purpose does it serve? Is it to be explained by environmental pressures on our ancestors a million years ago, or is it a cultural invention of more recent origin? In The Evolution of Morality, Richard Joyce takes up these controversial questions, finding that the evidence supports an innate basis to human morality. As a moral philosopher, Joyce is interested in whether any implications follow from this hypothesis. Might the fact that the human brain has been biologically prepared by natural selection to engage in moral judgment serve in some sense to vindicate this way of thinking—staving off the threat of moral skepticism, or even undergirding some version of moral realism? Or if morality has an adaptive explanation in genetic terms—if it is, as Joyce writes, "just something that helped our ancestors make more babies"—might such an explanation actually undermine morality's central role in our lives? He carefully examines both the evolutionary "vindication of morality" and the evolutionary "debunking of morality," considering the skeptical view more seriously than have others who have treated the subject. Interdisciplinary and combining the latest results from the empirical sciences with philosophical discussion, The Evolution of Morality is one of the few books in this area written from the perspective of moral philosophy. Concise and without technical jargon, the arguments are rigorous but accessible to readers from different academic backgrounds. Joyce discusses complex issues in plain language while advocating subtle and sometimes radical views. The Evolution of Morality lays the philosophical foundations for further research into the biological understanding of human morality.

Moral Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Moral Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Britain PDF Author: Colin Heydt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108421091
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
A new account of a vital period in the history of ethics, focusing on the content of morality.

Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics

Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics PDF Author: Alexis Burgess
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198801858
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
Conceptual engineering is a newly flourishing branch of philosophy which investigates problems with our concepts and considers how they might be ameliorated: 'truth', for instance, is susceptible to paradox, and it's not clear what 'race' stands for. This is the first collective exploration of possibilities and problems of conceptual engineering.