Download or read book A Liberal Theory of Practical Morality written by Earl Spurgin and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moral issues and questions abound in daily life. Media outlets frequently raise awareness of many, such as those concerning individuals’ right to privacy. The same venues seldom, if ever, raise awareness of others, such as moral issues and questions concerning our fantasies. Regardless of the level of publicity various venues afford particular moral matters, most people who become aware of those matters find many interesting and important. A problem most encounter, however, is determining the criteria through which they should approach the moral matters they wish to engage. Ethicists have long sought a moral theory that would provide the desired criteria, but most will grant readily that those efforts have not produced a generally-accepted theory. This book presents the author’s case that a kind of moral liberalism is the theory we should use to engage daily life’s moral matters. The author presents a conception of moral liberalism, argues that it is the best approach to practical morality in a plural society, and applies it to several of morality’s practical matters.
Download or read book Liberalism and the Moral Life written by Nancy Lipton Rosenblum and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberalism and the Moral Life presents the timely thoughts of twelve prominent scholars who are redrawing the map of liberalism... In essays that go beyond the conventional defense of liberalism based on moral skepticism or the possibility of discovering neutral principles, these writers consider possibilities for reinspiriting liberal thought. They offer fresh arguments for the moral status of individualism and argue that distinctively liberal virtues and practices sustain democracy, constituting a moral life that people share in common. Moving beyond theory, the authors point to a variety of institutional contexts within liberal democracy that provide moral education and opportunities for expressing commitment to substantive moral values.
Download or read book Value and Justification written by Gerald F. Gaus and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1990-07-27 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rational moral action can neither be seen as a way of maximising personal values, nor derived from reason independent of them is this study's assertion. It contends that commitment to the moral point of view is presupposed by value systems.Rational moral action can neither be seen as a way of maximising personal values, nor derived from reason independent of them is this study's assertion. It contends that commitment to the moral point of view is presupposed by value systems.
Download or read book The Political Morality of Liberal Democracy written by Michael J. Perry and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important new work elaborates and defends an account of the political morality of liberal democracy.
Download or read book Liberalism and Its Discontents written by Patrick Neal and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-27 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these essays the reigning models of liberal political theory of John Rawls and Joseph Raz are immanently criticized. Neal argues that neither 'political' nor 'perfectionist' liberalism adequately gives expression to the liberal spirit. Surprisingly, Neal finds resources for the expression of such a spirit in the much maligned tradition of Hobbesian, or 'vulgar', liberalism. He argues that a turn in this direction is necessary for the articulation of a liberalism more genuinely responsive to the diversity of modes of life in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book The Morality of Everyday Life written by Thomas Fleming and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fleming offers an alternative to enlightened liberalism, where moral and political problems are looked at from an objective point of view and a decision made from a distant perspective that is both rational and universally applied to all comparable cases. He instead places importance on the particular, the local, and moral complexity, advocating a return to premodern traditions for a solution to ethical predicaments. In his view, liberalism and postmodernism ignore the fact that human beings by their very nature refuse to live in a world of abstractions where the attachments of friends, neighbors, family, and country make no difference. Fleming believes that a modern type of "casuistry" should be applied to moral conflicts, using examples from history, literature, and religion to explain this moral ecology that refuses to divorce organisms from their interactions with each other and with their environment.
Download or read book Making Men Moral written by Robert P. George and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 1995-04-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary liberal thinkers commonly suppose that there is something in principle unjust about the legal prohibition of putatively victimless immoralities. Against the prevailing liberal view, Robert P. George defends the proposition that `moral laws' can play a legitimate, if subsidiary, role in preserving the `moral ecology' of the cultural environment in which people make the morally significant choices by which they form their characters and influence, for good or ill, the moral lives of others. George shows that a defence of morals legislation is fully compatible with a `pluralistic perfectionist' political theory of civil liberties and public morality.
Download or read book Public and Private Morality written by Stuart Hampshire and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1978-10-31 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collection of essays by well-known British and American philosophers on the moral principles by which public policies and political decisions should be judged: does effective political action necessarily involve and justify actions which the individual would regard as unacceptable in "private" morality?
Download or read book Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy written by John Rawls and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2000-11-15 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The premier political philosopher of his day, John Rawls, in three decades of teaching at Harvard, has had a profound influence on the way philosophical ethics is approached and understood today. This book brings together the lectures that inspired a generation of students--and a regeneration of moral philosophy. It invites readers to learn from the most noted exemplars of modern moral philosophy with the inspired guidance of one of contemporary philosophy's most noteworthy practitioners and teachers. Central to Rawls's approach is the idea that respectful attention to the great texts of our tradition can lead to a fruitful exchange of ideas across the centuries. In this spirit, his book engages thinkers such as Leibniz, Hume, Kant, and Hegel as they struggle in brilliant and instructive ways to define the role of a moral conception in human life. The lectures delineate four basic types of moral reasoning: perfectionism, utilitarianism, intuitionism, and--the ultimate focus of Rawls's course--Kantian constructivism. Comprising a superb course on the history of moral philosophy, they also afford unique insight into how John Rawls has transformed our view of this history.
Download or read book From Promise to Contract written by Dori Kimel and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2003-03-14 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberal theory of contract is traditionally associated with the view according to which contract law can be explained simply as a mechanism for the enforcement of promises. The book bucks this trend by offering a theory of contract law based on a careful philosophical investigation of not only the similarities,but also the much-overlooked differences between contract and promise. Drawing on an analysis of a range of issues pertaining to the moral underpinnings of promissory and contractual obligations, the relationships in the context of which they typically feature, and the nature of the legal and moral institutions that support them, the book argues for the abandonment of the over-simplified notion that the law can systematically replicate existing moral or social institutions or simply enforce the rights or the obligations to which they give rise, without altering these institutions in the process and while leaving their intrinsic qualities intact. In its place the book offers an intriguing thesis concerning not only the relationship between contract and promise, but also the distinct functions and values that underlie contract law and explain contractual obligation. In turn, this thesis is shown to have an important bearing on theoretical and practical issues such as the choice of remedy for breach of contract, and broader concerns of political morality such as the appropriate scope of the freedom of contract and the role of the state in shaping and regulating contractual activity. The book's arguments on such issues, while rooted in distinctly liberal principles of political morality, often produce very different conclusions to those traditionally associated with liberal theory of contract, thus lending it a new lease of life in the face of its traditional as well as contemporary critiques.
Download or read book The Market of Virtue written by Michael Baurmann and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2002-08-31 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Market of Virtue - Morality and Commitment in a Liberal Society is a contribution to the present controversy between liberalism and communitarianism. This controversy is not only confined to academic circles but is becoming of increasing interest to a wider public. It has become popular again today to criticize a liberal market society as being a society in which morality and virtues are increasingly being displaced by egoism and utility maximization. According to this view the competition between individuals and the dissolution of community ties erode the respect for the interests of others and undermine the commitment to the common good. The present book, however, develops quite a different picture of a liberal society. An analysis of its fundamental principles shows that anonymous market-relations and competition are by no means the only traits of a liberal society. Such a society also provides the framework for freedom of cooperation and association. It gives its citizens the right to cooperate with other people in pursuit of their own interests. Just as the rivalry between competitors is a basic element of a liberal society so is the cooperation between partners. Thus not only self-centred individualism is rewarded. The main part of the book explains how the freedom to cooperate and to establish social ties lays the empirical foundation for the emergence of civil virtues and moral integrity. It is the basic insight of this analysis that it can no longer be maintained that a liberal society is incapable of producing moral attitudes and social commitment. If a civil society can develop under a liberal order, then one can reckon with citizens who voluntarily contribute to public goods and who commit themselves of their own accord to the society, its constitution and institutions. However this book not only develops further arguments for the current debate between liberalism and communitarianism by explaining the emergence of morality and virtue in a market society. It also provides new aspects for the present theoretical and methodological controversies over the fundaments of the social sciences and contributes to the advancement of the modern individualistic approach in social theory. In this context it aims especially at an improvement of a sociological model of behaviour.
Download or read book Practical Turn in Political Theory written by Eva Erman and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-07 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book joins five key debates in the current theoretical literature that have been largely taking place in isolation and identifies common strands of argument and their shared problems to developed a unified way forward for practice-based political theory.
Download or read book Persons Rights and the Moral Community written by Loren E. Lomasky and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1990-07-26 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a complete and convincing account of what rights we do and do not have, who has them, and why. Presenting the foundations of a liberal, individualistic theory of rights, Lomasky explains the place of rights within the overall structure of morality, arguing for the moral importance of individual commitments to and pursuit of "projects." After developing his theory of basic rights, Lomasky demonstrates its implications for a variety of problems and issues, including property rights, the rights of children, and the status of the unborn, defective persons, animals, and even the dead. Arguing for a fundamental reshaping of philosophical ethics, Lomasky develops a credible alternative to currently fashionable views.
Download or read book Public Philosophy written by Michael J. Sandel and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2006-10-31 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Michael Sandel takes up some of the hotly contested moral and political issues of our time, including affirmative action, assisted suicide, abortion, gay rights, stem cell research, the meaning of toleration and civility, the gap between rich and poor, the role of markets, and the place of religion in public life. He argues that the most prominent ideals in our political life--individual rights and freedom of choice--do not by themselves provide an adequate ethic for a democratic society. Sandel calls for a politics that gives greater emphasis to citizenship, community, and civic virtue, and that grapples more directly with questions of the good life. Liberals often worry that inviting moral and religious argument into the public sphere runs the risk of intolerance and coercion. These essays respond to that concern by showing that substantive moral discourse is not at odds with progressive public purposes, and that a pluralist society need not shrink from engaging the moral and religious convictions that its citizens bring to public life.
Download or read book Moral Issues in Global Perspective written by Christine Koggel and published by Peterborough, Ont. : Broadview Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 840 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moral Issues in Global Perspective seeks to challenge standard approaches to morality and moral issues shaped by Western liberal theory and to extend the inquiry beyond the context of North America. It includes critiques of traditional liberal accounts of rights, justice, and moral values that raise questions about the treatment of disadvantaged groups within liberal societies as well as in other societies and across societies. It covers a broader range of issues and arguments than most textbooks on practical ethics. It incorporates work by race, class, feminist, and disability theorists that provides new perspectives on issues such as reproduction, euthanasia, censorship, and the environment. The collection places moral issues in a global context by providing selections by moral and political theorists from many different parts of the world.
Download or read book Mill on Liberty A Defence written by John Gray and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mill on Liberty was first published in 1983 and has become a classic of Mill commentary. The second edition reproduces the text of the first in full, and in paperback for the first time. To this, John Gray adds an extensive postscript which defends the interpretation of Mill set out in the first edition, but develops radical criticisms of the substance of Millian and other liberalism. The new edition is intended as a contribution to the current debate about the foundations of liberalism, and it looks closely at the recent seminal contributions to liberal thought by Raz, Feinberg, Rawls and Berlin. Central to its argument is Gray's contention that, like other liberalisms that ground themselves on an ideal of autonomy or individuality, Millian liberalism has a Eurocentric bias that cannot be given rational justification. Gray addresses the question of whether any form of liberal theory, can, in fact, avoid the bias, and concludes that it cannot. This book will be indispensable both to those familiar with On Liberty and to those coming to it for the first time. In addition, the book will also be of great interest to moral and political theorists, to students of law and jurisprudence and to intellectual historians.
Download or read book Ethical Explorations written by John Skorupski and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2000-01-06 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Skorupski develops in these essays a distinctive and systematic moral philosophy, examining fundamental questions in ethics, and then applying the results to issues of culture and politics. The first three parts of the book focus on central ethical concepts: reasons, the good, and morality. Skorupski examines normative claims about what we have reason to think, feel, or do. He then presents a conception of the good which differs significantly from the utilitarianism of Mill while maintaining its important insights. Drawing on Kant and Hegel, his account of morality relates it to autonomy and the emotions involved in blame and recognition. The final part of the book is a liberal critique of the forms of liberalism which dominate contemporary culture. Ethical Explorations firmly links liberal politics to its ethical ideal, and links that ideal to modern morality and modern ideas of the good.
