Download or read book No Morality No Self written by James Doyle and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elizabeth Anscombe’s “Modern Moral Philosophy” and “The First Person” have become touchstones of analytic philosophy but their significance remains controversial or misunderstood. James Doyle offers a fresh interpretation of Anscombe’s theses about ethical reasoning and individual identity that reconciles seemingly incompatible points of view.
Download or read book No Morality No Self written by James Doyle and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is becoming increasingly apparent that Elizabeth Anscombe (1919-2001), long known as a student, friend and translator of Wittgenstein, was herself one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. No Morality, No Self examines her two best-known papers, in which she advanced her most amazing theses. In 'Modern Moral Philosophy' (1958), she claimed that the term moral, understood as picking out a special, sui generis category, is literally senseless and should therefore be abandoned. In 'The First Person' (1975), she maintained that the word 'I' is not a referring expression: in other words, its function in the language is not to pick out the speaker, or 'the self' - or any entity whatsoever. Both papers are considered influential, and are frequently cited; but their main claims, and many of their arguments, have been widely misunderstood. In this book James Doyle shows that once various errors of interpretation have been cleared away, the claims can be seen to be far more plausible, and the arguments far more compelling, than even her defenders have realized. Philosophers often seek attention by making startling claims which are subsequently revealed as little more than commonplaces wrapped in hyperbole. Doyle's book makes it clear that here, in her greatest papers, Anscombe achieves something vanishingly rare in philosophy: a persuasive case for genuinely unsettling and profound conclusions. The two lines of argument, seemingly so disparate, are also shown to be connected by Anscombe's deep opposition to the Cartesian picture of the mind.--
Download or read book Whatever Happened to Good and Evil written by Russ Shafer-Landau and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a brief introduction to ethics, with a point of view. The book addresses "meta-ethical" questions that go beyond what most introductory ethics books address, which are "normative" theories (egoism, utilitarianism, etc.) and "applied" ethics (abortion, capital punishment, etc.).
Download or read book The Second Person Standpoint written by Stephen Darwall and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-30 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why should we avoid doing moral wrong? The inability of philosophy to answer this question in a compelling manner—along with the moral skepticism and ethical confusion that ensue—result, Stephen Darwall argues, from our failure to appreciate the essentially interpersonal character of moral obligation. After showing how attempts to vindicate morality have tended to change the subject—falling back on non-moral values or practical, first-person considerations—Darwall elaborates the interpersonal nature of moral obligations: their inherent link to our responsibilities to one another as members of the moral community. As Darwall defines it, the concept of moral obligation has an irreducibly second-person aspect; it presupposes our authority to make claims and demands on one another. And so too do many other central notions, including those of rights, the dignity of and respect for persons, and the very concept of person itself. The result is nothing less than a fundamental reorientation of moral theory that enables it at last to account for morality’s supreme authority—an account that Darwall carries from the realm of theory to the practical world of second-person attitudes, emotions, and actions.
Download or read book Reasons and Persons written by Derek Parfit and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 1986-01-23 with total page 880 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity. The author claims that we have a false view of our own nature; that it is often rational to act against our own best interests; that most of us have moral views that are directly self-defeating; and that, when we consider future generations the conclusions will often be disturbing. He concludes that moral non-religious moral philosophy is a young subject, with a promising but unpredictable future.
Download or read book Sources of the Self written by Charles Taylor and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992-03-12 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Taylor's latest book sets out to define the modern identity by tracing its genesis.
Download or read book Ethics Without Morals written by Joel Marks and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, Marks offers a defense of amorality as both philosophically justified and practicably livable. In so doing, the book marks a radical departure from both the new atheism and the mainstream of modern ethical philosophy. While in synch with their underlying aim of grounding human existence in a naturalistic metaphysics, the book takes both to task for maintaining a complacent embrace of morality. Marks advocates wiping the slate clean of outdated connotations by replacing the language of morality with a language of desire. The book begins with an analysis of what morality is and then argues that the concept is not instantiated in reality. Following this, the question of belief in morality is addressed: How would human life be affected if we accepted that morality does not exist? Marks argues that at the very least, a moralist would have little to complain about in an amoral world, and at best we might hope for a world that was more to our liking overall. An extended look at the human encounter with nonhuman animals serves as an illustration of amorality's potential to make both theoretical and practical headway in resolving heretofore intractable ethical problems.
Download or read book Normative Subjects written by Meir Dan-Cohen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining constructivist and hermeneutical themes, this book explores normative aspects of human self creation seen as a matter of fixing and elaborating the values and norms that shape human identity, individually and collectively. The book focuses especially on a conception of dignity as the value that accrues to us qua authors of the meanings constitutive of human life.
Download or read book Kant s Theory of Evil written by Pablo Muchnik and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Essay on Kant's Theory of Evil shows the centrality of the doctrine of radical evil within Kant's critical philosophy. Combining textual accuracy with systematic ethical theory, it fills the gaps Kant left open in his own doctrine, and provides a non-mystifying account of h...
Download or read book The Moral Landscape written by Sam Harris and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-09-13 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sam Harris dismantles the most common justification for religious faith--that a moral system cannot be based on science.
Download or read book Reading Wittgenstein with Anscombe Going On to Ethics written by Cora Diamond and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-04 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Reading Wittgenstein with Anscombe, Going On to Ethics, Cora Diamond follows two major European philosophers as they think about thinking, as well as about our ability to respond to thinking that has miscarried or gone astray. Acting as both witness to and participant in the encounter, Diamond provides fresh perspective on the importance of the work of these philosophers and the value of doing philosophy in unexpected ways. Diamond begins with the Tractatus (1921), in which Ludwig Wittgenstein forges a link between thinking about thought and the capacity to respond to misunderstandings and confusions. She then considers G. E. M. Anscombe’s An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (1959), in which Anscombe, through her engagement with Wittgenstein, further explores the limits of thinking and the ability to respond to thought that has gone wrong. Anscombe’s book is important, Diamond argues, in challenging contemporary assumptions about what philosophical problems are worth considering and about how they can be approached. Through her reading of the Tractatus, Anscombe exemplified an ethics of thinking through and against the grain of common preconceptions. The result drew attention to the questions that mattered most to Wittgenstein and conveyed with great power the nature of his achievement. Diamond herself, in turn, challenges Anscombe on certain points, thereby further carrying out just the kind of ethical work Wittgenstein and Anscombe each felt was crucial to getting things right. Through her textured engagement with her predecessors, Diamond demonstrates what genuinely independent thought is able to achieve.
Download or read book Justice written by Michael J. Sandel and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2009-09-15 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A renowned Harvard professor's brilliant, sweeping, inspiring account of the role of justice in our society--and of the moral dilemmas we face as citizens What are our obligations to others as people in a free society? Should government tax the rich to help the poor? Is the free market fair? Is it sometimes wrong to tell the truth? Is killing sometimes morally required? Is it possible, or desirable, to legislate morality? Do individual rights and the common good conflict? Michael J. Sandel's "Justice" course is one of the most popular and influential at Harvard. Up to a thousand students pack the campus theater to hear Sandel relate the big questions of political philosophy to the most vexing issues of the day, and this fall, public television will air a series based on the course. Justice offers readers the same exhilarating journey that captivates Harvard students. This book is a searching, lyrical exploration of the meaning of justice, one that invites readers of all political persuasions to consider familiar controversies in fresh and illuminating ways. Affirmative action, same-sex marriage, physician-assisted suicide, abortion, national service, patriotism and dissent, the moral limits of markets—Sandel dramatizes the challenge of thinking through these con?icts, and shows how a surer grasp of philosophy can help us make sense of politics, morality, and our own convictions as well. Justice is lively, thought-provoking, and wise—an essential new addition to the small shelf of books that speak convincingly to the hard questions of our civic life.
Download or read book An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals written by David Hume and published by . This book was released on 1907 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Virtue of Selfishness written by Ayn Rand and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1964-11-01 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays that sets forth the moral principles of Objectivism, Ayn Rand's controversial, groundbreaking philosophy. Since their initial publication, Rand's fictional works—Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged—have had a major impact on the intellectual scene. The underlying theme of her famous novels is her philosophy, a new morality—the ethics of rational self-interest—that offers a robust challenge to altruist-collectivist thought. Known as Objectivism, her divisive philosophy holds human life—the life proper to a rational being—as the standard of moral values and regards altruism as incompatible with man's nature. In this series of essays, Rand asks why man needs morality in the first place, and arrives at an answer that redefines a new code of ethics based on the virtue of selfishness. More Than 1 Million Copies Sold!
Download or read book Neuroexistentialism written by Gregg D. Caruso and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Existentialisms arise when the foundations of being, such as meaning, morals, and purpose come under assault. In the first-wave of existentialism, writings typified by Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche concerned the increasingly apparent inability of religion, and religious tradition, to support a foundation of being. Second-wave existentialism, personified philosophically by Sartre, Camus, and de Beauvoir, developed in response to similar realizations about the overly optimistic Enlightenment vision of reason and the common good. The third-wave of existentialism, a new existentialism, developed in response to advances in the neurosciences that threaten the last vestiges of an immaterial soul or self. Given the increasing explanatory and therapeutic power of neuroscience, the mind no longer stands apart from the world to serve as a foundation of meaning. This produces foundational anxiety. In Neuroexistentialism, a group of contributors that includes some of the world's leading philosophers, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, and legal scholars, explores the anxiety caused by third-wave existentialism and possible responses to it. Together, these essays tackle our neuroexistentialist predicament, and explore what the mind sciences can tell us about morality, love, emotion, autonomy, consciousness, selfhood, free will, moral responsibility, law, the nature of criminal punishment, meaning in life, and purpose.
Download or read book Kantian Ethics Almost without Apology written by Marcia W. Baron and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reappraisal on the emphasis on duty in Immanuel Kant's ethics is long overdue. Marcia W. Baron evaluates and for the most part defends Kantian ethics against two frequent criticisms: that duty plays too large a role, leaving no room for the supererogatory; and that Kant places too much value on acting from duty. The author first argues that Kant's distinction between perfect and imperfect duties provides a plausible and intriguing alternative to contemporary approaches to charity, self-sacrifice, heroism, and saintliness. She probes the differences between the supererogationist and the Kantian, exploring the motivation between the former's position and bringing to light sharply divided views on the nature of moral constraint and excellence. Baron then confronts problems associated with Kant's account of moral motivation, she argues that the value that Kant attaches to acting from duty attaches primarily to governing ones conduct by a commitment to doing what morality asks. Thus understood, Kant's ethics steers clear of the most serious criticism. Of special interest is her discussion of overdetermination. Clearly written and cogently argued, Kantian Ethics Almost without Apology takes on the most philosophically intriguing challenges to Kantian ethics and subjects them to a rigorous yet sympathetic assessment. Readers will find here original contributions to the debate over impartial morality.
Download or read book Ethical Studies written by Francis Herbert Bradley and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
