"Egalitarian" and "libertarian" are frequently seen as opposing political labels. These two views and their oppositions are the topic of this collection of important essays by an exceptionally distinguished group of thinkers.This collection of essays can be read as a critique of libertarianism. A libertarian, in contemporary discussion, is one who supports no more than a minimal state--a government that protects individuals from assault, murder, theft, and other invasions of their "Lockean...

Stephen Darwall is a moral philosopher who has played a central role in contemporary debates around the foundation of ethics. This book is a sequel to his earlier volume Modern Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to Kant, and like its predecessor it explores the history of the period through its key ethical thinkers. Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche – the founding members of the 'continental' tradition – are masterfully examined as they are brought into vivid conversation with bot...

Philosophers don't often write about the heart. At least, analytical philosophers don't. Why is this? Philosophers are said to live life “in their heads” rather than “from their hearts.” But even if that is so, why don't they think and write about the heart? Moreover, it can hardly have escaped philosophers' attention that matters of the heart are central to what we human beings value most about our lives, including our lives with animals. Philosophers write a lot about friendship and love...

In this magisterial study, one of our leading moral philosophers refutes the charge (originally made by Elizabeth Anscombe) that modern ethics is incoherent because it essentially depends on theological and religious assumptions that it cannot acknowledge. Stephen Darwall's panoramic picture starts with the seventeenth-century thinker Grotius and tells the story continuously down to the time of Kant, exploring what was in fact a completely new way of doing ethics based on secular ideas of ...

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 nonmoral values or practical, first-person considerations—Darwall elaborates the interperson...

This book shows how Hobbes, Mill, Kant, Aristotle, and Nietzsche all did ethical philosophy? It introduces students to ethics from a distinctively philosophical perspective, one that weaves together central ethical questions.

What kind of life best ensures human welfare? Since the ancient Greeks, this question has been as central to ethical philosophy as to ordinary reflection. But what exactly is welfare? This question has suffered from relative neglect. And, as Stephen Darwall shows, it has done so at a price. Presenting a provocative new "rational care theory of welfare," Darwall proves that a proper understanding of welfare fundamentally changes how we think about what is best for people.Most philos...

This is the little book that started a revolution, making women's voices heard, in their own right and with their own integrity, for virtually the first time in social scientific theorizing about women. Its impact was immediate and continues to this day, in the academic world and beyond. Translated into sixteen languages, with more than 700,000 copies sold around the world, In a Different Voice has inspired new research, new educational initiatives, and political debate—and helped many wom...

"MacIntyre--one of the foremost ethicists of the past half-century--makes a sustained argument for the cetnrality, in well-lived human lives, of both virtue and local communities of giving and receiving. He criticizes the mainstream of Western ethics, including his own previous position, for not taking seriously the dependent and animal sides of human nature, thereby overemphasizing the powers of reason and the pursuit of reason and the pursuit of autonomy. . . . This important work in eth...

"A welcome renewal and defense of John Dewey's ethical naturalism, which Johnson claims is the only morality 'fit for actual human beings.'" — Notre Dame Philosophical ReviewsWhat is the difference between right and wrong? This is no easy question to answer, yet we constantly try to make it so, frequently appealing to absolutes, whether drawn from God, universal reason, or societal authority. Combining cognitive science with a pragmatist philosophical frame...

How should you live? Should you devote yourself to perfecting a single talent or try to live a balanced life? Should you lighten up and have more fun, or buckle down and try to achieve greatness? Should you try to be a better friend? Should you be self-critical or self-accepting? And how should you decide among the possibilities open to you? Should you consult experts, listen to your parents, do lots of research? Make lists of pros and cons, or go with your gut? These are not questions tha...

Are there things we should value because they are, quite simply, good? If so, such things might be said to have "absolute goodness." They would be good simpliciter or full stop - not good for someone, not good of a kind, but nonetheless good (period). They might also be called "impersonal values." The reason why we ought to value such things, if there are any, would merely be the fact that they are, quite simply, good things. In the twentieth century, G. E. Moore was the great champion of ...