Broad's Critical Essays in Moral Philosophy (Routledge Revivals)

Broad's Critical Essays in Moral Philosophy (Routledge Revivals)
Author: David Cheney
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2013-10-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1134696310

The ideas of C. D. Broad have affected the work of moral philosophers throughout the twentieth century to the present day. First published in 1971, this edited volume contains Broad’s best essays on the philosophical problems of Ethics, mostly written and published between 1914 and 1964. Among the essays are Broad’s important critiques of G. E. Moore’s ethical theory, his lecture entitled ‘Determinism, Indeterminism and Libertarianism’, and other pieces discussing topics as broad as Conscience, Egoism and Free Will. This reissue serves as an important companion to Broad’s other works, a number of which have also been reissued within the Routledge Library Editions series, and will be invaluable to students interested in Broad’s theories and twentieth-century philosophical thought.

British Ethical Theorists from Sidgwick to Ewing

British Ethical Theorists from Sidgwick to Ewing
Author: Thomas Hurka
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2014-11-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191038539

Thomas Hurka presents the first full historical study of an important strand in the development of modern moral philosophy. His subject is a series of British ethical theorists from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, who shared key assumptions that made them a unified and distinctive school. The best-known of them are Henry Sidgwick, G. E. Moore, and W. D. Ross; others include Hastings Rashdall, H. A. Prichard, C. D. Broad, and A. C. Ewing. They disagreed on some important topics, especially in normative ethics. Thus some were consequentialists and others deontologists: Sidgwick thought only pleasure is good while others emphasized perfectionist goods such as knowledge, aesthetic appreciation, and virtue. But all were non-naturalists and intuitionists in metaethics, holding that moral judgements can be objectively true, have a distinctive subject-matter, and are known by direct insight. They also had similar views about how ethical theory should proceed and what are relevant arguments in it; their disagreements therefore took place on common ground. Hurka recovers the history of this under-appreciated group by showing what its members thought, how they influenced each other, and how their ideas changed through time. He also identifies the shared assumptions that made their school unified and distinctive, and assesses their contributions critically, both when they debated each other and when they agreed. One of his themes is that that their general approach to ethics was more fruitful philosophically than many better-known ones of both earlier and later times.

Themes from G. E. Moore

Themes from G. E. Moore
Author: Susana Nuccetelli
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2007-11-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199281726

These thirteen original essays, whose authors include some of the world's leading philosophers, examine themes from the work of the Cambridge philosopher G. E. Moore (1873-1958), and demonstrate his considerable continuing influence on philosophical debate. Part I bears on epistemological topics, such as scepticism about the external world, the significance of common sense, and theories of perception. Part II is devoted to themes in ethics, such as Moore's open question argument, his non-naturalism, utilitarianism, and his notion of organic unities.

Sidgwick's Ethics and Victorian Moral Philosophy

Sidgwick's Ethics and Victorian Moral Philosophy
Author: J. B. Schneewind
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 482
Release: 1977-11-17
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191519820

Henry Sedgewick's The Methods of Ethics challenges comparison, as no other work in moral philosophy, with Aristotle's Ethics in the depth of its understanding of practical rationality, and in its architectural coherence it rivals the work of Kant. In this historical, rather than critical study, Professor Schneewind shows how Sidgewick's arguments and conclusions represent rational developments of the work of Sidgewick's predecessors, and brings out the nature and structure of the reasoning underlying his position.

Underivative Duty

Underivative Duty
Author: Thomas Hurka
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2011-02-17
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199577447

A team of eminent contemporary philosophers present the first collective study of seminal British moral thinkers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some, like Henry Sidgwick and G. E. Moore, are already recognized as leading philosophers of their day; others, like Hastings Rashdall and A.C. Ewing, are unjustly neglected.

Aristotle on the Human Good

Aristotle on the Human Good
Author: Richard Kraut
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2021-02-09
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0691225125

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which equates the ultimate end of human life with happiness (eudaimonia), is thought by many readers to argue that this highest goal consists in the largest possible aggregate of intrinsic goods. Richard Kraut proposes instead that Aristotle identifies happiness with only one type of good: excellent activity of the rational soul. In defense of this reading, Kraut discusses Aristotle's attempt to organize all human goods into a single structure, so that each subordinate end is desirable for the sake of some higher goal. This book also emphasizes the philosopher's hierarchy of natural kinds, in which every type of creature achieves its good by imitating divine life. As Kraut argues, Aristotle's belief that thinking is the sole activity of the gods leads him to an intellectualist conception of the ethical virtues. Aristotle values these traits because, by subordinating emotion to reason, they enhance our ability to lead a life devoted to philosophy or politics.

Rossian Ethics

Rossian Ethics
Author: David Phillips
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2019-06-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190602198

W.D. Ross (1877-1971) was the most important opponent of utilitarianism and consequentialism in British moral philosophy between 1861 and 1939. In Rossian Ethics, David Phillips offers the first monograph devoted exclusively to Ross's seminal contribution to moral philosophy. The book has two connected aims. The first is to interpret and evaluate Ross's moral theory, focusing on its three key elements: his introduction of the concept of prima facie duty, his limited pluralism about the right, and his limited pluralism about the good. The metaethical and epistemological framework within which Ross develops his moral theory is the subject of the fifth and final chapter of the book. The second aim is to articulate a distinctive view intermediate between consequentialism and absolutist deontology, which Phillips calls "classical deontology." According to classical deontology the most fundamental normative principles are principles of prima facie duty, principles which specify general kinds of reasons. Consequentialists are right to think that reasons always derive from goods; ideal utilitarians are right, contra hedonistic utilitarians, to think that there are a small number of distinct kinds of intrinsic goods. But consequentialists are wrong to think that all reasons have the same weight for all agents. Instead there are a small number of distinct kinds of agent-relative intensifiers: features that increase the importance of certain goods for certain agents. Phillips claims that classical deontology combines the best elements of the moral theories of Ross and of Sidgwick, ultimately arguing that Ross is best interpreted as a classical deontologist.

C. D. Broad: Key Unpublished Writings

C. D. Broad: Key Unpublished Writings
Author: C. D. Broad
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2022-08-09
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000624641

C. D. Broad (1887–1971) was a British philosopher who taught for many years at Trinity College, Cambridge. Possessing extremely wide-ranging interests, Broad made significant contributions to the mind-body problem, perception, memory, introspection, the unconscious, the nature of space, time, and causation. He also wrote extensively on the philosophy of science, ethics, the history of philosophy, and the philosophy of religion and had an abiding interest in ‘psychical research’—a subject he approached with the disinterested curiosity and scrupulous care that is characteristic of his philosophical work. Whilst overshadowed in his own time by figures such as Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein, he is acknowledged to have anticipated important developments in several fields, such as emergence in philosophy of science, sense perception, and the 'growing block' theory of time in metaphysics. Although Broad published many books in his lifetime, this volume is unique in presenting some of his most interesting unpublished writings. Divided into five clear sections, the following figures and topics are covered: Autobiography Hegel and the nature of philosophy Francis Bacon Hume's philosophy of the self and belief F. H. Bradley The historical development of scientific thought from Pythagoras to Newton Causation Change and continuity Quantitative methods Poltergeists Paranormal phenomena. Each section is introduced and placed in context by the editor, Joel Walmsley. The volume also includes an engaging and informative foreword by Simon Blackburn. It will be of great value to those studying and researching the history of twentieth-century philosophy, metaphysics, and the recent history and philosophy of science, as well as anyone interested in Broad's philosophical thought and his place in the history of philosophy.

Achievement as Value in the Igbo/African Identity

Achievement as Value in the Igbo/African Identity
Author: Vernantius Emeka Ndukaihe
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2006
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9783825899295

Achievement seems to be a first-class value in our world today. With the ongoing global debate on what constitutes identity, can we include achievement as one of the constituents? In the Igbo/African identity, the achievement instinct is basically innate. The ethics of this phenomenon needs an evaluation, aimed at improving the status quo. What is the plight of the Igbo/African "achieving" in the face of modern capitalistic tendencies? What has become of the many other values in her identity, which has been her pride as a race? How is her religiosity (which is inseparable from daily living) affected by "modernity" and its new trends of the achievement ethos? These are some of the issues that are addressed in this book with the conviction that theology, achievement and identity are continuity.