Is the science of moral cognition usefully modelled on aspects of Universal Grammar? Are human beings born with an innate 'moral grammar' that causes them to analyse human action in terms of its moral structure, with just as little awareness as they analyse human speech in terms of its grammatical structure? Questions like these have been at the forefront of moral psychology ever since John Mikhail revived them in his influential work on the linguistic analogy and its implications for jurisprudence and moral theory. In this seminal book, Mikhail offers a careful and sustained analysis of the moral grammar hypothesis, showing how some of John Rawls' original ideas about the linguistic analogy, together with famous thought experiments like the trolley problem, can be used to improve our understanding of moral and legal judgement.
If you accept evolutionary theory, can you also believe in God? Are human beings superior to other animals, or is this just a human prejudice? Does Darwin have implications for heated issues like euthanasia and animal rights? Does evolution tell us the purpose of life, or does it imply that life has no ultimate purpose? Does evolution tell us what is morally right and wrong, or does it imply that ultimately 'nothing' is right or wrong? In this fascinating and intriguing book, Steve Stewart-Williams addresses these and other fundamental philosophical questions raised by evolutionary theory and the exciting new field of evolutionary psychology. Drawing on biology, psychology and philosophy, he argues that Darwinian science supports a view of a godless universe devoid of ultimate purpose or moral structure, but that we can still live a good life and a happy life within the confines of this view.
Making National Heroes is an ethnography of the making of national heroes in the commemoration of the Second World War in contemporary China. Foregrounding the lived experience of men and women who participate in commemorative activities, it theorises how masculinity and nationalism entangle in recollecting war memories. Taking the feminist line of inquiry, this anthropological study develops an approach to capture the centrality of making exemplars in the realisation of hegemonic masculinities. It adds a gender perspective to studies on exemplarist moral theory and theorises exemplary men’s cross-cultural significance in defining masculinities. Researchers in the fields of critical masculinity studies, anthropology, feminist methodology, China studies, and memory studies will be interested in this book.
ESSAYS ON CHINESE PHILOSOPHY AND CULTUREby T'ang Chun-i1. The Development of Ideas of Spiritual Value in Chinese Philosophy2. The Individual and the World in Chinese Methodology3. Cosmologies in Chinese Philosophy4. The T'ien Ming (Heavenly Ordinance) in Pre-Ch'in China I5. The T'ien Ming (Heavenly Ordinance) in Pre-Ch'in China II6. The Spirit and Development of Neo-Confucianism7. Chang Tsai's Theory of Mind and Its Metaphysical Basis8. The Development of the Concept of Moral Mind from Wang Yang-ming to Wang Chi9. The Criticism of Wang Yang-ming's Teachings as Raised by His Contemporaries10. Liu Tsung-chou's Doctrine of Moral Mind and Practice and His Critique of Wang Yang-ming11. The Development of the Chinese Humanistic Spirit12. The Religious Spirit of Confucianism13. Chinese Attitude Toward World Religions14. On the Direction of the Development of Political Consciousness in the Chinese people in the Past One Hundred Years15. The Reconstruction of Confucianism and the Modernization
Christine Korsgaard has become one of the leading interpreters of Kant's moral philosophy. She is identified with a small group of philosophers who are intent on producing a version of Kant's moral philosophy that is at once sensitive to its historical roots while revealing its particular relevance to contemporary problems. She rejects the traditional picture of Kant's ethics as a cold vision of the moral life which emphasises duty at the expense of love and value. Rather, Kant's work is seen as providing a resource for addressing not only the metaphysics of morals, but also for tackling practical questions about personal relations, politics, and everyday human interaction. This collection contains some of the finest current work on Kant's ethics and will command the attention of all those involved in teaching and studying moral theory.
A liberal society seeks not to impose a single way of life, but to leave its citizens as free as possible to choose their own values and ends. It therefore must govern by principles of justice that do not presuppose any particular vision of the good life. But can any such principles be found? And if not, what are the consequences for justice as a moral and political ideal? These are the questions Michael Sandel takes up in this penetrating critique of contemporary liberalism. Sandel locates modern liberalism in the tradition of Kant, and focuses on its most influential recent expression in the work of John Rawls. In the most important challenge yet to Rawls' theory of justice, Sandel traces the limits of liberalism to the conception of the person that underlies it, and argues for a deeper understanding of community than liberalism allows.
Moral Theory: An Introduction explores some of the most historically important and currently debated moral theories about the nature of the right and good. Providing an introduction to moral theory th
Hume's moral theory was the most important contribution to the sustained debate among the British Moralists of the 17th and 18th centuries. J. L. Mackie's classic text examines this debate and provide
