Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Throughout history, humans have explored new places, making both good and bad moral decisions along the way. As humanity proceeds to explore space, it is important that we learn from the successes and not repeat the mistakes of the past. This book...

One mark of interpersonal relationships is a tendency to blame. But what precise evaluations and responses constitute blame? Is it most centrally a judgment, or is it an emotion, or something else? Does blame express a demand, or embody a protest, or...

In Essays on the History of Ethics Michael Slote collects his essays that deal with aspects of both ancient and modern ethical thought and seek to point out conceptual/normative comparisons and contrasts among different views. Arranged in chronological...

Consumers and policy makers have unprecedented choices to make in the years to come about how and what we eat. If we continue down our current path of food production, we risk ever-increasing levels of animal exploitation, environmental destruction,...

There has recently been a good deal of interest in moral sentimentalism, but most of that interest has been exclusively either in meta-ethical questions about the meaning of moral terms or in normative issues about benevolence and/or caring and their...

This is a revised edition of Walker's well-known book in feminist ethics first published in 1997. Walker's book proposes a view of morality and an approach to ethical theory which uses the critical insights of feminism and race theory to rethink the...

This book is based upon a lecture series inaugurating the new Canadian Museum for Human Rights that took place in Winnipeg, Canada between September 2013 and May 2014. Fragile Freedoms brings together some of the most influential contemporary thinkers on...

The editors of Ethics at the Cinema invited a diverse group of moral philosophers and philosophers of film to engage with ethical issues raised within, or within the process of viewing, a single film of each contributor's choice. The result is a unique...

As the development of autonomous vehicles proceeds full-speed ahead, it is often said that this new, disruptive form of transportation will change everything. Such a claim has drawn both philosophical and public attention to what could be called ethical...

In choosing between moral alternatives -- choosing between various forms of ethical action -- we typically make calculations of the following kind: A is better than B; B is better than C; therefore A is better than C. These inferences use the principle...

Joining the ancient debate over the roles of reason and appetite in the moral mind, In Praise of Desire takes the side of appetite. Acting for moral reasons, acting in a praiseworthy manner, and acting out of virtue amount to nothing more than acting out...

The Ethics of Sport explores moral issues that arise in sports, especially competitive athletics, in a manner that is accessible not only to sports fans or participants but also to those critical of sports or simply interested in an introduction to the...

Why do people behave in moral ways in some circumstances, but not in others? In order to account fully for morality, Dennis Krebs departs from traditional approaches to morality that suggest that children acquire morals through socialization, cultural...

Social Media Ethics and COVID-19: Well-Being, Truth, Misinformation and Authenticity explores ways that some of the best and worst moments of the pandemic resulted from the interconnection of social media and ethics. The ethical challenges social media...

In cases that involve domination of, and discrimination against, minorities, the most common solution is the promotion of minority rights. However, this book contends that in the context of migrant minorities in Africa, appealing to minority rights is...

Essays on Ethics and Feminism is a selection of the shorter writings of Sabina Lovibond, one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary philosophy since the 1980s. This work lays claim to a broad thematic unity based on its affiliation to the realist...

Ethicists and psychologists have become increasingly interested in the development of virtue in recent years, approaching the topic from the perspectives of virtue ethics and developmental psychology respectively. Such interest in virtue development has...

An excellent new translation and commentary. It will serve newcomers as an informative, accessible introduction to the Nicomachean Ethics and to many issues in Aristotle's philosophy, but also has much to offer advanced scholars. The commentary is...

This collection features essays from top experts in ethics and philosophy of love that offer varying perspectives on the value of a contemporary secular virtue of chastity. The virtue of chastity has traditionally been portrayed as an excellent...

In bringing the concepts and methods of philosophy to bear on specific, pressing, practical concerns, applied philosophy is the modern expression of a perennial concern: to understand, in part to control, and to come to terms with the conditions in which...

John Stuart Mill's 1861 Utilitarianism remains one of the most widely known and influential works of moral philosophy ever written. It is also a model of critical thinking - one in which Mill's reasoning and interpretation skills are used to create a...

Elizabeth Anscombe's 1958 essay "Modern Moral Philosophy" is a cutting intervention in modern philosophy that shows the full power of good evaluative and analytical critical thinking skills. Though only 16 pages long, Anscombe's paper set...

The history of moral philosophy has been dominated by attempts to find and defend the correct moral principle or set of principles. However, over the last two decades the assumption that morality can and should be understood in terms of principles has...

Hippocrates famously advised doctors 'it is far more important to know what person the disease has than what disease the person has'. Yet 2,500 years later, 'personalised medicine', based on individual genetic profiling and the achievements of genomic...

The Skillfulness of Virtue provides a new framework for understanding virtue as a skill, based on psychological research on self-regulation and expertise. Matt Stichter lays the foundations of his argument by bringing together theories of self-regulation...

The moral status of animals is a subject of controversy both within and beyond academic philosophy, especially regarding the question of whether and when it is ethical to eat meat. A commitment to animal rights and related notions of animal protection is...

Knowledge aims to fit the world, and action to change it. In this collection of essays, Onora O'Neill explores the relationship between these concepts and shows that principles are not enough for ethical thought or action: we also need to understand how...

Many people have claimed that integrity requires sticking to one's convictions come what may. Greg Scherkoske challenges this claim, arguing that it creates problems in distinguishing integrity from fanaticism, close-mindedness or mere inertia. Rather,...

In this risk-taking book, a major feminist philosopher engages the work of the actor and director who has progressed from being the stereotypical "man's man" to pushing the boundaries of the very genres-the Western, the police thriller, the war or boxing...

Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume XXIV, Life and Death: Metaphysics and Ethics is an important contribution to the literature on the intersection of issues of metaphysics and issues of ethics. In the Midwest Studies tradition, twenty of the more...

Despite an explosion of studies on memory in historical and cultural studies, there is relatively little in moral philosophy on this subject. In this book, Jeffrey Blustein provides a systematic and philosophically rigorous account of a morality of...

Are leaders morally special? Is there something ethically distinctive about the relationship between leaders and followers? Should leaders do whatever it takes to achieve group goals? Leadership Ethics uses moral theory, as well as empirical research in...

This book contributes to current bioethical debates by providing a critical analysis of the philosophy of human death. Bernard N. Schumacher discusses contemporary philosophical perspectives on death, creating a dialogue between phenomenology,...

This book explores the impact of neuroscience research over the past 20 or more years on brain function as it affects moral decisions. Findings show that the mind and brain are very close, if not the same, and that the brain 'makes' the mind. This is...

Samuel J. Kerstein develops a new, broadly Kantian account of the ethical issues that arise when a person treats another merely as a means, that is, 'just uses' the other and thereby acts wrongly. He takes his inspiration from Immanuel Kant's 'Formula of...

Thomas Pink offers a new approach to the problem of free will. Do we have control of how we act, so that we are free to act in more than one way, and does it matter to morality whether we do? Pink argues that what matters to morality is not in fact the...

This essay is a version of the text presented as a paper in Kolkata in February 2003. This was the first day of the two-day S. G. Deuskar lecture delivered by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Fifteen...

This work is in the form of letters written by an old philosopher, at the end of his career and life, to a young student. The letters cover a comprehensive introduction to philosophy, wisdom, and the art of thinking. Inspired from Letters to a Young Poet...

Oxford Studies in Metaethics is the only publication devoted exclusively to original philosophical work in the foundations of ethics. It provides an annual selection of much of the best new scholarship being done in the field. Its broad purview includes...

The new field of experimental philosophy has emerged as the methods of psychological science have been brought to bear on traditional philosophical issues. Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy is the place to go to see outstanding new work in the...