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Title: Philosophical Ethics (Dimensions of Philosophy) by Stephen Darwall, Stehpen Darwall ISBN: 0-8133-7860-5 Publisher: Westview Press Pub. Date: February, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $36.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)
Rating: 4
Summary: Good Introduction to a Range of Issues in Ethics
Comment: Darwall has come up with a fairly interesting way to introduce topics in both meta-ethics and normative ethics. A signal virtue of this book is that it provides an introduction to the history of ethical theory as well as contemporary issues in meta-ethics and normative ethics.
The book begins with a section on meta-ethics; this section is written as a philosophical textbook. It consists of several short chapters, each of which is concerned with one of the positions that has been defended in contemporary meta-ethics. The following positions are discussed: naturalist realism, theological voluntarism, ideal observer theories, noncognitivism, error theories, relativism, and intuitionism. As anyone familiar with work of this sort will know, each of these chapters includes a brief introduction to the main elements of a position and analysis of a few objections to that position. Darwall keeps this chapters short--most are between five and ten pages--and he does so by writing very compressed prose. He manages to at least mention most of the important objections to these views, and he do so in such a concise manner by limiting his discussion of most of these objections to merely a paragraph or two. Needless to say, this leaves a lot to be said. But it has its benefits, too. It makes the book an excellent reference book on these particular views, as one can pick up the book and review the main objections to some theory in only a few minutes. Moreover, it leaves the beginner with something to think about. He or she is left to think about the plausibility of these views, and the force of the objections to them, without having to work through pages and pages of summary of the literature on these issues.
In short, the chapters of the book's first section are about what you would expect from good introductory lectures on these topics: they provide you with the basic elements of the view and some sense of its strenghts and weaknesses.
The second section of the book is an introduction to issues in normative ethics. But the introduction here is different from the introduction to meta-ethics in that it is historical in character. Rather than devoting an individual chapter to each view that is popular in the contemporary literature, Darwall presents and analyzes the views of famous figures in the history of ethics. But this isn't exactly an introduction to the history of ethics, either; it's a series of extended discussions of major historical figures who provide paradigmatic examples of the main positions in normative ethics. Kant is discussed as an example of deontology, Mill as an example of consequentialism, Hobbes as an example of contractualism, Aristotle as an example of virtue theory, and Nietzsche as an example of someone skeptical of the very notion of morality.
So Darwall is concerned with general outlines of these thinkers views and their contemporary relevance, and not with their views as historical relics or as examples of historical trends in ethical thought. What is valuable about this way of approaching normative ethics is that it reflects that fact that historically important figures in philosophy aren't of interest only to historians of the subject; some of their views are genuine competitors in the current debate, and more current theories can be understood as developing in response to objections to the views of these earlier figures.
This is an excellent book for those approaching normative ethics and meta-ethics for the first time, and I think it would also serve as a useful resource for those coming to it with prior knowledge of the subject. Having some background in philosophy (though not necessarily in ethics) wouldn't hurt readers of this book, but I doubt that it's necessary.
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Title: In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development by Carol Gilligan ISBN: 0674445449 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: September, 1993 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Facts, Values, and Norms : Essays toward a Morality of Consequence by Peter Railton ISBN: 0521426936 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 17 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.00 |
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Title: Moral Discourse and Practice: Some Philosophical Approaches by Allan Gibbard, Gibbard Railton Darwall, Peter Railton, Stephen Darwall ISBN: 019509669X Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: June, 1997 List Price(USD): $44.95 |
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Title: The Moral Problem (Philosophical Theory) by Michael Smith ISBN: 0631192468 Publisher: Blackwell Publishers Pub. Date: January, 1995 List Price(USD): $38.95 |
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Title: Natural Goodness by Philippa Foot ISBN: 0198235089 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: June, 2001 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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