Do moral dilemmas truly exist? What counts as a moral dilemma? Can an adequate moral theory admit the possibility of genuine conflicts of moral obligations? In this book, twelve prominent moral theorists examine these and other questions from a wide variety of philosophical perspectives. Concerned throughout with the implications of moral dilemmas for moral theory, this collection of essays captures in striking fashion the full scope and vitality of the current moral dilemmas debate. Including both realist and anti-realist meta-ethical positions, and Kantian and consequentialist normative views, Moral Dilemmas and Moral Theory sheds new light on several standing controversies in moral philosophy while raising a fresh set of challenging issues. Contributors include Simon Blackburn, Ruth Barcan Marcus, Alan Donagan, Terrance McConnell, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Mary Mothersill, Norman Dahl, David Brink, Peter Railton, Thomas E. Hill, Jr., Christopher Gowans, and H.E. Mason.

"The book is well worth the time of anyone interested in this view."--Ethics

The essays in this work focus on the theoretical significance of moral dilemmas. The contributors, many of them philosophers who have shaped the current debate, shed light on standing controversies in moral philosophy.

Concerned throughout with the implications of moral dilemmas for moral theory, this collection of essays captures in striking fashion the full scope and vitality of the current moral dilemmas debate. Including both realist and anti-realist meta-ethical positions, and Kantian and consequentialist normative views, Moral Dilemmas and Moral Theory sheds new light on several standing controversies in moral philosophy while raising a fresh set of challenging theoretical issues. In essays that sometimes respond directly to preceding arguments, the contributors debate the form a moral dilemma must take, the extent to which real-world moral conflicts assume this form, and the plausibility of supposing that there might in practice be rational ways of resolving moral dilemmas. They assess the argument from moral residues, the claim that guilt and remorse and the need to explain often felt by agents after choosing between competing obligations, is evidence that moral dilemmas exist. They critically evaluate a number of popular examples of supposed moral dilemmas, drawn from literature, works of philosophy, and life. And they take stock of our current understanding of morality, a pair of authors suggesting in two otherwise distinct essays that there may be more, perhaps much more, to discover about ethics and ethical reasoning.