Synopses & Reviews
The Development of Ethics is a selective historical and critical study of moral philosophy in the Socratic tradition, with special attention to Aristotelian naturalism, its formation, elaboration, criticism, and defence. It discusses the main topics of moral philosophy as they have developed historically, including: the human good, human nature, justice, friendship, and morality; the methods of moral inquiry; the virtues and their connexions; will, freedom, and responsibility; reason and emotion; relativism, subjectivism, and realism; the theological aspect of morality. This volume examines ancient and medieval philosophy up to the sixteenth century; Volumes 2 and 3 will continue the story up to Rawls's
Theory of Justice.
The present volume begins with Socrates, the Cyrenaics and Cynics, and Plato, and then offers a fuller account of Aristotle, stressing the systematic naturalism of his position. The Stoic position is compared with the Aristotelian at some length; Epicureans and Sceptics are discussed more briefly. Chapters on early Christianity and on Augustine introduce a fuller examination of Aquinas' revision, elaboration, and defence of Aristotelian naturalism. The volume closes with an account of some criticisms of the Aristotelian outlook by Scotus, Ockham, Machiavelli, and some sixteenth-century Reformers.
The emphasis of the book is not purely descriptive, narrative, or exegetical, but also philosophical. Irwin discusses the comparative merits of different views, the difficulties that they raise, and how some of the difficulties might be resolved. The book tries to present the leading moral philosophers of the past as participants in a rational discussion that is still being carried on, and tries to help the reader to participate in this discussion.
About the Author
Terence Irwin is Professor of Ancient Philosophy in the University of Oxford, and Fellow of Keble College.
Table of Contents
66. Kant: Practical Laws
67. Kant: From Practical Laws to Morality
68. Kant: Some objections and replies
69. Kant: Freedom
70. Kant: From Freedom to Morality
71. Kant: Morality and the good
72. Kant: Meta-ethical questions
73. Hegel: History and Theory
74. Hegel: Morality and beyond
75. Marx and Idealist Moral Theory
76. Schopenhauer
77. Kierkegaard
78. Nietzsche
79. Mill: Earlier Utilitarianism and its Critics
80. Mill: A revised version of utilitarianism
81. Sidgwick: Methods and Sources
82. Sidgwick: The Examination of Methods
83. Sidgwick's Axioms of Morality
84. Bradley
85. Green
86. Moore
87. Ross
88. Logical Empiricism and Emotivism
89. Lewis
90. Hare: A defence of non-cognitivism
91. Existentialism
92. Revivals of Non-Cognitivism
93. Objectivity and its Critics
94. Versions of Naturalism
95. Rawls: The just, the fair, and the right
96. Rawls: The right and the good