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'The Rational and the Moral Order' is a significant book providing a comprehensive theory of morality. The opening chapter is simply marvellous. Baier provides a cogent response to Hume's conundrums on practical reasoning: logical entailment, he argues, is not the correct model of the relation between reasons and that for which they are reasons. Indeed, the giving of reasons is, in part, a social enterprise, and there is no necessary connection between rationality and self-interest. Just as the giving of reasons is a social enterprise taught to succeeding generations, so too is the moral enterprise, for a moral order is a social order of some sort. It is a social order that encourages a critical stance toward, and permits the correction of, its mores. Moral precepts can be sound or unsound, and yet can be relative to a moral order. In the concluding chapter Baier shows how his theoretical framework can be used to confront some of the moral problems people face, problems which have also exercised contemporary philosophers. Though there are many philosophers who believe that killing is worse than letting anyone die, there are few that defend the view other than by raw intuition. Baier deploys the resources of his theory of morality in support of this widely shared but poorly defended viewpoints. "Along the way, Baier deals with virtually all the problems that have taxed moral philosophers for a very long time -- rationality, responsibility, morality's relation to law, the good life, prisoner's dilemma, moral motivation, and others. The Rational and the Moral Order is careful, insightful, and convincing." --Theodore M. Benditt, University of Alabama
Moral systems, like normative systems more broadly, involve complex mental representations. Rational Rules proposes that moral learning can be understood in terms of general-purpose rational learning procedures. Nichols argues that statistical learning can help answer a wide range of questions about moral thought: Why do people think that rules apply to actions rather than consequences? Why do people expect new rules to be focused on actions rather than consequences? How do people come to believe a principle of liberty, according to which whatever is not expressly prohibited is permitted? How do people decide that some normative claims hold universally while others hold only relative to some group? The resulting account has both empiricist and rationalist features: since the learning procedures are domain-general, the result is an empiricist theory of a key part of moral development, and since the learning procedures are forms of rational inference, the account entails that crucial parts of our moral system enjoy rational credentials. Moral rules can also be rational in the sense that they can be effective for achieving our ends, given our ecological settings. Rational Rules argues that at least some central components of our moral systems are indeed ecologically rational: they are good at helping us attain common goals. Nichols argues that the account might be extended to capture moral motivation as a special case of a much more general phenomenon of normative motivation. On this view, a basic form of rule representation brings motivation along automatically, and so part of the explanation for why we follow moral rules is that we are built to follow rules quite generally.
Western civilization fashioned a capitalism that created a worldwide economic cornucopia and higher standards of living than any other system, yet its legitimacy is often questioned by its beneficiaries. Boston University Emeritus Professor Angelo M. Codevilla, proclaims Donald Devine’s The Enduring Tension between Capitalism and the Moral Order, “the best answer to this question since Adam Smith’s. Like Smith, Devine shows the mutually sustaining nature of morality and economic freedom, and provides a much-needed clearing away of the confusion with which recent authors have befogged this essential relationship.” Devine begins with Karl Marx setting capitalism’s roots in feudalism and the implications of that traditionalist inheritance, finally transformed by Rousseau’s “Christian heresy,” which turned the vision of heavenly perfection into an impossibly perfect ideal for earthly society. To unravel this capitalist enigma, Devine identifies the roots of the confusion, critiques the rationalized responses, and identifies the remedy—the revival of an historical Lockean pluralism able to fuse a moral scaffolding sufficient to hold the walls and preserve the best of capitalist civilization.
This volume contains ten new essays focused on the exploration and articulation of a narrative that considers the notion of order within medieval and modern philosophy—its various kinds (natural, moral, divine, and human), the different ways in which each is conceived, and the diverse dependency relations that are thought to obtain among them. Descartes, with the help of others, brought about an important shift in what was understood by the order of nature by placing laws of nature at the foundation of his natural philosophy. Vigorous debate then ensued about the proper formulation of the laws of nature and the moral law, about whether such laws can be justified, and if so, how-through some aspect of the divine order or through human beings-and about what consequences these laws have for human beings and the moral and divine orders. That is, philosophers of the period were thinking through what the order of nature consists in and how to understand its relations to the divine, human, and moral orders. No two major philosophers in the modern period took exactly the same stance on these issues, but these issues are clearly central to their thought. The Divine Order, the Human Order, and the Order of Nature is devoted to investigating their positions from a vantage point that has the potential to combine metaphysical, epistemological, scientific, and moral considerations into a single narrative.
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
This seminal work makes a cogent and compelling case for Christian ethics based on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Drawing on a profound knowledge both of the history of Christian thought and of contemporary ethical theology, Oliver O'Donovan illumines such important concepts as freedom, authority, nature, history, and revelation. This revised edition also includes an extensive new prologue in which the author enters into critical dialogue with four key figures in Christian ethics: John Finnis, Martin Honecker, Stanley Hauerwas, and Karl Barth.
Originally published in 1988, this landmark study develops its own positive account of the nature and foundations of moral judgement, while at the same time serving as a guide to the range of views on the matter which have been given in modern western philosophy. The book addresses itself to two main questions: Can moral judgements be true or false in that fundamental sense in which a true proposition is one which describes things as they really are? Are rational methods available in ethics which can be expected to produce convergence on shared moral views on the part of those who use them intelligently?