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Dialogical reason requires dialogue among the members of a community. Thinkers like Habermas and Apel have proposed that judgments of both fact and value become objects of public debate. The debate should determine whether these judgments can earn the assent of the community. If so, they attain a degree of intersubjective validity. Javier Muguerza’s Ethics and Perplexity makes a highly original contribution to the debate over dialogical reason. The work opens with a letter that establishes a parallel between Ethics and Perplexity and Maimonides’s classic Guide of the Perplexed. It concludes with an interview that repeatedly strikes sparks on Spanish philosophy’s emergence from its “long quarantine,” as Muguerza puts it. These informal pieces—witty, informative, conversational—orbit the nucleus of the work: a formidable critique of dialogical reason. The result is a volume by turns vivid and profound. Muguerza insists that the experience of perplexity is inseparable from the exercise of philosophy. Perplexity is linked to aporia and wonder, which the ancients identified as the origin of their activity. The only solidarity among philosophers is that of searching, and philosophy is hardly more than a set of questions unceasingly posed and posed again, of forever open problems, of perplexities that assail us over and over again. Perplexity avoids both the certainty of dogmatism and the ignorance of skepticism. In fact, it is the only philosophical ailment capable of immunizing us against both. Philosophy is always a guide to the perplexed. The series Philosophy in Spain, founded to bring Spanish philosophy to the attention of English-speaking philosophers, seeks outstanding works by classic and contemporary Spanish thinkers as well as books on Spanish philosophy.
Consider the following situation: a mayor is holding captive the leader of a terrorist group that has placed bombs throughout the city. It is determined that the only way to get the terrorist to confess where the bombs are hidden is to torture his child in front of him. Should the mayor torture an innocent child to save the lives of many? In Perplexity in the Moral Life Santurri discusses how situations of moral perplexity are to be construed and how the interpretation of these situations might be constrained by the presuppositions of Christian ethics. Often in our practical lives we are perplexed about what morality requires of us: any course of action appears as a moral transgression. Santurri examines the thesis that situations of moral perplexity may actually be cases of genuine moral dilemmas in which a moral transgression is unavoidable. Proponents of the moral dilemmas thesis collide with an established philosophical tradition holding that no adequate ethical theory can countenance the existence of genuine dilemmas. It has been suggested that admitting the existence of dilemmas is tantamount to acknowledging the presence of a debilitating incoherence in one's system of moral reasoning. Santurri contends that the issue of whether or not genuine moral dilemmas exist cannot be resolved on the basis of philosophical arguments typically advanced either by the traditional or by the revisionist views, and maintains that moral perplexity is a phenomenon which cannot be interpreted apart from answering certain fundamental questions of moral ontology. He then goes on to consider what sort of constraints a Christian view of morality imposes on the interpretation of moral conflict and argues that there are good reasons for Christian ethics to deny the existence of genuine dilemmas. He concludes with a critical discussion of the positions that have been or might be employed in Christian ethical arguments for the reality of irresolvable moral conflict.
Most of us desire to be moral people, but too often we struggle to translate philosophical concepts about morality and ethics to everyday life. One way we can bridge this gap is by approaching ethics as skills that we can develop rather than a set of ideas we must grasp. Taking this practical approach, and writing especially for medicine, law, and business students trying to understand ethics in the real world Larry R. Churchill examines morality in the context of human experience. His book builds readers' understanding of ethics from the raw materials of moral life: the curiosity we feel when confronted with moral differences, the perplexities of practical life, and the satisfactions of moral growth. The book orients ethics around the skills that are needed for sound ethical reflection and deliberation, acknowledging that ethical issues change as we change, and their concerns extend over a lifespan. To Churchill, learning and honing these personal and relational skills is the fundamental work of ethics and the foundation for judicious use of more theoretical approaches. A succinct and compassionate guide to ethical living, this book draws from literature, as well as philosophical and religious writings. It encompasses both popular and underemphasized concepts, and demonstrates their centrality to ethics. Exercises and case studies reinforce the practical skills it teaches. Ethics for Everyone shows the wide range of skills and human capacities that make the field of ethics true to human experience. It is a book to be read and then re-read at life's major junctures.
This volume presents fourteen of William E. Mann's essays on three prominent figures in late Patristic and early medieval philosophy: Augustine, Anselm, and Peter Abelard. The essays explore some of the quandaries, arguments, and theories presented in their writings. The essays in this volume complement those to be found in Mann's God, Modality, and Morality (OUP, 2015). While the essays in God, Modality, and Morality are primarily essays in philosophical theology, those found in the present volume are more varied. Some still deal with issues in philosophical theology. Other essays are aporetic in nature, discussing cases of philosophical perplexity, sometimes but not always leaving the cases unresolved. All the essays display, directly or indirectly, the philosophical influence that Augustine has had. His Confessions is a rich source for philosophical puzzlement. Individual essays examine his reflections on the alleged innocence of infants, which raises questions about cognitive, emotional, and linguistic development; his juvenile theft of pears and its relation to moral motivation; and his struggle with and resolution of the problem of evil. One essay presents the rudiments of an Augustinian moral theory, rooted in his understanding of the Sermon on the Mount. Another essay illustrates the theory by discussing his writings on lying. Mann argues that Abelard amplified Augustine's moral theory by emphasizing the crucial role that intention plays in wrongdoing. Augustine bequeathed to Anselm the notion of "faith seeking understanding." Mann argues that this methodological slogan shapes Anselm's "ontological argument" for God's existence and his efforts to explicate the doctrine of the Trinity.
This much-needed volume represents all that is new in the field of global ethics. It recognizes the emergence of the search to move beyond relativism and the study of ethical aspects of globalization, acknowledging aspects of globalization that make ethical reasoning itself a challenging task. As such the young field of global ethics is a search for new approaches and methodologies that go beyond existing ones and succeed in addressing these ethical issues of globalization. This volume presents these new developments, focusing specifically on how to re-conceive ethics in order to come to grips with ethical and political life today. It sets out an agenda for the field of global ethics, addresses the critiques and illustrates the rapprochement of global ethics. This is a valuable collection of essays that connect theoretical innovation with substantive issues in the public realm and hence is suitable for a wide audience across philosophy, politics, international relations and development studies.
"Ian Gregory explores how ethical concerns influence not only how research is conducted but also how researchers engage with a piece of research. Also analysed in detail is the impact ethics have on the interpretation of data and research findings."--BOOK JACKET.
How developing a more expansive, non-formal conception of reason produces richer ethical understandings of human situations, explored and illustrated with many real examples. In Re-Reasoning Ethics, Barry Hoffmaster and Cliff Hooker enhance and empower ethics by adopting a non-formal paradigm of rational deliberation as intelligent problem-solving and a complementary non-formal paradigm of ethical deliberation as problem-solving design to promote human flourishing. The non-formal conception of reason produces broader and richer ethical understandings of human situations, not the simple, constrained depictions provided by moral theories and their logical applications in medical ethics and bioethics. Instead, it delivers and vindicates the moral judgment that complex, contextual, and dynamic situations require. Hoffmaster and Hooker demonstrate how this more expansive rationality operates with examples, first in science and then in ethics. Non-formal reason brings rationality not just to the empirical world of science but also to the empirical realities of human lives. Among the many real cases they present is that of how women at risk of having children with genetic conditions decide whether to try to become pregnant. These women do not apply the formal principle of maximizing expected utility (as advised by genetic counselors) and instead imagine scenarios of what their lives could be like with an affected child and assess whether they could accept the worst of these scenarios. Hoffmaster and Hooker explain how moral compromise and a liberated, extended, and enriched reflective equilibrium expand and augment rational ethical deliberation and how that deliberation can rationally design ethical practices, institutions, and policies.
Explores the nature and grounds of moral reasoning, the relation between public and private morality, and how just war teaching needs to be refashioned to provide practical guidance.
Complicating a pervasive view of the ethical thought of the Victorians and their close relations, which emphasizes the domineering influence of a righteous and repressive morality, Wainwright discerns a new orientation towards an expansive ethics of flourishing or living well in Austen, Gaskell, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy and Forster. In a sequence of remarkable novels by these authors, Wainwright traces an ethical perspective that privileges styles of life that are worthy and fulfilling, admirable and rewarding. Presenting new research into the ethical debates in which these authors participated, this rigorous and energetic work reveals the ways in which ideas of major theorists such as Kant, F. H. Bradley, or John Stuart Mill, as well as those of now little-known writers such as the priest Edward Tagart, the preacher William Maccall, and philanthropist Helen Dendy Bosanquet, were appropriated and reappraised. Further, Wainwright seeks also to place these novelists within the wider context of modernity and proposes that their responses can be linked to the on-going and animated discussions that characterize modern moral philosophy.
This work introduces the reader to the central issues and theories in western environmental ethics, and against this background develops a Buddhist environmental philosophy and code of ethics. It contains a lucid exposition of Buddhist environmentalism, its ethics, economics and Buddhist perspectives for environmental education. The work is focused on a diagnosis of the contemporary environmental crisis and a Buddhist contribution to positive solutions. Replete with stories and illustrations from original Buddhist sources, it is both informative and engaging.