The Robust Demands of the Good: Ethics with Attachment, Virtue, and Respect

ISBN-13: 9780198732600 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 256 str.

Philip Pettit

Opis

Philip Pettit offers a new insight into moral psychology. He shows that attachments such as love, and certain virtues such as honesty, require not only their characteristic positive behaviours in the actual world (i.e. as things are), but preservation of those characteristic behaviours across a range of counterfactual scenarios in which things are different from how they actually are. The counterfactual 'robustness', in this sense, of these behaviours is thus part of our very conception of these attachments and these virtues. Pettit shows that attachment, virtues, and respect all conform to a similar conceptual geography. He explores the implications of this idea for key moral issues, such as the doctrine of double effect and the distinction between doing and allowing. He articulates and argues against an assumption, which he calls 'moral behaviourism, ' which permeates contemporary ethics.

Recenzje

The rich, comprehensive view Pettit develops in this volume will more than repay engagement by philosophers working in normative ethics, and metaethics, and the theory of action.

O autorze

Philip Pettit is L.S.Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and Human Values, Princeton University and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Australian National University. Among his books are The Common Mind (1993), Republicanism (1997), Rules, Reasons and Norms (2002), Made with Words (2008), On the Peoples Terms (2012) and Just Freedom (2014). He has co-authored The Economy of Esteem (2004, with Geoffrey Brennan), A Political Philosophy in Public Life (2010, with Jose Marti) and Group Agency (2011 with Christian List). Common Minds: Themes from the Philosophy of Philip Pettit appeared with OUP in 2007.