Needs, Values, Truth brings together of some of the most important and influential writings by a leading contemporary philosopher, drawn from twenty-five years of his work in the broad area of the philosophy of value. The author ranges between problems of ethics, meta-ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of logic and language, looking at questions relating to meaning, truth and objectivity in judgements of value. For this third edition he has added a new essay on incommensurability, in addition to making minor revisions to the existing text. The volume will stand as a definitive summation of his work in this area.
After Taste is an inquiry into a field of study dedicated to the reconsideration, reconstruction and rehabilitation of the concept of Taste. Taste is the category, whose systematic, historical and actual dimensions have traditionally been located in a variety of disciplines. The actuality and potential of the study is based on a variety of collected facts from readings and experiences, which materialize in the following features: One concept (figurative Taste), two thinking traditions (analytic and synthetic/continental) and three interrelated dimensions (systematic, historic and actual) are presented in three parts or volumes. As such, the study presents a salient comprehensive companion for wider readership of humanities approaching conceptions of Taste for the first time. Moreover, After Taste is intended for anyone who hopes to make a further contribution to the subject. Since its appearance and apparently short triumph some 250 years ago, the concept of non-literary Taste remained the linchpin of aesthetic theory and practice, but also a category outreaching aesthetics. Taste as the personal unity of the production, theory and criticism of art and literature, which was still largely taken as a given in the eighteenth century, has meanwhile given way to a highly-differentiated art world, in which aesthetic discourse is placed in such a way that it can seemingly no longer have a conceptual or linguistic effect on general opinion making. After Taste fills the gaps of systematic research by a comprehensive tracing of the emergence of the doctrines, discourses and disciplinary dimensions of Taste up to the peak of its systematic and historical trajectory in the eighteenth century and onwards into the present day. The guiding goal is a post-disciplinary rehabilitation of the contested category as a preparation for its productive usage in emerging academic and popular contexts. It shows how the category of Taste became the foundation, legitimation and the catalyst for the emerging division of labour, faculties and disciplines, confirming the hypothesis of the immense impact and actuality of Taste in the contemporary world.
Do any needs defensibly make claims on anyone? If so, which needs and whose needs can defensibly do this? What are the grounds for our responsibilities to meet others' needs, when we have such responsibilities? The distinguished contributors to this volume consider these questions as they evaluate the moral force of needs. They approach questions of obligation and moral importance from a variety of different theoretical perspectives, including contractarian, Kantian, Aristotelian, rights-based, egalitarian, liberal, and libertarian perspectives. Much contemporary discourse about moral and political matters employs the language of needs; Necessary Goods is an important book for philosophers and political theorists tackling the ever-present problem of our responsibilities towards others. Contributors: John Baker, David Braybrooke, Gillian Brock, David Copp, Len Doyal, Harry Frankfurt, Robert Goodin, Charles Jones, Martha Nussbaum, Onora O'Neill, James Sterba, David Wiggins.
A. W. Moore argues in this bold and ambitious book that it is possible to think about the world 'from no point of view'. He examines this idea, explains its significance, and considers reasons for thinking that such a thing is not possible. In particular, drawing on the work of Kant andWittgenstein, he considers transcendental idealism. This leads to the heart of his project: a study of ineffability and nonsense. His fundamental idea is that transcendental idealism is nonsense resulting from the attempt to express certain inexpressible insights. This idea is applied to a widerange of fundamental philosophical issues, including the nature of persons, the subject-matter of mathematics, anti-realism, value, and God; Moores original approach forges unexpected connections between the various questions he addresses. Points of View is a lucid and lively study of the relationbetween reality and our representations of it, the upshot of which is a powerful critique of our own finitude.
Many philosophers believe that God has been put to rest. Naturalism is the default position, and the naturalist can explain what needs to be explained without recourse to God. This book agrees that we should be naturalists, but it rejects the more prevalent scientific naturalism in favour of an 'expansive' naturalism inspired by David Wiggins and John McDowell. It is argued that expansive naturalism can accommodate the idea of God, and that the expansive naturalist has unwittingly paved the way towards a form of naturalism which poses a genuine challenge to the atheist. It follows that the traditional naturalism versus theism debate must be reconfigured: naturalism and theism are no longer logically incompatible; rather, they can both be true. Fiona Ellis draws on a wide range of thinkers from theology and philosophy, and spans the gulf between analytic and continental philosophy. She tackles various philosophical problems including the limits of nature and the status of value; some theological problems surrounding the natural/supernatural relation, the Incarnation, and the concept of myth; and offers a model - inspired by the secular expansive naturalist's conception of philosophy - to comprehend the relation between philosophy and theology.
Alan Thomas presents an original study of the status of value and its relation to the contexts in which evaluative claims are justified. He articulates and defends the view that human beings do possess moral and political knowledge, but that it is historically and culturally contextual knowledge in ways that, say, mathematical or chemical knowledge is not. His exposition of a 'cognitivist contextualism' in ethics and politics builds upon contemporary work in epistemology, moral philosophy, and political theory to fashion an argument that is relevant to current debates about culture, modernity, and relativism.
Could our modern commitment to freedom be related to or even cause a variety of extreme modern evils, most notably (but not exclusively) Auschwitz? Ever since Kant and Hegel, the notion of autonomythe idea that we are beholden to no law except one imposed upon ourselvesis considered the truest philosophical expression of free human agency. In this context, philosopher Martin Shuster examines the notion of autonomy and its relationship to modern evil. Taking its cue from the work of Theodor Adorno, this book shows that the notion of autonomy, as emblematically conceived in this German philosophical tradition, is not only self-defeating and unstable, but also dangerous and connected to extreme evils like genocide because it ultimately dissolves our capacities for reason, especially practical reason, and thereby our very standing as agents. Examining Adorno s understanding of modern evil in the context of his debate with Kant on autonomous agency, Shuster shows how Adorno developed a conception of autonomous agency that manages to avoid any connection to extreme evil. Throughout, Adorno is put into dialogue not only with many traditional European philosophical interlocutors (including Kant, Hegel, Horkheimer, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty), but innovatively, also with a variety of Anglo-American thinkers such as Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Bernard Williams, John McDowell, and Robert Pippin. Shuster aims to integrate and situate Adorno s work, then, within both traditions discussions of freedom and autonomy, demonstrate the deep ethical stakes that are involved in these debates, and offer new insights and lessons from Adorno s writings."
The Ethics of Need: Agency, Dignity, and Obligation argues for the philosophical importance of the notion of need and for an ethical framework through which we can determine which needs have moral significance. In the volume, Sarah Clark Miller synthesizes insights from Kantian and feminist care ethics to establish that our mutual and inevitable interdependence gives rise to a duty to care for the needs of others. Further, she argues that we are obligated not merely to meet others’ needs but to do so in a manner that expresses "dignifying care," a concept that captures how human interactions can grant or deny equal moral standing and inclusion in a moral community. She illuminates these theoretical developments by examining two cases where urgent needs require a caring and dignifying response: the needs of the elderly and the needs of global strangers. Those working in the areas of feminist theory, women’s studies, aging studies, bioethics, and global studies should find this volume of interest.
God and Cosmos provides a four-fold moral argument for God's existence that is cumulative, abductive, and teleological. The four relevant moral realities that theism and Christianity best explain are: intrinsic human value and moral duties; moral knowledge; radical moral transformation of human persons; and a rapprochement between morality and rationality.
