A Shared Morality

A Shared Morality PDF

Author: Craig A. Boyd

Publisher: Baker Books

Published: 2007-11-01

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9781585585090

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Morality based on natural law has a long tradition, and has proven to be quite resilient in the face of numerous attacks and challenges over the years. Those challenges are no less serious today, which leads one to ask if natural law is still a viable foundation for ethics. Craig Boyd provides a contemporary defense of natural law theory against modern challenges from the arenas of science, religion, culture, and philosophy. In his analysis, he defends many of the classical elements of natural law, but also takes into account the contributions of scientific discoveries about human nature. He concludes that natural law is a necessary but not sufficient basis for ethics that must be accompanied by a theory of virtue.

Morality

Morality PDF

Author: Jonathan Sacks

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2020-09-01

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 1541675320

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A distinguished religious leader's stirring case for reconstructing a shared framework of virtues and values. With liberal democracy embattled, public discourse grown toxic, family life breaking down, and drug abuse and depression on the rise, many fear what the future holds. In Morality, respected faith leader and public intellectual Jonathan Sacks traces today's crisis to our loss of a strong, shared moral code and our elevation of self-interest over the common good. We have outsourced morality to the market and the state, but neither is capable of showing us how to live. Sacks leads readers from ancient Greece to the Enlightenment to the present day to show that there is no liberty without morality and no freedom without responsibility, arguing that we all must play our part in rebuilding a common moral foundation. A major work of moral philosophy, Morality is an inspiring vision of a world in which we can all find our place and face the future without fear.

God and Morality

God and Morality PDF

Author: R. Keith Loftin

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2012-08-28

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0830863451

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Is morality dependent upon belief in God? Is there more than one way for Christians to understand the nature of morality? Is there any agreement between Christians and atheists or agnostics on this heated issue? In God and Morality: Four Views four distinguished voices in moral philosophy ariticulate and defend their place in the current debate between naturalism and theism. Christian philosophers, Keith Yandell and Mark Linville and two self-identified atheist/agnostics, Evan Fales and Michael Ruse clearly and honestly represent their differing views on the nature of morality. Important differences as well as areas of overlap emerge as each contributor states their case, receives criticism from the others and responds. Of particular value for use as an academic text, these four essays and responses, covering the naturalist moral non-realist, naturalist moral realist, moral essentialist and moral particularist views, will foster critical thinking and contribute to the development of a well-informed position on this very important issue.

Conflicts of Law and Morality

Conflicts of Law and Morality PDF

Author: Kent Greenawalt

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 0195058240

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Powerful emotion and pursuit of self-interest have many times led people to break the law with the belief that they are doing so with sound moral reasons. This study is a comprehensive philosophical and legal analysis of the gray area in which the foundations of law and morality clash. In examining the extent of the obligations owed by citizens to their government, Greenawalt concentrates on the possible existence of a single source of obligation that reaches all citizens and all laws.

Creating a Shared Morality

Creating a Shared Morality PDF

Author: Heather Salazar

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-10-18

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 9004471073

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In Creating a Shared Morality, Heather Salazar develops a consistent and plausible account of ethical constructivism that rivals the traditional metaethical theories of realism and subjectivism (without lapsing into subjectivism as do previous constructivist attempts). Salazar’s Enlightenism argues that all people have moral obligations and that if they reflect well, they will naturally come to care about others as extensions of themselves. Enlightenism resolves difficulties within constructivism, builds bridges between the two traditional Western views of metaethics and employs concepts from Eastern (Buddhist) philosophy. It embraces universal morality while elevating the importance of autonomy, diversity and connectedness. Constructivist enlightenment entails understanding the interdependence of people on others such that we are all co-responsible for the world in which we live.

The Morality of Pluralism

The Morality of Pluralism PDF

Author: John Kekes

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 1996-03-04

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 140082110X

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Controversies about abortion, the environment, pornography, AIDS, and similar issues naturally lead to the question of whether there are any values that can be ultimately justified, or whether values are simply conventional. John Kekes argues that the present moral and political uncertainties are due to a deep change in our society from a dogmatic to a pluralistic view of values. Dogmatism is committed to there being only one justifiable system of values. Pluralism recognizes many such systems, and yet it avoids a chaotic relativism according to which all values are in the end arbitrary. Maintaining that good lives must be reasonable, but denying that they must conform to one true pattern, Kekes develops and justifies a pluralistic account of good lives and values, and works out its political, moral, and personal implications.

Do Morals Matter?

Do Morals Matter? PDF

Author: Joseph S. Nye

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0190935960

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What is the role of ethics in American foreign policy? The Trump Administration has elevated this from a theoretical question to front-page news. Should ethics even play a role, or should we only focus on defending our material interests? In Do Morals Matter? Joseph S. Nye provides a concise yet penetrating analysis of how modern American presidents have-and have not-incorporated ethics into their foreign policy. Nye examines each presidency during theAmerican era post-1945 and scores them on the success they achieved in implementing an ethical foreign policy. Alongside this, he evaluates their leadership qualities, explaining which approaches work and which ones do not.

In Defense of Natural Law

In Defense of Natural Law PDF

Author: Robert P. George

Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 9780199242993

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In his collection George extends the critique of liberalism he expounded in Making Men Moral and also goes beyond it to show how contemporary natural law theory provides a superior way of thinking about basic problems of justice and political morality. It is written with the same combination of stylistic elegance and analytical rigour that distinguished his critical work. Not content merely to defend natural law from its cultural despisers, he deftly turns the tables and deploys the idea to mount a stunning attack on regnant liberal beliefs about such issues as abortion, sexuality, and the place of religion in public life.

Morality, Religious and Secular

Morality, Religious and Secular PDF

Author: Basil Mitchell

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1980

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 9780198245377

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This book analyzes the moral confusion of contemporary society, relating rival conceptions of morality with a wide variety of views about the nature and predicament of man. Mitchell argues that many secular thinkers possess a traditional "Christian" conscience which they find hard to defend in terms of an entirely secular world-view, but which is more in line with a Christian understanding of man.

The Evolution of Morality

The Evolution of Morality PDF

Author: Richard Joyce

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2007-08-24

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 0262263254

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Moral thinking pervades our practical lives, but where did this way of thinking come from, and what purpose does it serve? Is it to be explained by environmental pressures on our ancestors a million years ago, or is it a cultural invention of more recent origin? In The Evolution of Morality, Richard Joyce takes up these controversial questions, finding that the evidence supports an innate basis to human morality. As a moral philosopher, Joyce is interested in whether any implications follow from this hypothesis. Might the fact that the human brain has been biologically prepared by natural selection to engage in moral judgment serve in some sense to vindicate this way of thinking—staving off the threat of moral skepticism, or even undergirding some version of moral realism? Or if morality has an adaptive explanation in genetic terms—if it is, as Joyce writes, "just something that helped our ancestors make more babies"—might such an explanation actually undermine morality's central role in our lives? He carefully examines both the evolutionary "vindication of morality" and the evolutionary "debunking of morality," considering the skeptical view more seriously than have others who have treated the subject. Interdisciplinary and combining the latest results from the empirical sciences with philosophical discussion, The Evolution of Morality is one of the few books in this area written from the perspective of moral philosophy. Concise and without technical jargon, the arguments are rigorous but accessible to readers from different academic backgrounds. Joyce discusses complex issues in plain language while advocating subtle and sometimes radical views. The Evolution of Morality lays the philosophical foundations for further research into the biological understanding of human morality.