Thomas Hurka presents the first full historical study of an important
strand in the development of modern moral philosophy. His subject is a
series of British ethical theorists from the late nineteenth century
to the mid-twentieth century, who shared key assumptions that made
them a unified and distinctive school. The best-known of them are
Henry Sidgwick, G. E. Moore, and W. D. Ross; others include Hastings
Rashdall, H. A. Prichard, C. D. Broad, and A. C. Ewing. They disagreed
on some important topics, especially in normative ethics. Thus some
were consequentialists and others deontologists: Sidgwick thought only
pleasure is good while others emphasized perfectionist goods such as
knowledge, aesthetic appreciation, and virtue. But all were
non-naturalists and intuitionists in metaethics, holding that moral
judgements can be objectively true, have a distinctive subject-matter,
and are known by direct insight. They also had similar views about how
ethical theory should proceed and what are relevant arguments in it;
their disagreements therefore took place on common ground. Hurka
recovers the history of this under-appreciated group by showing what
its members thought, how they influenced each other, and how their
ideas changed through time. He also identifies the shared assumptions
that made their school unified and distinctive, and assesses their
contributions critically, both when they debated each other and when
they agreed. One of his themes is that that their general approach to
ethics was more fruitful philosophically than many better-known ones
of both earlier and later times.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780191038549
Publisert
2020
Utgiver
Vendor
OUP Oxford
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter