The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary EthicsOUP Oxford, 23 mei 2014 - 320 pagina's What does the idea of taking 'the point of view of the universe' tell us about ethics? The great nineteenth-century utilitarian Henry Sidgwick used this metaphor to present what he took to be a self-evident moral truth: the good of one individual is of no more importance than the good of any other. Ethical judgments, he held, are objective truths that we can know by reason. The ethical axioms he took to be self-evident provide a foundation for utilitarianism. He supplements this foundation with an argument that nothing except states of consciousness have ultimate value, which led him to hold that pleasure is the only thing that is intrinsically good. Are these claims defensible? Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer test them against a variety of views held by contemporary writers in ethics, and conclude that they are. This book is therefore a defence of objectivism in ethics, and of hedonistic utilitarianism. The authors also explore, and in most cases support, Sidgwick's views on many other key questions in ethics: how to justify an ethical theory, the significance of an evolutionary explanation of our moral judgments, the choice between preference-utilitarianism and hedonistic utilitarianism, the conflict between self-interest and universal benevolence, whether something that it would be wrong to do openly can be right if kept secret, how demanding utilitarianism is, whether we should discount the future, or favor those who are worse off, the moral status of animals, and what is an optimum population. |
Inhoudsopgave
1 | |
1 What is Ethics? | 14 |
2 Reason and Action | 33 |
3 Intuition and the Morality of Common Sense | 66 |
4 Justification in Ethics | 94 |
5 The Axioms of Ethics | 115 |
6 The Profoundest Problem of Ethics | 149 |
7 The Origins of Ethics and the Unity of Practical Reason | 174 |
Hedonism | 240 |
10 Rules | 285 |
11 Demandingness | 317 |
12 Distribution | 337 |
Conclusion | 378 |
383 | |
399 | |
Perfectionism and DesireBased Theory | 200 |
Overige edities - Alles bekijken
The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek,Peter Singer Gedeeltelijke weergave - 2014 |
The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek,Peter Singer Gedeeltelijke weergave - 2014 |
The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek,Peter Singer Geen voorbeeld beschikbaar - 2016 |
Veelvoorkomende woorden en zinsdelen
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