The Birth of Ethics

Reconstructing the Role and Nature of Morality

Nonfiction, Reference & Language, Law, Jurisprudence, Religion & Spirituality, Philosophy, Political, Ethics & Moral Philosophy
Cover of the book The Birth of Ethics by Philip Pettit, Oxford University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Philip Pettit ISBN: 9780190904937
Publisher: Oxford University Press Publication: October 15, 2018
Imprint: Oxford University Press Language: English
Author: Philip Pettit
ISBN: 9780190904937
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication: October 15, 2018
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Language: English

Imagine a human society, perhaps in pre-history, in which people were generally of a psychological kind with us, had the use of natural language to communicate with one another, but did not have any properly moral concepts in which to exhort one another to meet certain standards and to lodge related claims and complaints. According to The Birth of Ethics, the members of that society would have faced a set of pressures, and made a series of adjustments in response, sufficient to put them within reach of ethical concepts. Without any planning, they would have more or less inevitably evolved a way of using such concepts to articulate desirable patterns of behavior and to hold themselves and one another responsible to those standards. Sooner or later, they would have entered ethical space. While this central claim is developed as a thesis in conjectural history or genealogy, the aim of the exercise is philosophical. Assuming that it explains the emergence of concepts and practices that are more or less equivalent to ours, the story offers us an account of the nature and role of morality. It directs us to the function that ethics plays in human life and alerts us to the character in virtue of which it can serve that function. The emerging view of morality has implications for the standard range of questions in meta-ethics and moral psychology, and enables us to understand why there are divisions in normative ethics like that between consequentialist and Kantian approaches.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Imagine a human society, perhaps in pre-history, in which people were generally of a psychological kind with us, had the use of natural language to communicate with one another, but did not have any properly moral concepts in which to exhort one another to meet certain standards and to lodge related claims and complaints. According to The Birth of Ethics, the members of that society would have faced a set of pressures, and made a series of adjustments in response, sufficient to put them within reach of ethical concepts. Without any planning, they would have more or less inevitably evolved a way of using such concepts to articulate desirable patterns of behavior and to hold themselves and one another responsible to those standards. Sooner or later, they would have entered ethical space. While this central claim is developed as a thesis in conjectural history or genealogy, the aim of the exercise is philosophical. Assuming that it explains the emergence of concepts and practices that are more or less equivalent to ours, the story offers us an account of the nature and role of morality. It directs us to the function that ethics plays in human life and alerts us to the character in virtue of which it can serve that function. The emerging view of morality has implications for the standard range of questions in meta-ethics and moral psychology, and enables us to understand why there are divisions in normative ethics like that between consequentialist and Kantian approaches.

More books from Oxford University Press

Cover of the book The Death Penalty in America by Philip Pettit
Cover of the book Integration Interrupted by Philip Pettit
Cover of the book The OUPblog Tenth Anniversary Book by Philip Pettit
Cover of the book Conversational Interaction in Second Language Acquisition - Oxford Applied Linguistics by Philip Pettit
Cover of the book American Pragmatism by Philip Pettit
Cover of the book From Complexity to Life by Philip Pettit
Cover of the book Dreams and Dead Ends by Philip Pettit
Cover of the book Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament by Philip Pettit
Cover of the book Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race by Philip Pettit
Cover of the book In the Shadow of Korematsu by Philip Pettit
Cover of the book Sloth by Philip Pettit
Cover of the book Sonidos Negros by Philip Pettit
Cover of the book The Acadian Diaspora:An Eighteenth-Century History by Philip Pettit
Cover of the book The Sign of the Four by Philip Pettit
Cover of the book Zen Masters by Philip Pettit
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy