bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Evaluative vs. Deontic Concepts
Authors: Tappolet Christine
Published: January 2013

Ethical thought is articulated around normative concepts (seenormativity). Standard examples of normative concepts aregood,reason,right,ought, andobligatory. Theorists often treat the normative as an undifferentiated domain. Even so, it is common to distinguish between two kinds of normative concepts: evaluative or axiological concepts (from the Latinvaloresor the Greekaxios, both meaning that which has worth), such asgood, and deontic concepts (from the Greekdeon, meaning that which is binding), such asought. The basic idea behind the distinction, which is a generalization of the traditional opposition between value and duty, is that there is a difference between terms that are used to assess the worth of things and to express states such as approval or disapproval, on the one hand, and terms that are used to tell us what to do and not to do, on the other.
Mysticism and Ethics
Authors: Wainwright William J.
Published: January 2013

The relation between mysticism and ethics is contentious. Albert Schweitzer, Arthur Danto, and others have argued that mystical consciousness and morality are incompatible. The dominant view is expressed by Steven T. Katz, however: “it is difficult to find any major mystical figures, or mystical traditions, that can be said to preach moral indifference; and certainly none preach immorality” (1992: 254). But the issue is not so straightforward.
Normativity
Authors: Wedgwood Ralph
Published: January 2013

As the term is typically used in ethics today,normativethinking is the kind of thinking that is concerned with what peopleoughtto think or do, or havereasonto think or do. The first two sections of this essay will clarify what exactly the domain of the “normative” includes and what it does not. The rest of the essay surveys the philosophical issues that surround normativity.
Wisdom
Authors: Tiberius Valerie
Published: January 2013

The kind of wisdom that is of concern in ethics is
practical wisdom
. Practical wisdom is the virtue that enables a person to deliberate and choose well. It is distinguished from theoretical wisdom (a virtue that might be credited to a good scientist), which has to do with knowledge of the world. Practical wisdom includes knowledge or understanding of the right goals (or “ends”) in human life and the reasoning abilities that allow the wise person to apply this knowledge to come to a decision about what to do (
see
Practical Reasoning). On most views it also requires having appropriate emotional responses and possessing the capacity to conform one's actions to the results of reasoning. It is, therefore, a very demanding and wide‐ranging virtue. Practical wisdom (henceforth “wisdom”) is closely associated with a good life; the wise person is supposed to make choices that promote her flourishing (
see
Eudaimonism; Happiness). The fact that wise people are wise about
living
is what makes wisdom so difficult to find and also what makes it so sought after in advisors, leaders, and friends.
Ought
Authors: Finlay Stephen
Published: January 2013

The word “ought” figures centrally in many different philosophical issues. Considered the normative or action‐guiding wordpar excellence(seeNormativity), it appears in many of the most central questions of ethics (e.g., how ought one to act, and what kind of person ought one to be?), of political philosophy (e.g., what kind of government ought we to have?), of decision theory (e.g., how ought one to choose under conditions of uncertainty?), and of epistemology (e.g., what ought we to believe, and why?). An entire branch of logic (seeDeontic Logic) is frequently understood as concerned with the formal relationships of “ought” sentences. Consequently, defining or clarifying the meaning of “ought” is one of the central problems of metaethics as the study of the foundations of ethics.
Negligence
Authors: Smith Holly M.
Published: January 2013

The degree of an agent's blameworthiness for unjustified wrong‐doing varies with the mental attitude the agent has at the time of the action: other things being equal, the highest degree of blameworthiness attaches to
purposeful
wrong‐doing (the agent intends to commit the wrong), but progressively decreases if the agent acts
knowingly
(the agent believes the action is wrong), acts
recklessly
(the agent believes there is a substantial risk of serious wrong), or acts
negligently
(
see
Blame; Risk). In all these cases except negligence the agent is aware that the act is or risks being wrong. Most cases of negligence, however, do not involve conscious advertence to the risk of wrong; the agent's “mental attitude” is
lack
of awareness. For this reason the common assumption that negligent wrongful action is blameworthy has puzzled many commentators, and sometimes been rejected.
War
Authors: Lazar Seth
Published: January 2013

Since at least the first recorded instance of human‐on‐human conflict, in Wadi Halfa, Sudan, between 14,000 and 12,000 years ago (Reader 1998: 142–3), human beings have fought with, and killed one another. Also, probably since that first conflict over diminishing resources, we have sought to explain and justify some of this killing. Each culture, each historical and religious tradition, has its own history of debate about war's morality (seeJust War Theory, History of). Christian just war theory traces its roots to the early Church fathers, medieval scholastics, and the eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century jurists. The Qur'ān offers Muslims guidance on when and how to fight; while Hindus derive insights from the Mahabharata and the Laws of Manu, among other places. Other traditions have their own key texts and insights. In recent years, thinking about war's morality has slipped its religious moorings, and drifted towards more secular, universalist foundations. Foremost among these is the conviction that profound moral reasons protect all human beings equally against lethal attacks, no matter how they otherwise differ (seeKilling). To justify killing, we must explain how these weighty reasons can either be overridden, or defeated by some other consideration. Although other terms might be used, this is most commonly expressed in the conviction that all people have fundamental human rights against being killed, such that we can only justify killing them if they have somehow lost that right, or it has been overridden by some even weightier set of moral reasons (seeRights). Since killing is the business of war, if warfare is to be justified, we must explain how our enemies lose their rights against attack, or how those rights are overridden by our positive reasons for fighting. On this justificatory project hangs the viability of an ethics of war: if it fails, we must reject warfare, and endorse pacifism (seePacifism).
Predatory Pricing
Authors: Snyder Jeremy
Published: January 2013

Predatory pricing consists of selling goods or services at unusually low prices. Typically these prices are unreasonably low by the standards of the local market, usually to the point where they are unprofitable to the seller. The intent of the predatory seller is to force competitors out of the market and to achieve monopoly pricing power within that market. Predatory pricing is frequently cited as an unethical practice within business and marketing ethics texts (Brenkert 2008; Desjardins 2008;
see
Business Ethics) and is condemned by the American Marketing Association's
Code of Ethics
(AMA 2004).
Police Ethics
Authors: Miller Seumas
Published: January 2013

The term “police ethics” typically refers to an area of academic inquiry within philosophical ethics concerned with ethical issues that arise for police officers and police organizations (Heffernan and Stroup 1985; Delattre 1994; Kleinig 1996a; Miller and Blackler 2005). Let me describe some of the main ethical or moral (I use the terms interchangeably here to avoid unnecessary complication) issues that arise in policing.
Global Poverty
Authors: Barry Christian , Wisor Scott
Published: January 2013

Normative discussions of global poverty have been focused on developing adequate answers to the following two questions:
Charity
Authors: Cullity Garrett
Published: January 2013

In the tradition of Western ethical thought, “charity” refers to two ideas. Although now distinguishable, they are historically connected. The first is an attitude: the attitude of selfless love which is treated in the Christian tradition as the most fundamental of the virtues. The second is a kind of action: the action of rendering material assistance to those who need it. Derivative from this second idea is the current use of “a charity” to refer to an organization through which such assistance is coordinated.
Promises
Authors: Owens David
Published: January 2013

When a writer wishes to give an example of something we are obliged to do, likely as not they cite something we have promised to do. Promising is a standard source of obligation (seeDuty and Obligation). Promissory obligation is also widely regarded as a peculiarly difficult or problematic form of obligation, as posing questions which other forms of obligation do not. We find ourselves obliged to do many things but promissory obligations are our own creation. Or so it seems. And the idea of a freely created obligation has puzzled many thinkers. When did this puzzlement begin?
Chastity
Authors: Halwani Raja
Published: January 2013

Chastity is the virtue that moderates our sexual desires. Being chaste is not the same as successfully resisting the urges of improper sexual desires (that would be continence); it is instead to not feel these desires to begin with. Thus, a chaste person does not sexually desire what is wrong. If having the virtues is necessary or needed for human beings to lead good, flourishing lives, having chastity is part of leading a good life. Assuming that we all want to lead good lives, then we all have good reason to be chaste.
Reason and Passion
Authors: Blackburn Simon
Published: January 2013

There is a familiar view, which was also dominant in the classical world, that when we exercise self‐control we use our reason to moderate or direct or resist our passions. In the famous Platonic image from the dialogue the
Phaedrus
, the charioteer, who is an emblem of reason, controls the unruly horses of spirit and desire, that might otherwise pull his vehicle in random, foolish, or wicked directions, possibly dashing its driver and others to destruction (
see
Plato). In Aristotle, human beings alone possess rationality, and the best kind of life consists in acting in accordance with reason, which is equivalent to living virtuously (
see
Aristotle). Ethical thought is then a matter of discovering what reason requires in any particular situation. In both pictures the passions are disruptive and unruly, and right living consists in subordinating them to reason. Later than Plato and Aristotle, both the Stoics and Epicurus urged a more extreme view parallel to that of Buddhism, that the best life was to be approached largely by divesting oneself altogether of desire and passion, aiming at a benign or self‐satisfied serenity that is blissfully insensitive to everything that upsets lesser souls (
see
Stoicism; Buddhist Ethics).
Equality of Opportunity
Authors: Temkin Larry S.
Published: January 2013

The ideal of equality of opportunity (equal opportunity) plays an important role in contemporary discourse. A continually evolving notion, it is invoked in political, social, and moral contexts. It is often identified with the view that positions should be distributed according to merit, but also with calls to end discrimination or level the playing field amongst different people (seeAffirmative Action;Compensatory Justice;Egalitarianism;Equality). Originally applied to a narrow range of group categories like race, religion, ethnicity, and gender, its scope has been extended in recent years to include other categories like age, handicap, or sexual orientation (seeAge Discrimination;Sexual Equality). Moreover, in principle, the notion has unlimited scope, extending to any people against whom there is discrimination or between whom there is significant variation in undeserved advantages, including, for example, intelligence, beauty, height, or even voice quality. Accordingly, the ideal of equal opportunity means different things to different people, and many who favor equal opportunity on one construal oppose it on others.
Satisficing
Authors: Weber Michael E.
Published: January 2013

The Nobel Prize‐winning economist Herbert Simon introduced the term “satisficing” into the contemporary lexicon (Simon 1955). It was used previously as an alteration of “satisfy” (Oxford English Dictionary1989). Simon, however, gave the term a specific new meaning. For Simon, satisficing is a strategy for decision‐making in which an individual or firm seeks an option the outcome of which is satisfactory or “good enough” rather than best or optimal. Satisficing, then, stands in contrast to the maximizing models dominant in rational choice theory, economics, and philosophy (seeGame Theory and Rational Choice; Rationality).
Husserl, Edmund
Authors: Nenon Thomas
Published: January 2013

The most important texts on ethics from Edmund Husserl (1864–1938) are two large volumes based on his lecture courses on ethics – one on the courses he presented in 1908/09, 1911, and 1914 (1988), and one on the courses of 1920 and 1924 (2004) – along with several programmatic essays on individual and social ethics, which were originally composed for the Japanese journal
Kaizo
in the early 1920s (1989). These texts, which remained unpublished until five decades after Husserl's death, confirm the general view expressed in his published works that transcendental phenomenology as he developed it, as a general method for philosophy and philosophical issues, was also the key to reasonable and rigorous philosophical discussions in practical philosophy.
Sympathy
Authors: Snow Nancy E.
Published: January 2013

The term “sympathy” has two meanings in philosophical literature. According to one conception, “sympathy” commonly means having care and concern for another whose well‐being is under threat or is encountering some obstacle (Darwall 1998: 261). When I feel sympathy, I feel for the other (Darwall 1998: 261). The Confucian philosopher Mengzi (also known as Mencius), for example, writes that a person seeing a small child on the verge of falling into a well would be moved by alarm and compassion (Darwall 1998: 261; Van Norden 2008: 46;
see
Confucian Ethics; Mencius). Here “compassion” seems to be used interchangeably with “sympathy.” When I feel sympathy or compassion, I show care and concern for another in her plight.
Prioritarianism
Authors: Persson Ingmar
Published: January 2013

Prioritarianism, or the priority view, is the view that benefits to those who are worse off, absolutely speaking, have a greater moral weight or value than benefits to those who are better off. It could be seen as a view that aims to rectify the distributive insensitivity of utilitarianism (seeUtilitarianism). Many find it implausible that utilitarianism implies that a benefit, or a unit of welfare or well‐being (seeWell‐being), has the same moral value, or makes the outcome as much morally better, if it is received by somebody who is better off as by somebody who is worse off. To be sure, utilitarians could mitigate the counterintuitiveness of this implication by maintaining that what we usually are in a position to distribute directly areresourceswhichproducebenefits (understood in terms of pleasure, happiness, desire‐fulfillment, etc. [seePleasure; Happiness]) rather than benefits and that, according to diminishing marginal utility, resources as a rule produce fewer benefits in the hands of the better off than the worse off. So, in practice, utilitarianism generally implies that resources should go to the worse off. But this clarification is not enough to appease many critics of the distributive shortcomings of utilitarianism: they will insist that it is morally better if a resource goes to someone worse off even if it does not then generate a greater benefit than it would were it to go to someone better off. Such critics might turn to prioritarianism.
Casuistry
Authors: Strong Carson
Published: January 2013

Casuistry is a method of reasoning for identifying justifiable courses of action in situations involving moral conflict. The term “casuistry” is derived from “case” (in Latin,casus) and refers to reasoning in which a case, the moral resolution of which is in dispute, is compared to one or more paradigm cases in which the justifiable resolution is relatively clear. This case‐based reasoning flourished during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but fell into disrepute and was abandoned as a method of reasoning. In moral philosophy from the modern era until the 1980s, there is little reference to casuistry except as a term of disparagement. The emergence of bioethics (seeBIOETHICS) in the twentieth century laid the groundwork for the rediscovery of casuistry. Traditional ethical theories were found to provide little help in resolving clinical ethics cases, and case‐based reasoning began to receive increased attention. Several versions of casuistry have been put forward as useful ways to analyze difficult bioethics cases. In bioethics today, there is debate over the strengths and weaknesses of casuistry as a method of moral reasoning.
Proudhon, Pierre‐Joseph
Authors: Schröder Peter
Published: January 2013

Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon (1809–65) is best known for his polemical textWhat is Property?, which he published in 1840. He was an ardent critic of French society and politics of the first half of the nineteenth century. His uncompromising stance assured him a certain notoriety, but it also meant that he was rather isolated in his views of politics and society. His rigorous criticism attacked institutions such as the church, as well as the postrevolutionary bourgeoisie in France. His positions seem ambiguous and contradictory, but his fundamental attack on the property relations of nineteenth‐century France is the bedrock of his vision of progress and emancipation of the people. Consciously very similarly framed like Sieyès' polemical question just before the French Revolution of 1789 (“What is the third estate?”), Proudhon asked “what is property?” He argued that the institution of property was “the last obstacle … to consummate the revolution” (1994: 32). Indeed, he infamously had claimed that property was theft and that it was impossible to justify property. He thus linked the material condition of man with the notion of liberty and claimed that “liberty is an absolute right …a sine qua nonof existence” which was “completely irreconcilable” with property (1994: 42f).
Holocaust
Authors: Brecher Bob
Published: January 2013

Minimally, the term “Holocaust” – from the ancient Greek participleholokaustos, “burnt in entirety,” which is in turn a compound ofholōs, “entirely,” andkaiein, “to burn” – refers to the actions of the Nazis and their sympathizers in killing some 6 million European Jews – two‐thirds of the Jews in Europe (Gilbert 1988) – during the course of World War II. The victims were killed in death camps, in work camps, and across Central and Eastern Europe, by death squads of ordinary soldiers (seeKilling). As a proper name,Holocaustis, however, doubly controversial. First, in its range of applicability: some writers include in its sphere the Roma and Sinti genocide and the systematic murder of Slavs, gays, disabled people, and other groups; others reserve it for the Jews alone. Hence the namePorrajmos– which, in some Roma dialects, means “devouring” – is preferred to Holocaust by most Roma and Sinti. Second, notwithstanding the differences above, arguments from etymology prompt some writers to prefer the nameShoah(which is the Hebrew for “calamity”) in reference to the Jewish Holocaust. On the wider view, at least 11 million people were killed (Niewyk and Nicosia 2000). Many were subjected to horrific medical experiments (Müller‐Hill 1998).
Reasons, Motivating and Normative
Authors: Feldman Simon
Published: January 2013

Samantha has a Philosophy 101 paper due in the morning, but her new, somewhat rebellious friends are pressuring her to come out with them and have fun. Thinking (as it turns out, wrongly) that her friends will think she's cool if she downloads a paper from the web and goes partying with them instead of doing her work, she does exactly that. Given what Samantha believes (that her friends will think well of her if she cheats) and what she desires (to ingratiate herself with these friends), what she does is perfectly intelligible. But at the same time what she does seems imprudent and wrong. She shouldn't want to impress these people and in fact her actions are ill‐suited to achieving this goal (it turns out they are so blasé about cheating that Samantha's minor infraction doesn't register with them as cool). Samantha has reasons to do what she does even if we agree that her reasons are really very bad. The basic distinction between motivating reasons and normative reasons is the distinction between the reasons for which a person in fact does (or is disposed to do) something and the reasons that count in favor of, or against, her doing it. Put differently, motivating reasons are the considerations wetaketo justify what we do and in virtue of which our behavior is explicable as intentional action (Davidson 1980).Normative reasonsare the considerations weoughtto be guided by when we are deciding what to do or when we are evaluating the justification of an action. When we are fully rational, our motivating reasons, the reasons for which we act, correspond to, or accommodate, the normative reasons that govern the situation (Heuer 2004).
Infanticide
Authors: Tooley Michael
Published: January 2013

The question of the moral status of infanticide in the case of normal human infants is very important, both theoretically and practically. Its theoretical importance lies in the fact that intuitions differ very greatly on this question, so that the ability to set out an answer that is solidly grounded in fundamental moral principles is a crucial task for any comprehensive account of the morality of killing (seeKilling). Its practical significance, on the other hand, lies in its connection with the closely related – and very important – ethical question of whether it is morally permissible to kill severely defective infants (Kuhse and Singer 1985).
Diderot, Denis
Authors: Look Brandon C.
Published: January 2013

Denis Diderot (1713–84) was one of the most important thinkers in Enlightenment and pre‐revolutionary France. The author of philosophical, literary, and critical works, he was also (with Jean Le Rond D'Alembert) the cofounder and coeditor of and a major contributor to the
Encyclopédie
, one of the great cultural and scientific documents of the eighteenth century.
Fetuses
Authors: Sherwin Susan
Published: January 2013

Human fetuses play a prominent role in various ethics debates, primarily those concerned with activities within clinical medicine and scientific research. The principal controversies involve the sort of moral consideration that is owed to human fetuses with respect to obligations of care and permission for use. These questions are complicated by an inconsistency in terminology between ethicists and scientists. Scientists distinguish among zygotes (fertilized eggs in the earliest stages of division), blastocysts (organisms beginning cell differentiation, in the period from five days after fertilization until about three weeks), embryos (organisms in which the process of organ formation has started, in the period of three weeks to nine weeks), and fetuses (entities with recognizable features, covering all stages of development, from nine weeks until birth) (MedlinePlus). Most ethicists ignore these distinctions and deploy the term “fetus” to characterize all human life from the time an egg is fertilized until birth. Ethicists are primarily concerned with the question of whether fetuses should be regarded as persons – and thereby fully entitled to the moral consideration associated with that status – or merely as potential persons (seePersonhood, Criteria of; Potential Persons). Although this question seems to be one of ontology, many theorists appeal to moral arguments to support their ontological positions regarding prenatal human organisms.
Truth Commissions
Authors: Murphy Colleen
Published: January 2013

A truth commission is a temporary institution established by a government and charged with investigating and producing a report on patterns of human rights abuses committed over a specified time period (seeInternational Bill of Rights). Reports from truth commissions often include recommendations on how to prevent such abuses in the future. Commissions differ in the specific abuses and time period covered, the extent to which hearings and final reports are made public, and the investigative powers enjoyed. Since the 1970s, more than two dozen commissions have been established globally. Truth commissions represent one way that a community may deal with its legacy of human rights abuses. Unlike criminal trials, however, truth commissions do not convict or punish perpetrators of human rights abuses (seePunishment). In addition, truth commissions may have the power to grant amnesty to perpetrators of human rights abuses or be established in a context where an amnesty already exists (seeAmnesty). For these reasons, some people contend, they ignore and/or leave unfulfilled the demands of justice (seeJustice).
Wollstonecraft, Mary
Authors: Tong Rosemarie
Published: January 2013

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) was a British philosopher, writer, and feminist. Her writings are a challenge to interpret because they are both personal and practical. Wollstonecraft lived during a time of great sociopolitical upheaval, highlighted by the French Revolution. In fact, Wollstonecraft spent time in France just before Louis XVI was guillotined. Like many British expatriates, she was forced to flee France after Britain declared war on it. In addition to living through the exciting days of the French Revolution, Wollstonecraft was part of a movement that in Western Europe gave rise to a new middle class built on fundamental liberal values: rationality, independence, free speech, free enterprise, hard work, and meritoriousness (
see
Liberalism). This rising middle class was bolstered by a family structure in which men and women played clearly defined and supposedly equally important roles (
see
Family). Among the important philosophical issues that this new middle class had to address was the relationship between reason and feeling (sensibility) in both the private and public domains.
Repugnant Conclusion
Authors: Arrhenius Gustaf
Published: January 2013

Derek Parfit originally formulated the Repugnant Conclusion as follows: “For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better even though its members have lives that are barely worth living” (1984: 388).
Self‐Deception
Authors: Van Leeuwen Neil
Published: January 2013

What's the point of calling someone “self‐deceived”? It's to say that someone has a false belief (or other cognitive attitude) that is not just from stupidity or lack of information. Rather, the self‐deceiver is at some level aware of information that would lead her to form the correct belief, but some motivational bias leads her to hold the opposite.
Responsibility
Authors: Tognazzini Neal A.
Published: January 2013

The notion of responsibility is vexed, both conceptually and metaphysically. It is invoked in a bewildering variety of contexts, and in many of those contexts its very possibility is questioned. Ordinary language is not of much help: people can
be
responsible,
become
responsible, and be
held
responsible; they can
have
responsibilities,
claim
responsibility,
take
responsibility – and the list of verbs goes on. Our “modern scientific worldview” is often thought to undermine responsibility, yet we regret that politicians and teenagers don't take it more seriously. It is, like most philosophically interesting concepts, remarkably easy to use but dreadfully difficult to understand. In this essay, I offer what little help I can.
Self‐Defense
Authors: Uniacke Suzanne
Published: January 2013

The use of force in self‐defense is widely regarded as morally justified. Perhaps for this reason self‐defense received only sporadic attention in Western philosophy until relatively recently. In the thirteenth century St. Thomas Aquinas (
see
Aquinas, Saint Thomas) needed to reconcile permissible self‐defense with his view that a private person must not kill intentionally; he sought to do this by distinguishing between intended, as opposed to (merely) foreseen, effects of an action and thus laid the basis of the doctrine of double effect (
see
Doctrine Of Double Effect). Several sixteenth‐ and seventeenth‐century philosophers discussed self‐defense. Thomas Hobbes regarded self‐defense as a fundamental and inalienable right (
see
Hobbes, Thomas). Others addressed self‐defense within civil society and in relation to just war (
see
Natural Law; Just War Theory, History of; Locke, John; Grotius, Hugo; Pufendorf, Samuel Von).
Just Price
Authors: Sandberg Joakim
Published: January 2013

The just price tradition has roots in Ancient philosophy but is most straightforwardly associated with a line of medieval philosophers and theologians, such as John Duns Scotus (
see
Duns Scotus), St. Thomas Aquinas (
see
Aquinas, Saint Thomas) and others. What generally characterizes the tradition is an interest in matters of ethics and justice concerning the pricing of goods and services on commercial markets. Medieval philosophers were often critical of commerce in general – and commerce with
money
in particular (
see
Usury) – viewing it as an (at best) unfortunate practical necessity dominated by (at least strong tendencies towards) the sins of greed and deceit. The just price tradition can be seen as a part of this moral critique of commerce and profiteering in general (
see
Profit Motive). At the same time, however, perhaps it can also be seen as staking out a way for commercial agents to ethically redeem themselves.
Genocide
Authors: Lee Steven P.
Published: January 2013

Genocide, meaning literally the killing of a kind, is a monstrous crime, a crime against humanity, involving the murder of individuals because of the group to which they belong (seeCrimes Against Humanity). Though the crime is an old one, it was not named until 1944, when the term was introduced by the Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin to refer to the systematic killings perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II against Jews and other groups, a historical event that came to be known as the Holocaust (seeHolocaust). Crimes against humanity were legally recognized by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, established to try Nazis responsible for war‐time crimes (seeWar Crimes).
Jaspers, Karl
Authors: Langley Raymond J.
Published: January 2013

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) was the first twentieth‐century thinker to describe his work as a philosophy of existence (
see
Existentialism). Existential philosophers shift the emphasis from objective truth to focus on human beings, who struggle for recognition and freedom in a world of moral and political conflicts (
see
Heidegger, Martin; Sartre, Jean‐Paul). At age 18 Jaspers contracted a heart–lung disease that forced him to alternate short periods of work and recuperation. In 1908 Jaspers graduated with a medical degree but could not practice medicine because of physical limitations of illness. He began doing psychiatric research at Heidelberg University. In 1913 Jaspers published
General Psychopathology
. Psychopathology studies the origins and behaviors of mental illness but general psychopathology examines all empirical experience. Jaspers' rigorous methodology combined physical and causal explanations with a descriptive method analyzing subjective experiences and a new model of empathetic understanding between patient and doctor. He borrowed these methodological innovations from the new field of phenomenological philosophy (
see
Phenomenology, Moral; Husserl, Edmund). Jaspers' groundbreaking approach, now called philosophical psychiatry, focused on the relation of body and mind as a synthesis of both objective and subjective evidence. But psychopathology was subordinated to his humanism. In a proposition reiterated throughout all his writings, “man is always more that he can know of himself,” for the complexity of experience transcends all external or internal views.
Criminal Attempts
Authors: Duff R. A.
Published: January 2013

If I deliberately damage another's property, or deliberately wound someone, or avoid paying taxes that I should pay, or defraud my insurance company by a dishonest claim, I commit a criminal offense. If I try but fail to commit such actions, I also commit a criminal offense, of attempt. The criminal law defines a wide range of complete offenses, like those mentioned here, and a general, inchoate offense of attempting to commit any of those specific offenses. (An inchoate offense is one that might not actually bring about, but is in some suitable way related to, the primary mischief that concerns the criminal law: attempted fraud is suitably related to, as an attempt to bring about, the criminal mischief of dishonestly depriving another of her money.) This feature of most modern systems of criminal law raises several theoretical and normative questions, and leads us into issues in practical philosophy and the philosophy of action.
Filial Duties
Authors: Keller Simon
Published: January 2013

Most people show special concern for their parents. You might make significant sacrifices in order to pay for your parents' medical care, to give your parents somewhere comfortable to live in their old age, or to honor your parents' desires and values, when you would never do the same for just anybody. Not only are most of us inclined to give special treatment to our parents, we also tend to think that our giving them such treatment is a matter of duty. We show special concern for our parents not only because we want to, but also because we think it would be wrong to do otherwise. A grown child who fails to look after his parents, when his parents have been perfectly loving and have given him a perfectly good upbringing, and when they have needs he is perfectly able to meet, is a person who fails in his moral duty.
Russell, Bertrand
Authors: Pigden Charles
Published: January 2013

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), third Earl Russell, aristocrat, activist, journalist, mathematician and philosopher, survives in philosophical memory mainly for his technical achievements. He was one of the founding fathers of analytic philosophy, a pioneer of logicism in the philosophy of mathematics, and one of the co‐creators of symbolic logic. Indeed, the dominant tone of analytic philosophy, with its keen interest in science and its casual use of logical notation, largely derives from Russell. But philosophy as conceived and practiced by Russell is an elite pursuit. It requires a good deal of background knowledge, both of science and of logic (though as a dedicated popularizer Russell was keen to diffuse the necessary knowledge as widely as possible). And the questions it addresses – “Can mathematics be reduced to logic?” “Is our knowledge of the external world based solely on experience?” – are of interest only to a few. “Philosophers,” says Marx, “have onlyinterpretedthe world in various ways: the point, however is to change it” (Marx and Engels 1976: 620;seeMarx, Karl). Russell disagreed, not about the need to change the world, but about the point of philosophy as an intellectual enterprise.Interpretingthe world is indeed the chief purpose of philosophy, which means that if, as a citizen, you are trying to change the world (or even to stop it getting worse), you are probablynotdoing philosophy.
Externalism, Motivational
Authors: Mason Elinor
Published: January 2013

Motivational judgment externalism is the view that even when someone sincerely judges that they ought to do something, they will not necessarily be motivated to do it. This might seem counterintuitive – we usually expect that people will be motivated by their judgments about what they ought to do. In fact, motivational judgment internalists use this expectation as the basis of their claim that we arenecessarilymotivated by our sincere judgments about what we ought to do. The internalist argument goes something like this – suppose someone tells you that they believe that it is wrong to eat meat. We would expect them to be motivated not to eat meat. Of course, they might not always succeed in resisting the temptation to eat meat: imagine that a friend tells us that she has recently become an ethical vegetarian. We come across this friend in a steak restaurant, tucking into a rare sirloin. What do we expect? We expect that either she will tell us that she changed her mind and realized that meat eating was acceptable after all, or she will tell us that she feels awful about it, but she couldn't help herself, she found herself ordering the steak and wolfing it down, but she is disgusted with herself and plans to try harder in future. If she gaily says, “Oh yes, I shouldn't eat meat, but I don“t care about that, Iapos;m going to anyway” we would be very puzzled. Motivational internalists think that this last possibility issopuzzling that it is not what it seems to be, or that it shows that something is more generally wrong with the agent. Motivational externalists argue that perfectly functional agents can and do behave in ways that they themselves disapprove of.
Critical Theory
Authors: Baynes Kenneth
Published: January 2013

The tradition of critical theory (or the “Frankfurt School”) includes a variety of different positions on morality. In the initial years of the Institute for Social Research, Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) defended a form of eudaimonism (seeEudaimonism) against the rationalist morality of Kant and the neo‐Kantians; Theodor Adorno (1903–69), by contrast, especially in the postwar years, developed a distinctive critique of morality that stressed the impossibility of any correct or right living in a corrupt world; finally, beginning in the 1970s, Jürgen Habermas (1929–), together with Karl‐Otto Apel (1922–), proposed a discourse (or communicative) morality that belongs to a broadly neo‐Kantian approach (seeDiscourse Ethics). Despite these differences, critical theory shares a generally Marxist (or materialist) suspicion about the social function of morality. This heritage is significant, however, since Marxism itself has always had an extremely ambivalent relation to morality (Lukes 1985;seeMarx, Karl). On the one hand, it views morality as largely ideological and in the service of prevailing socioeconomic interests. On the other hand, it also makes use of moral values in its condemnation of capitalism as oppressive and/or unjust. Critical theorists have self‐consciously struggled with this ambivalence as much as anyone. At times, they follow the strategy of “immanent criticism” – that is, attempting to show how liberal society fails to live up to its own ideals without necessarily embracing those ideals itself; at other times, they regard immanent criticism as insufficient. This essay offers a brief sketch of the views of Horkheimer and Adorno and then turns to a fuller discussion of Habermas's discourse morality.
Political Correctness
Authors: Sparrow Robert
Published: January 2013

“Political correctness” is a phrase that came to prominence in the “culture wars” that occurred in the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was subsequently taken up elsewhere. The idea that a coalition of feminists (seeFeminist Ethics), ethnic minorities, homosexuals, and left‐wing intellectuals has achieved so much social and institutional power in the United States as to be capable of censoring – or at least intimidating – anyone who holds views contrary to the supposedly “politically correct” orthodoxy was promoted by conservative and neo‐conservative writers such as Dinesh D'souza (1991), Allan Bloom (1987), Roger Kimball (1991), and Nat Hentoff (1992). These authors’ efforts led to a range of initiatives by progressives, regarding campus “hate speech,” racial vilification, affirmative action, sexual harassment, and the content of the curricula at schools and universities, to become known as “political correctness” (PC;seeHate Speech; Affirmative Action; Sexual Harassment; Academic Freedom). The subsequent “PC debate” raised important issues about the nature and extent of freedom of expression, the difference between censorship and criticism, and the role of educational institutions in a democratic society (Berman 1992; Dunant 1994; Williams 1995;seeSpeech, Freedom of).
Berlin, Isaiah
Authors: Blattberg Charles
Published: January 2013

Regarded by many as a leading thinker of the twentieth century, Isaiah Berlin (1909–97) was an Oxford philosopher who specialized in the history of ideas, the philosophy of history, and moral and political philosophy. As a child he witnessed a scene of brutality during the Russian Revolution that had a great impact upon him, leaving him with a life‐long wariness toward the potential of ideologies such as communism to lead people to commit great cruelties; indeed, Berlin was later to become an important “Cold War liberal.” With respect to ethics, he is chiefly of interest for his doctrine of value pluralism and the related account of liberty as presented in his famous 1958 essay, “Two Concepts of Liberty” (Berlin 2002). How the two are related has been a matter of considerable controversy.
Bentham, Jeremy
Authors: Harrison Ross
Published: January 2013

Bentham is one of the founding fathers of the ethical doctrine known as utilitarianism in which the rightness or wrongness of actions is wholly judged in terms of their consequences. Bentham calls the consequences that count “utility” or “happiness”. But, although he is a chief originator of a value theory that has been important from his own time to the present day, his importance does not lie particularly with proposing happiness or utility as the proper end of all actions. This had been done before. His importance lies instead in the applications he made of the principle, his explanations and justifications of utility or happiness as the proper end of action, and in his development of an associated philosophy of language and psychology.
Categorical Imperative
Authors: Reath Andrews
Published: January 2013

The term “categorical imperative” was introduced into moral philosophy by Immanuel Kant (
see
Kant, Immanuel). The concept is central to his moral philosophy, and if he is right, to moral thought and reasoning more generally. It refers both to a certain kind of substantive rational requirement on action that we shall call “a categorical imperative” and to the fundamental principle that can be used to determine our moral requirements, a principle that we shall call “the Categorical Imperative.” This essay will begin by explaining the concept of a categorical imperative and will then turn to the fundamental principle and its application.
Perception, Moral
Authors: McGrath Sarah
Published: January 2013

On the face of it, we have some moral knowledge. We know some general moral truths, for example, that slavery is wrong. And we know some particular moral truths. For example, confronted with a choice about how to act, we often know which action would be right, which wrong, which dishonest, which kind, etc. A central question in moral epistemology is the question of how we acquire moral knowledge (if, indeed, we acquire it). One answer to be found both in ancient texts and in the contemporary literature is that we acquire moral knowledge in the same way that we acquire much of our nonmoral knowledge about the empirical world – namely, by perception.
Deep Ecology
Authors: Brennan Andrew
Published: January 2013

One of the most influential positions in environmental philosophy (seeEnvironmental Ethics), deep ecology emerged in the 1970s as the philosophical expression of a wider cultural movement in Scandinavia. The term “deep ecology” is often used loosely to refer to any environmental ethical position that attributes intrinsic value or moral standing to some or all natural things, often combined with a relational view of human subjects (as defined by their place in larger ecological, social, and economic systems). In this essay the focus will largely be on the deep ecology movement understood in a stricter sense, based on the philosophical work of Arne Næss. That movement – associated with the termfriluftsliv(roughly, “outdoor life”) – emphasized the importance of outdoor activity both as a spontaneous way of being at home in the world, and also as an important element in human education and socialization. While the termfriluftslivwas used widely in nineteenth‐century Norway and even figured in a poem by Henrik Ibsen, the twentieth‐century explorer Fridtjof Nansen famously introduced the term as a contrast totourism, the latter implying a merely shallow encounter with nature, while life in the free open air was meant to lead us back to our “true home” in “God's free grand nature” (Breivik 1989). In 1971 three Norwegians – Nils Faarlund, Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng, and Arne Næss – set out on an “anti‐expedition” to Nepal, partly with the aim of helping the local Sherpas in their campaign to protect the sacred mountain Tseringma from tourist‐mountaineers. It was during this trip that Næss experienced the “breakthrough” that enabled him to complete the sketch of a new environmental philosophy, or “ecosophy,” Kvaløy formulated an ecopolitics of a “life necessities society” (as opposed to the dominant “industrial growth society”), and Faarlund was inspired to continue his work promotingfriluftslivas a wider approach to outdoor education – one that combined training in mountaineering, skiing, and winter survival techniques with a philosophy of character‐building through long periods of exposure to wilderness activities that deliberately use low technology and nature‐friendly approaches.
Work, Nature and Value of
Authors: McCall John J.
Published: January 2013

Work in its most general sense is the intentional expenditure of time and effort in pursuit of some objective. For example, “She is working in her garden” and, even, “He is working on his tan” are perfectly understandable expressions. However, it is a safe bet that when most of us think about work, we are thinking about paid employment. It is this latter sense of work with which we will be concerned here.
Spencer, Herbert
Authors: Small Robin
Published: January 2013

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) was a vastly influential thinker during his lifetime. His primary appeal was to the educated public, leaving the academic world looking on, often with some bemusement. William James said: “He is the philosopher whom those who have no other philosopher can appreciate” – adding that the statement was “great praise” (1978: 115). By supplying a comprehensive and self‐contained system of ideas, centering on a single universal law of development, Spencer encouraged his readers to look no further for the explanations they needed in philosophy, ethics, and politics.
Nonideal Ethics
Authors: Rivera‐López Eduardo
Published: January 2013

Our world is far from ideal: people kill, steal, and harm others; governments initiate unjust wars; material resources are sometimes scarce or unjustly distributed; and millions of people suffer extreme deprivation from social or natural causes. Any adequate moral theory should be sensitive to these unfortunate facts. It seems obvious that the best or most appropriate actions, rules, and institutions in this nonideal world are different from what they would be in an ideal one. I briefly delineate some problems that ethics and political philosophy face when dealing with imperfect moral agents and institutions.