Title: Ethics and the discovery of the unconscious
First published: 1997
Description: This book shows why the discovery of the unconscious by Nietzsche and Freud requires a reconception of the concepts of moral agency and responsibility and even of morality itself. It explicates how contemporary psychology has taken over the traditional task of ethics in elucidating a theory of human well-being, but criticizes this psychology for being unable to generate adequate notions of either responsibility or moral agency.

Riker develops a new moral psychology in which the reality of unconscious functioning is included within a theory of responsibility, and the agent's primary ethic concern becomes knowing what her unconscious motivations are and integrating them into a morally and psychologically mature self.
Subjects: Ethics, Moral development, Psychological aspects, Psychological aspects of Social values, Psychology, Social values, Morals, Psychology Unconscious
LC classification: BF47 .R55 1997