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Can we reconcile the idea that we are free and responsible agents with the idea that what we do is determined according to natural laws? For centuries, philosophers have tried in different ways to show that we can. Hilary Bok takes a fresh approach here, as she seeks to show that the two ideas are compatible by drawing on the distinction between practical and theoretical reasoning. Bok argues that when we engage in practical reasoning--the kind that involves asking \"what should I do?\" and sifting through alternatives to find the most justifiable course of action--we have reason to hold ourselves responsible for what we do. But when we engage in theoretical reasoning--searching for causal explanations of events--we have no reason to apply concepts like freedom and responsibility. Bok contends that libertarians' arguments against \"compatibilist\" justifications of moral responsibility fail because they describe human actions only from the standpoint of theoretical reasoning. To establish this claim, she examines which conceptions of freedom of the will and moral responsibility are relevant to practical reasoning and shows that these conceptions are not vulnerable to many objections that libertarians have directed against compatibilists. Bok concludes that the truth or falsity of the claim that we are free and responsible agents in the sense those conceptions spell out is ultimately independent of deterministic accounts of the causes of human actions. Clearly written and powerfully argued, Freedom and Responsibility is a major addition to current debate about some of philosophy's oldest and deepest questions.

In this collection of essays, the author provides a compelling new framework for thinking about the moral obligations that private actors in a market economy have toward each other and to society. In a sharp break with traditional approaches to business ethics, the author argues that the basic principles of corporate social responsibility are already implicit in the institutional norms that structure both marketplace competition and the modern business corporation. In four new and nine previously published essays, the author articulates the foundations of a “market failures” approach to business ethics. Rather than bringing moral concerns to bear upon economic activity as a set of foreign or externally imposed constraints, this approach seeks to articulate a robust conception of business ethics derived solely from the basic normative justification for capitalism. The result is a unified theory of business ethics, corporate law, economic regulation, and the welfare state, which offers a reconstruction of the central normative preoccupations in each area that is consistent across all four domains. Beyond the core theory, the author offers new insights on a wide range of topics in economics and philosophy, from agency theory and risk management to social cooperation and the transaction cost theory of the firm.

The idea of moral progress played a central role in liberal political thought from the Enlightenment through the nineteenth century but is rarely encountered in moral and political philosophical discourse today. One reason for this is that traditional liberal theorists of moral progress, like their conservative detractors, tended to rely on underevidenced assumptions about human psychology and society. For the first time in history, we are developing robust scientific knowledge about human nature, especially through empirical psychological theories of morality and culture that are informed by evolutionary theory. In addition, the social sciences now provide better information about which social arrangements are feasible and sustainable and about how social norms arise, change, and come to shape moral thought and behavior. Accordingly, it is time to revisit the question of moral progress. On the surface, evolutionary accounts of morality paint a pessimistic picture, suggesting that certain types of moral progress are unrealistic or inappropriate for beings like us. In brief, humans are said to be “hard-wired” for rather limited moral capacities. However, such a view overlooks the great plasticity of human morality as evidenced by our history of social and political moral achievements. To account for these changes while giving evolved moral psychology its due, we develop a dynamic, biocultural theory of moral progress that highlights the interaction between adaptive components of moral psychology and the cultural construction of moral norms and beliefs; and we explore how this interaction can advance, impede, and reverse moral progress.

The book presents a novel approach to ethics. It draws on the work of F. H. Bradley and his principal commentator, Richard Wollheim, and is underpinned by naturalistic metaphysical and psychoanalytic perspectives. It proposes an analysis of objectively true moral statements. The first part of the book demarcates the perspective offered from contemporary analytic ethics, and gives an account of the philosophical foundations of the subsequent analysis. The second part discusses the growth of the moral sense in the individual, and identifies three vertices in the moral life: first, the Station of Narcissus, concerning the self-fulfilment of the individual; second, My Station and its Duties, concerning the place of the individual in society; and third, Universal Moral Vision, concerning global moral consciousness. This second part concludes with an analysis of the Good as a supervenient phenomenon. The third part describes various contexts of moral decision-making that arise in life, and discusses a variety of examples of moral dilemmas, including ones drawn from literature and modern controversies. It will be of value to all students and faculty members in philosophy departments, as well as lay readers, with an interest in moral philosophy.

This is the first volume of a major work in moral philosophy, the long-awaited follow-up to Parfit's classic Reasons and Persons, a landmark of 20th-century philosophy. Parfit presents a powerful new treatment of reasons and a critical examination of the most prominent systematic moral theories, leading to his own ground-breaking conclusion.

Many of us are so busy that we might be tempted to think we don't have time to be patient.However, that idea involves a serious underestimation of what patience is and why it matters.In On Patience, Matthew Pianalto revives a richer understanding of what patience is and why it is centrally important in both virtue theory and everyday life.