Value, Welfare, and Morality

by Edited by R. G. Frey , Christopher W. Morris

• ISBN13: 9780521416962
• ISBN10: 0521416965
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1994-08-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book addresses critical issues in normative ethical theory. Every such theory must contain not only a theory of motivation but also a theory of value, and the link that is often forged between what is valuable and what would be right is human welfare or well-being. This topic is a subject of considerable controversy in contemporary ethics, not least because of the current reconsideration of utilitarianism. Indeed, there is as much disagreement about the nature of value and its relationship to welfare and morality, as there is about the substantive content of normative ethical theories. The essays in this collection, all written by a distinguished team of moral philosophers, provide an overview, analysis and an attempted resolution of those controversies. They constitute a rigorous account of the relationships among value, welfare and morality.

Table of Contents

List of contributors

Preface

Value, welfare and morality

The land of lost content

Putting rationality in its place

Can a Humean be moderate?

Welfare, preference and rationality

Preference

Reason and needs

Desired desires

On the winding road from good to right

Value, reasons and the sense of justice

Agent-relativity of value, deontic restraints and self-ownership

Agent-relativity - the very idea

The separateness of persons, distributive norms and moral theory

Harmful goods, harmless bads

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