Ethics Done Right: Practical Reasoning as a Foundation for Moral Theory

by Elijah Millgram

• ISBN13: 9780521548267
• ISBN10: 0521548268
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-07-11
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Ethics Done Right examines how practical reasoning can be put into the service of ethical and moral theory. Elijah Millgram shows that the key to thinking about ethics is to understand generally how to make decisions. The papers in this volume support a methodological approach and trace the connections between two kinds of theory in utilitarianism, in Kantian ethics, in virtue ethics, in Hume's moral philosophy, and in moral particularism. Unlike other studies of ethics, Ethics Done Right does not advocate a particular moral theory. Rather, it offers a tool that enables one to decide for oneself.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction: The Method of Practical Reasoning	1	(294)
1 What's the Use of Utility?	33	(23)
2 Mill's Proof of the Principle of Utility	56	(33)
3 Does the Categorical Imperative Give Rise to a Contradiction in the Will?	89	(44)
4 Reasonably Virtuous	133	(35)
5 Murdoch, Practical Reasoning, and Particularism	168	(30)
6 Was Hume a Humean?	198	(20)
7 Hume on "Is" and "Ought"	218	(29)
8 Hume, Political Noncognitivism, and the History of England	247	(26)
9 Incommensurability and Practical Reasoning	273	(22)
10 Commensurability in Perspective	295	(17)
11 Varieties of Practical Reasoning and Varieties of Moral Theory	312	(15)
References	327	(12)
Index	339