Moral Understandings A Feminist Study in Ethics

by Walker, Margaret Urban

• ISBN13: 9780195315394
• ISBN10: 0195315391
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-09-13
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Moral Understandings depends an expressive-collaborative model of morality that challenges common assumptions in philosophical ethics. Morality is best revealed in practice, the socially accepted patterns of assigning and deflecting responsibility. These practices express shared understandings about who we are, what we value, and to whom we are required to account for our actions. Morality is collaborative as we reproduce or shift our moral understandings together in many daily interactions of social life. For this reason, moral practices cannot be separated from other social practices, nor moral identities from social roles and institutions in particular ways of lite. In fact, not everyone has the same power to set or change moral understandings. Differently valued social-moral identities with different responsibilities and privileges are the rule in human societies.

Author Biography

Margaret Urban Walker is Lincoln Professor of Ethics and Professor of Philosophy at Arizona State University. She is author of Moral Contexts and Moral Repair: Reconstructing Moral Relations After Wrongdoing, and editor of Mother Time: Women, Aging and Ethics and Moral Psychology: Feminist Ethics and Social Theory, with Peggy DesAutels.

Table of Contents

The Mise en Scene: Moral Philosophy Now
The Subject of Moral Philosophy, with Postscript 2007	p. 3
Where Do Moral Theories Come From? Henry Sidgwick and Twentieth-century Ethics	p. 35
Clearer Views: An Expressive-Collaborative Model
Authority and Transparency: The Example of Feminist Skepticism	p. 55
Charting Responsibilities: From Established Coordinates to Terra Incognita	p. 83
Self- (and Other) Portraits: Who Are We, and How Do We Know?
Picking Up Pieces: Lives, Stories, and Integrity	p. 109
Career Selves: Plans, Projects, and Plots in "Whole Life Ethics"	p. 137
Made a Slave, Born a Woman: Knowing Others' Places	p. 161
Unnecessary Identities: Representational Practices and Moral Recognition	p. 185
Testing Sight Lines
The Politics of Transparency and the Moral Work of Truth	p. 211
Peripheral Visions, Critical Practice	p. 235
Epilogue: Some Questions about Moral Understandings	p. 259
Notes	p. 269
Bibliography	p. 281
Index	p. 299
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