Reclaiming the History of Ethics: Essays for John Rawls

by Edited by Andrews Reath , Barbara Herman , Christine M. Korsgaard

• ISBN13: 9780521063500
• ISBN10: 0521063507
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-05-29
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The essays in this volume offer an approach to the history of moral and political philosophy that takes its inspiration from John Rawls. All the contributors are philosophers who have studied with Rawls and they offer this collection in his honour. The distinctive feature of this approach is to address substantive normative questions in moral and political philosophy through an analysis of the texts and theories of major figures in the history of the subject: Aristotle, Hobbes, Hume, Rousseau, Kant and Marx. By reconstructing the core of these theories in a way that is informed by contemporary theoretical concerns, the contributors show how the history of the subject is a resource for understanding present and perennial problems in moral and political philosophy. This outstanding collection will be of particular interest to historians of moral and political philosophy, historians of ideas, and political scientists.

Table of Contents

Aristotle on the soul's conflict: towards an understanding of virtue ethics

Coercion, ideology and education in Hobbes's Leviathan

The Hobbesian side of

The natural goodness of humanity

Metaphysics, philosophy: Rousseau on the problem of evil

Within the limits of reason

A cosmopolitan kingdom of ends

Legislating for a realm of ends: the social dimension of autonomy

Kant on the objectivity of moral law

Kantian virtue: priggish or passional?

Taking the law into our own hands: Kant on the right to revolution

Kant on aesthetic and biological purposiveness

Kant on ends and the meaning of life

Community and completion

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