
Drawing Morals
Essays in Ethical Theory
Thomas Hurka(Author)
Oxford University Press Inc
1st Edition
Published on 11. August 2011
Book
Hardback
288 pages
978-0-19-974309-4 (ISBN)
Description
This volume contains selected essays in moral and political philosophy by Thomas Hurka. The essays address a wide variety of topics, from the well-rounded life and the value of playing games to proportionality in war and the ethics of nationalism. They also share a common aim: to illuminate the surprising richness and subtlety of our everyday moral thought by revealing its underlying structure, which they often do by representing that structure on graphs. More specifically, the essays all give what the first in the volume calls "structural" as against "foundational" analyses of moral views. Eschewing the grander ambition of grounding our ideas about, say, virtue or desert in claims that use different concepts and concern some other, allegedly more fundamental topic, they examine these ideas in their own right and with close attention to their details. As well as illuminating their individual topics, the essays illustrate the insights this structural method can yield.
Reviews / Votes
One should hope and expect that intriguing puzzles emerge from a collection of essays like this. Perhaps the most important moral to be drawn from Drawing Morals is that Hurka's structural method and the insights he explores will continue to engender further philosophizing. * Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Academic philosophers and their students as well as general readers with an interest in moral philosophy.
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
655 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-974309-4 (9780199743094)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
07/2011
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€41.49
Available for download

E-Book
07/2011
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€42.49
Available for download
Person
Thomas Hurka is Jackman Distinguished Professor of Philosophical Studies at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Perfectionism, Principles: Short Essays on Ethics, Virtue, Vice, and Value, and The Best Things in Life, as well as of many articles in moral and political philosophy. For two years he wrote a philosophy column for the Globe and Mail newspaper.
Author
Jackman Distinguished Professor of Philosophical StudiesJackman Distinguished Professor of Philosophical Studies, University of Toronto
Content
Preface ; Acknowledgements ; Introduction ; I. Methodology ; 1 Normative Ethics: Back to the Future ; II. Comparing and Combining Goods ; 2 Value and Population Size ; 3 The Well-Rounded Life ; 4 Monism, Pluralism, and Rational Regret ; 5 How Great a Good is Virtue? ; 6 Two Kinds of Organic Unity ; 7 Asymmetries in Value ; III. Individual Goods ; 8 Why Value Autonomy? ; 9 Desert: Holistic and Individualistic ; 10 Virtuous Act, Virtuous Disposition ; 11 Games and the Good ; IV. Principles of Right ; 12 Rights and Capital Punishment ; 13 Two Kinds of Satisficing ; 14 The Justification of National Partiality ; 15 Proportionality in the Morality of War