We often think of justice as a virtue that belong to states, societies, and institutions. It has not always been that way. Justice began as something between individual people, and only recently has its application to larger groups become predominant. In Just People, Mark LeBar makes a case for recovering the original priority of justice in and between individual people, as a virtue of character. The model for this virtue comes from Aristotle, whose own notion of the virtue of jus...

A blindfolded woman holding a balance and a sword personifies one of our most significant virtues. We find Lady Justice in statues and paintings that adorn courts and other institutions of law, symbolizing strength and impartiality. Yet why do we valorize this virtue primarily as a quality of societies, and secondly as one of individual character? We can trace the virtue of justice to ancient Greece, where virtue ethics began its long evolution. There justice was seen as one of the most pr...

The philosophical inquiry of responsibility is a major and fast-growing field. It not only features questions around free will and moral agency but also addresses various challenges in thesocial, institutional, and legal contexts in which people are being held responsible.The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Responsibility is an outstanding survey and exploration of these issues. Comprised of forty-one chapters by an international team of contributors, the Handbook is d...

The question of autonomy is fundamental to understanding some of the most important questions and debates in contemporary political and moral life, from freedom of the individual, free will and decision-making to controversies surrounding medical ethics, human rights and the justifications for state intervention. It is also a crucial concept for understanding the development of liberalism.The Routledge Handbook of Autonomy is a comprehensive survey and assessment of the key figures...

A new way of understanding the essence of moral obligationThe Moral Nexus develops and defends a new interpretation of morality—namely, as a set of requirements that connect agents normatively to other persons in a nexus of moral relations. According to this relational interpretation, moral demands are directed to other individuals, who have claims that the agent comply with these demands. Interpersonal morality, so conceived, is the domain of what we owe ...

This title was first published in 2003. This book critically examines the moral and political status of the child by a consideration of three interrelated questions: What rights if any does the child have? What rights over and duties in respect of a child do parents have? What rights over and duties in respect of a child does the state have? David Archard adopts three areas for particular discussion on the practical implications of the general theoretical issues: education, child protectio...

The tendency to reciprocate – to return good for good and evil for evil – is a potent force in human life, and the concept of reciprocity is closely connected to fundamental notions of ‘justice’, ‘obligation’ or ‘duty’, ‘gratitude’ and ‘equality’.In Reciprocity, first published in 1986, Lawrence Becker presents a sustained argument about reciprocity, beginning with the strategy for developing a moral theory of the virtues. He considers the concept of reciprocity in detail,...

Argues that the path to the good life does not consist in working toward some abstract concept of the good, but rather by ameliorating the problems of the practices and institutions that make up our practical life.Grounded in American pragmatism, Pragmatist Ethics proposes a rethinking of ethics. Rather than looking to the good-a concept for which consensus is difficult to achieve-pragmatists instead advocate for tending to the problems of the day. James J...

The first edition of Nel Noddings' Philosophy of Education was acclaimed as the 'best overview in the field' by the journal Teaching Philosophy and predicted to 'become the standard textbook in philosophy of education' by Educational Theory. This classic text, originally designed to give the education student a comprehensive look at philosophical thought in relation to teaching, learning, research, and educational policy, has now been updated to reflect the most current thinking i...

By the time of his death in 2003, Bernard Williams was one of the greatest philosophers of his generation. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy is not only widely acknowledged to be his most important book, but also hailed a contemporary classic of moral philosophy.Presenting a sustained critique of moral theory from Kant onwards, Williams reorients ethical theory towards ‘truth, truthfulness and the meaning of an individual life’. He explores and reflects upon the most dif...

Virtue ethics has emerged from a rich history, in which both Aristotle and Aquinas have played an important role, to become one of the fastest-growing fields in contemporary ethics. In this volume of newly commissioned essays, leading moral philosophers offer a comprehensive overview of virtue ethics. They examine the theoretical structure of virtue ethics and its place in contemporary moral theory and other topics discussed include the history of virtue-based approaches to ethics, what ma...

This volume presents two closely related essays by Thomas Nagel: “Gut Feelings and Moral Knowledge” and “Moral Reality and Moral Progress.” Both essays are concerned with moral epistemology and our means of access to moral truth; both are concerned with moral realism and with the resistance to subjectivist and reductionist accounts of morality; and both are concerned with the historical development of moral knowledge. The second essay also proposes an account of the historical development ...