Description
Book SynopsisJ. B. Schneewind presents a selection of his published essays on ethics, the history of ethics and moral psychology, together with a new piece offering an intellectual autobiography. The volume ranges across the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries: it includes Schneewind''s early anti-foundationalist ''Moral Knowledge and Moral Principles'', the classic ''The Misfortunes of Virtue'', and other early essays on Kant''s relation to pre-Kantian moral philosophy; also a long piece on ''The Active Powers'', and Schneewind''s own interpretation of Kant''s moral philosophy. These writings provide excellent introductions to Schneewind''s two long books, and supplement them in important ways.
Trade ReviewThis is a fine collection of essays by one of our profession's most influential and learned historians of ethics. It is an important resource for those researching and teaching moral philosophy and its history. * Anthony Skelton, Mind *
His two long books and his essays are unrivalled in their combination of narrative skill, historical learning, and philosophical intelligence. Both the philosopher and the intellectual historian can learn from these books and essays. * T. H. Irwin, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *
Table of ContentsPART I: THEORY ; 1. Moral Knowledge and Moral Principles ; PART II: VICTORIAN MATTERS ; 2. First Principles and Common Sense Morality in Sidgwick's Ethics ; 3. Moral Problem and Moral Philosophy in the Victorian Period ; PART III: ON THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY ; 4. Moral Crisis and the History of Ethics ; 5. Modern Moral Philosophy: From Beginning to End? ; 6. No Discipline, No History: The Case of Moral Philosophy ; 7. Teaching the History of Moral Philosophy ; PART IV: SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MORAL PHILOSOPHY ; 8. The Divine Corporation and the History of Ethics ; 9. Natural Law ; 10. The Misfortune of Virtue ; 11. Voluntarism and the Foundations of Ethics ; 12. Hume and the Religious Significance of Moral Rationalism ; PART V: ON KANT ; 13. Why Study Kant's Groundwork? ; 14. Autonomy, Obligation and Virtue ; 15. Kant and Stoic Ethics ; 16. Towards Enlightenment ; 17. Kant on Unsocial Sociability ; PART VI: MORAL PSYCHOLOGY ; 18. The Active Powers ; PART VII: AFTERWORD ; 19. Sixty Years of Philosophy in a Life ; J. B. Schneewind: Bibliography
