Originally published in 1988, this landmark study develops its own positive account of the nature and foundations of moral judgement, while at the same time serving as a guide to the range of views on the matter which have been given in modern western philosophy. The book addresses itself to two main questions: Can moral judgements be true or false in that fundamental sense in which a true proposition is one which describes things as they really are? Are rational methods available in ethics which can be expected to produce convergence on shared moral views on the part of those who use them intelligently?

A systematic analysis considers the objectivity of ethics, the relationship between the moral point of view and a scientific or naturalist worldview and its role in a person's rational lifespan.

Examines how practical reasoning can be put into the service of ethical and moral theory.

Just when we need them the most, our ethical resources seem least clear and reliable. Hence our search for foundations of ethics. Our intent in this volume has not been to solve any specific moral problem, but to explore basic issues: the prospects for a rational ethic; the relation between ethics and a religious mythos; the challenge of non-Western ethical values; problems raised by the practice of confession, the evaluation of privacy, the ubiquity of science, and more. We obviously have not explored all the foundation issues. We cannot even claim that the ones we have explored are always the most significant. We do claim, however, that these explorations give a vivid picture of our ethical dilemma, and present some of the best thinking currently being done. --from the Introduction

Rectifying misrepresentations of Popperian thought with a historical approach to Popper’s philosophy, Gattei reconstructs the logic of Popper’s development to show how one problem and its tentative solution led to a new problem.

Shaun Nichols' theory is that emotions play a critical role in both the psychological and the cultural underpinnings of basic moral judgement, in that the norms prohibiting the harming of others are fundamentally associated with our emotional responses to those harms.

When do governments merit our allegiance, and when should they be denied it? Ian Shapiro explores this most enduring of political dilemmas in this innovative and engaging book. Building on his highly popular Yale courses, Professor Shapiro evaluates the main contending accounts of the sources of political legitimacy. Starting with theorists of the Enlightenment, he examines the arguments put forward by utilitarians, Marxists, and theorists of the social contract. Next he turns to the anti-Enlightenment tradition that stretches from Edmund Burke to contemporary post-modernists. In the last part of the book Shapiro examines partisans and critics of democracy from Plato’s time until our own. He concludes with an assessment of democracy’s strengths and limitations as the font of political legitimacy. The book offers a lucid and accessible introduction to urgent ongoing conversations about the sources of political allegiance.