This work is an examination of teleological attributions i.e. ascriptions of proper functions and natural ends) to the features and behavior of living things with a view to understanding their application to human life.

Nature and Normativity argues that the problem of the place of norms in nature has been essentially misunderstood when it has been articulated in terms of the relation of human language and thought, on the one hand, and the world described by physics on the other. Rather, if we concentrate on the facts that speaking and thinking are activities of organic agents, then the problem of the place of the normative in nature becomes refocused on three related questions. First, is there a sense in which biological processes and the behavior of organisms can be legitimately subject to normative evaluation? Second, is there some sense in which, in addition to having ordinary causal explanations, organic phenomena can also legitimately be seen to happen because they should happen in that way, in some naturalistically comprehensible sense of 'should', or that organic phenomena happen in order to achieve some result, because that result should occur? And third, is it possible to naturalistically understand how human thought and language can be legitimately seen as the normatively evaluable behavior of a particular species of organism, behavior that occurs in order to satisfy some class of norms? This book develops, articulates, and defends positive answers to each of these questions.

Why read Kant's Critique of Judgment? For most readers, the importance of the work lies in its contributions to aesthetics and, to a lesser extent, the philosophy of biology. Hannah Ginsborg, by contrast, sees the Critique of Judgment as a central contribution to the understanding of human cognition generally. The fourteen essays collected here advance a common interpretive project: that of bringing out the philosophical significance of the notion of judgment which figures in the third Critique and showing its importance both to Kant's own theoretical philosophy and to contemporary views of human thought and cognition. For us to possess the capacity of judgment, on the interpretation defended here, is for our natural perceptual and imaginative responses to involve a claim to their own normativity with respect to the objects which cause them. It is in virtue of this capacity that we are able not merely to respond discriminatively to objects, as animals do, but to bring objects under concepts. The Critique of Judgment, on this reading, rejects the traditional dichotomy between the natural and the normative: our natural psychological responses to the spatio-temporal objects which affect our senses are both causally determined by those objects, and normatively appropriate to them. The essays in this book aim collectively to develop and illuminate this understanding of judgment in its own right, and to use it to address specific interpretive issues in Kant's aesthetics, theory of knowledge, and philosophy of biology; they are also concerned to bring out the relevance of this conception of judgment to contemporary debates regarding concept-acquisition, the content of perception, and skepticism about rules and meaning.

Although he wrote sermons, letters, and commentaries on Holy Scripture, Lombard's Four Books of Sentences (1148-51) established his reputation and subsequent fame, earning him the title of magister senteniarum ("master of the sentences: ). The Sentences, a collection of teachings of the Church Fathers and opinions of medieval masters arranged as a systematic treatise, marked the culmination of a long tradition of theological pedagogy, and until the 16th century it was the official textbook in the universities. Hundreds of scholars wrote commentaries on it, including the celebrated philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas.

What make someone a good human being? Is there an objective answer to this question, an answer that can be given in naturalistic terms? For ages philosophers have attempted to develop some sort of naturalistic ethics. Against ethical naturalism, however, notable philosophers have contended that such projects are impossible, due to the existence of some sort of 'gap' between facts and values. Others have suggested that teleology, upon which many forms of ethical naturalism depend, is an outdated metaphysical concept. This book argues that a good human being is one who has those traits the possession of which enables someone to achieve those ends natural to beings like us. Thus, the answer to the question of what makes a good human being is given in terms both objective and naturalistic. The author shows that neither 'is-ought' gaps, nor objections concerning teleology pose insurmountable problems for naturalistic virtue ethics. This work is a much needed contribution to the ongoing debate about ethical theory and ethical virtue.

Resorting to natural law is one way of conveying the philosophical conviction that moral norms are not merely conventional rules. Accordingly, the notion of natural law has a clear metaphysical dimension, since it involves the recognition that human beings do not conceive themselves as sheer products of society and history. And yet, if natural law is to be considered the fundamental law of practical reason, it must show also some intrinsic relationship to history and positive law. The essays in this book examine this tension between the metaphysical and the practical and how the philosophical elaboration of natural law presents this notion as a "limiting-concept", between metaphysics and ethics, between the mutable and the immutable; between is and ought, and, in connection with the latter, even the tension between politics and eschatology as a double horizon of ethics. This book, contributed to by scholars from Europe and America, is a major contribution to the renewed interest in natural law. It provides the reader with a comprehensive overview of natural law, both from a historical and a systematic point of view. It ranges from the mediaeval synthesis of Aquinas through the early modern elaborations of natural law, up to current discussions on the very possibility and practical relevance of natural law theory for the contemporary mind.

Some of the most fundamental questions which moral philosophers have been grappling with include: What makes us moral beings? Is morality a product of culture or nature or both? Are ethical norms and principles universal and unchanging or are they relative, being rooted in specific socio-political and historical contexts? Can ethical conclusions be derived from descriptive statements? This book addresses these and similar questions through a comparative study between Alasdair MacIntyre’s views and biological ethics. It discusses how both MacIntyre’s views and biological ethics highlight the importance of human biology for human morality. Based on this discussion, the book proposes that both the rational and the biological (including the emotional) dimensions of humans have to be considered in order to understand the complex and multi-layered phenomenon of human morality. As such, it will prove to be a valuable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of moral philosophy, especially those interested in studying the biological approach toward ethics, Thomistic Aristotelian ethics and metaethics.