In a crisp, original style the author approaches the crucial question of moral theory, the `is--ought' problem via communicative argumentation. Moving to the end of Habermas's conception of the communicative action, he introduces the concept of `radical choice' as the key to the transition from the descriptive to the normative. Phenomenological subjectivity of the intersubjective life-world is being vindicated as the `arch-value' of all derivative values, or the first principle for all normative precepts. With exceptional acumen and mastery of the philosophical argument, the author -- a young native Chinese lately trained in a Western university -- delineates a fascinating route along which the philosophical question of justification raised in the analytic tradition can be answered on the basis of phenomenology. A noteworthy contribution to the interplay between the Anglo--American and Continental schools of philosophy.

Philosophical Papers will interest a very wide range of philosophers and students of the human sciences.

What is a good life? What does it mean to be a good person? Richard White answers these questions by considering aspects of moral goodness through the virtues: courage, temperance, justice, compassion, and wisdom. White explores how moral virtues affect and support social movements such as pacifism, environmentalism, multiculturalism, and animal rights. Drawing on the classics, White includes historical and cross-cultural analysis and examines the lives of Socrates, Buddha, and Gandhi, who lived virtuous lives, to help the reader understand and acquire moral wisdom. Book jacket.

This book explains Kantian morality against an interrelated set of criticisms that constitute the most influential contemporary critique of Kantian morality. It demonstrates that a theory which emphasizes the guidance of impartial moral principles does not threaten a person's feelings of attachment.

Elizabeth Anscombe’s “Modern Moral Philosophy” and “The First Person” have become touchstones of analytic philosophy but their significance remains controversial or misunderstood. James Doyle offers a fresh interpretation of Anscombe’s theses about ethical reasoning and individual identity that reconciles seemingly incompatible points of view.

Ought we conceive of theological ethics as an activity that draws from a community's vision of human goodness and that has implications for the kind of person each of us is to be? Or, can students of the discipline map the ethical implications of what Christians confess about God, themselves, and the world while remaining indifferent to these claims? Habituated by modern moral theories such as consequentialism and deontology, Mark Ryan argues, we too often assume that Christian ethics makes no claim on the character of its students and teachers. It is rather like yet another department store within the shopping mall of ideas and ideologies to which advanced education provides access. By arguing that theological ethics is an activity by nature "political," the author endeavors to show us that to do Christian ethics is to be habituated into ways of talking and seeing that put us on a path toward the good. The author thus affirms the claim that theological ethics is a life-changing practice. But why is it so? This book endeavors to display a philosophical basis for this claim, by articulating the political character of practical reason. Through rigorous conversation with G. E. M. Anscombe, Charles Taylor, Stanley Hauerwas, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Jeffrey Stout, Ryan provides an account of practical reasoning that enables us to rightly conceive theological ethics as a discipline that ought to change our lives.

Beijing International Conference, 1992