About the Book
The Development of Ethics is a selective historical and critical study of moral philosophy in the Socratic tradition, with special attention to Aristotelian naturalism, its formation, elaboration, criticism, and defence. This three-volume set discusses the main topics of moral philosophy as they have developed historically, including: the human good, human nature, justice, friendship, and morality; the methods of moral inquiry; the virtues and their
connexions; will, freedom, and responsibility; reason and emotion; relativism, subjectivism, and realism; the theological aspect of morality. Volume 1 examines ancient and medieval philosophy up
to the sixteenth century, beginning with Socrates, the Cyrenaics and Cynics, Plato, and then Aristotle. Terence Irwin compares the Stoic position with the Aristotelian at some length; Epicureans and Sceptics are discussed more briefly. Chapters on early Christianity and on Augustine introduce a fuller examination of Aquinas' revision, elaboration, and defence of Aristotelian naturalism. The volume closes with an account of some criticisms of the Aristotelian outlook by Scotus, Ockham,
Machiavelli, and some sixteenth-century Reformers. Volume 2 examines early modern moral philosophy from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, and explores Suarez's interpretation of Scholastic moral
philosophy, seventeenth- and eighteenth- century responses to the Scholastic outlook, and the treatments of natural law by Grotius, Hobbes, Cumberland, and Pufendorf. Disputes about moral facts, moral judgments, and moral motivation, are traced through Cudworth, Clarke, Balguy, Hutcheson, Hume, Price, and Reid. Butler's defence of a naturalist account of morality is examined and compared with the Aristotelian and Scholastic views discussed in Volume 1. The volume ends with a survey of the
persistence of voluntarism in English moral philosophy, and a brief discussion of the contrasts and connexions between Rousseau and earlier views on natural law. Volume 3 continues the story up to Rawls's
Theory of Justice, and takes the comparison between the Kantian and the Aristotelian outlook as a central theme. The chapters on Kant compare Kant both with his rationalist and empiricist predecessors and with the Aristotelian naturalist tradition. Reactions to Kant are traced through Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard. Utilitarian and idealist approaches to Kantian and Aristotelian views are traced through Sidgwick, Bradley, and Green. Mill and Sidgwick provide a link
between eighteenth-century rationalism and sentimentalism and the twentieth-century debates in the metaphysics and epistemology of morality. These debates are explored in Moore, Ross, Stevenson, Hare, C.I. Lewis,
Heidegger, and in some more recent meta-ethical discussion. This volume concludes with a discussion of Rawls, with special emphasis on a comparison of his position with utilitarianism, intuitionism, Kantianism, naturalism, and idealism. Since these volumes seek to be not only descriptive and exegetical, but also philosophical, they discuss the comparative merits of different views, the difficulties that they raise, and how some of the difficulties might be resolved. Irwin
presents the leading moral philosophers of the past as participants in a rational discussion in which the contemporary reader can participate.
Table of Contents:
Volume 1
From Socrates to the Reformation
Volume 2
From Suarez to Rousseau
Volume 3
From Kant to Rawls
About the Author :
Terence Irwin is Professor of Ancient Philosophy in the University of Oxford, and Fellow of Keble College.
Review :
`For it truly is a great book, and I doubt that we will see a history of ethics similar in scope and ambition for some time to come.'
Mark Eli Kalderon, Ethics
`Review from previous edition A remarkable work of scholarship. Very few philosophers could produce a work of such scale and such erudition. Professor Irwin has studied his chosen authors with minute precision, and has read exhaustively in the secondary literature. Sources are conscientiously recorded and ample quotations provided in footnotes. The treatment of controversial issues is always balanced, and the eventual verdicts are always judicious ... This
book is a monument of erudition and patience, and gives promise of similar virtues in the forthcoming successor volume.
'
Anthony Kenny, Times Literary Supplement
`Para concluir, é preciso enfatizar a erudição, a clareza, a elegância com que os argumentos são apresentados e, sobretudo, a excepcional fecundidade que eles possuem para o debate sobre os destinos da ética como disciplina filosófica. Os estudos acadêmicos em ética e, em geral, em filosofia encontrarão nesta obra uma referência segura e uma fonte importante de
inspiração e direção.'
Marco Zingano, Journal of Ancient Philosophy
`Development ... provides the novice in ethics with a challenging introduction to moral philosophical thinking and the more experienced scholar with a host of bold yet clear positions that invite philosophical consideration and reflection. We can look forward to more of the same in the upcoming volumes that continue and conclude Irwin's extensive project.'
Dimitrios Dentsoras, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
