Showing papers on "Morality published in 2002"

Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

Abstract: Immanuel Kant's "Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals" is one of the most important texts in the history of ethics. In it Kant searches for the supreme principle of morality and argues for a conception of the moral life that has made this work a continuing source of controversy and an object of reinterpretation for over two centuries. This new edition of Kant's work provides a translation that seeks to be faithful to the German original and is fully annotated. There are also four essays by well-known scholars that discuss Kant's views and the philosophical issues raised by his work. J.B. Schneewind defends the continuing interest in Kantian ethics by examining its historical relation both to the ethical thought that preceded it and to its influence on the ethical theories that came after it; Marcia Baron sheds light on Kant's famous views about moral motivation; and Shelly Kagan and Allen W. Wood advocate contrasting interpretations of Kantian ethics and its practical implications.

Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 5th edn.

Abstract: The Principles of Biomedical Ethics by Beauchamp and Childress is a classic in the field of medical ethics. The first edition was published in 1979 and “unleashed” the four principles of respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice on the newly emerging field. These principles were argued to be mid-level principles mediating between high-level moral theory and low-level common morality, and they immediately became very popular in writings about medical ethics. Over the years Beauchamp and Childress have developed this approach and vigorously defended it against the various criticisms that have been raised. The 5th edition of this book is, as all the …

The self-importance of moral identity.

Abstract: Recent theorizing in moral psychology extends rationalist models by calling attention to social and cultural influences (J. Haidt, 2001). Six studies using adolescents, university students, and adults measured the associations among the self-importance of moral identity, moral cognitions, and behavior. The psychometric properties of the measure were assessed through an examination of the underlying factor structure (Study 1) and convergent, nomological, and discriminant validity analyses (Studies 2 and 3). The predictive validity of the instrument was assessed by examinations of the relationships among the self-importance of moral identity, various psychological outcomes, and behavior (Studies 4, 5, and 6). The results are discussed in terms of models of moral behavior, social identity measurement, and the need to consider moral self-conceptions in explaining moral conduct.

Dialectic of enlightenment : philosophical fragments

Abstract: Dialectic of Enlightenment is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. "What we had set out to do," the authors write in the Preface, "was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism." Yet the work goes far beyond a mere critique of contemporary events. Historically remote developments, indeed, the birth of Western history and of subjectivity itself out of the struggle against natural forces, as represented in myths, are connected in a wide arch to the most threatening experiences of the present. The book consists in five chapters, at first glance unconnected, together with a number of shorter notes. The various analyses concern such phenomena as the detachment of science from practical life, formalized morality, the manipulative nature of entertainment culture, and a paranoid behavioral structure, expressed in aggressive anti-Semitism, that marks the limits of enlightenment. The authors perceive a common element in these phenomena, the tendency toward self-destruction of the guiding criteria inherent in enlightenment thought from the beginning. Using historical analyses to elucidate the present, they show, against the background of a prehistory of subjectivity, why the National Socialist terror was not an aberration of modern history but was rooted deeply in the fundamental characteristics of Western civilization. Adorno and Horkheimer see the self-destruction of Western reason as grounded in a historical and fateful dialectic between the domination of external nature and society. They trace enlightenment, which split these spheres apart, back to its mythical roots. Enlightenment and myth, therefore, are not irreconcilable opposites, but dialectically mediated qualities of both real and intellectual life. "Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology." This paradox is the fundamental thesis of the book. This new translation, based on the text in the complete edition of the works of Max Horkheimer, contains textual variants, commentary upon them, and an editorial discussion of the position of this work in the development of Critical Theory.

Selective Moral Disengagement in the Exercise of Moral Agency

Abstract: Moral agency has dual aspects manifested in both the power to refrain from behaving inhumanely and the proactive power to behave humanely. Moral agency is embedded in a broader socio-cognitive self-theory encompassing affective self-regulatory mechanisms rooted in personal standards linked to self-sanctions. Moral functioning is thus governed by self-reactive selfhood rather than by dispassionate abstract reasoning. The self-regulatory mechanisms governing moral conduct do not come into play unless they are activated and there are many psychosocial mechanisms by which moral self-sanctions are selectively disengaged from inhumane conduct. The moral disengagement may centre on the cognitive restructuring of inhumane conduct into a benign or worthy one by moral justification, sanitising language and exonerative social comparison; disavowal of personal agency in the harm one causes by diffusion or displacement of responsibility; disregarding or minimising the injurious effects of one's actions; and attributio...

The dignity of working men : morality and the boundaries of race, class, and immigration

Abstract: Introduction: Making Sense of Their Worlds The Questions The People The Research I. American Workers 1. The World in Moral Order "Disciplined Selves": Survival, Work Ethic, and Responsibility Providing for and Protecting the Family Straightforwardness and Personal Integrity Salvation from Pollution: Religion and Traditional Morality Caring Selves: Black Conceptions of Solidarity and Altruism The Policing of Moral Boundaries 2. Euphemized Racism: Moral qua Racial Boundaries How Morality Defines Racism Whites on Blacks Blacks on Whites Immigration The Policing of Racial Boundaries 3. Assessing"People Above" and"People Below" Morality and Class Relations "People Above" "People Below" The Policing of Class Boundaries II. The United States Compared 4. Workers Compared Profile of French Workers Profile of North African Immigrants Working Class Morality The Policing of Moral Boundaries Compared 5. Racism Compared French Workers on Muslims French Workers' Antiracism: Egalitarianism and Solidarity North African Responses The Policing of Racial Boundaries Compared 6. Class Boundaries Compared Class Boundaries in a Dying Class Struggle Workers on"People Above" Solidarity a la francaise: Against"Exclusion" The Policing of Class Boundaries Compared Conclusion: Toward a New Agenda Appendix A: Methods and Analysis Appendix B: The Context of the Interview: Economic Insecurity, Globalization, and Places Appendix C: Interviewees Notes References Index

Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior

Abstract: Preface: a renaissance of virtue 1. Joining the hunt 2. Character and consistency 3. Moral character, moral behavior 4. The fragmentation of character 5. Judging character 6. From psychology to ethics 7. Situation and responsibility 8. Is there anything to be ashamed of?

Freedom Is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements

Abstract: "Freedom Is an Endless Meeting" offers vivid portraits of American experiments in participatory democracy throughout the twentieth century. Drawing on meticulous research and more than one hundred interviews with activists, Francesca Polletta challenges the conventional wisdom that participatory democracy is worthy in purpose but unworkable in practice. Instead, she shows that social movements have often used bottom-up decision making as a powerful tool for political change. Polletta traces the history of democracy in early labor struggles and pre-World War II pacifism, in the civil rights, new left, and women's liberation movements of the sixties and seventies, and in today's faith-based organizing and anti-corporate globalization campaigns. In the process, she uncovers neglected sources of democratic inspiration-Depression-era labor educators and Mississippi voting registration workers, among them-as well as practical strategies of social protest. But "Freedom Is an Endless Meeting" also highlights the obstacles that arise when activists model their democracies after familiar nonpolitical relationships such as friendship, tutelage, and religious fellowship. Doing so has brought into their deliberations the trust, respect, and caring typical of those relationships. But it has also fostered values that run counter to democracy, such as exclusivity and an aversion to rules, and these have been the fault lines around which participatory democracies have often splintered. Indeed, Polletta attributes the fragility of the form less to its basic inefficiency or inequity than to the gaps between activists' democratic commitments and the cultural models on which they have depended to enact those commitments. The challenge, she concludes, is to forge new kinds of democratic relationships, ones that balance trust with accountability, respect with openness to disagreement, and caring with inclusiveness. For anyone concerned about the prospects for democracy in America, "Freedom Is an Endless Meeting" will offer abundant historical, theoretical, and practical insights. "This is an excellent study of activist politics in the United States over the past century. . . . Assiduously researched, impressively informed by a great number of thoughtful interviews with key members of American social movements, and deeply engaged with its subject matter, the book is likely to become a key text in the study of grass-roots democracy in America."-Kate Fullbrook, "Times Literary Supplement" "Polletta's portrayal challenges the common assumption that morality and strategy are incompatible, that those who aim at winning must compromise principle while those who insist on morality are destined to be ineffective. . . . Rather than dwell on trying to explain the decline of 60s movements, Polletta shows how participatory democracy has become the guiding framework for many of today's activists."-Richard Flacks, "Los Angeles Times Book Review" "In Freedom Is an Endless Meeting, Francesca Polletta has produced a remarkable work of historical sociology. . . . She provides the fullest theoretical work of historical sociology. . . . She provides the fullest theoretical picture of participatory democracy, rich with nuance, ambiguity, and irony, that this reviewer has yet seen. . . . This wise book should be studied closely by both academics and by social change activists."-Stewart Burns, "Journal of American History"

Morality and Technology

Abstract: Technology is always limited to the realm of means, while morality is supposed to deal with ends. In this theoretical article about comparing those two regimes of enunciation, it is argued that tec...

Visions of Politics

Abstract: Volume I: General Introduction Acknowledgments Notes on the text 1. Introduction: seeing things their way 2. The practice of history and the cult of the fact 3. Interpretation, rationality and truth 4. Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas 5. Motives, intentions and interpretation 6. Interpretation and the understanding of speech acts 7. 'Social meaning' and the explanation of social action 8. Moral principles and social change 9. The idea of a cultural lexicon 10. Retrospect: Studying rhetoric and conceptual change. Volume II. 1. Introduction 2. The rediscovery of republican values 3. Ambrogio Lorenzetti and the portrayal of virtuous government 4. Ambrogio Lorenzetti on the power and glory of republics 5. Republican virtues in an age of princes 6. Machiavelli on virtu and the maintenance of liberty 7. The idea of negative liberty: Machiavelli and modern perspectives 8. Thomas More's Utopia and the virtue of true nobility 9. Was there a Calvinist theory of revolution? 10. Moral ambiguity and the renaissance art of eloquence 11. John Milton and the politics of slavery 12. Classical liberty, Renaissance translation and the English civil war 13. From the state of princes to the modern state 14. Augustan party politics and Renaissance constitutional thought. Volume III: 1. Introduction: Hobbes's career in philosophy 2. Hobbes and the studia humanitatis 3. Hobbes's changing conception of a civil science 4. Hobbes on rhetoric and the construction of morality 5. Hobbes and the purely artificial person of the state 6. Hobbes on the proper signification of liberty 7. Hobbes and the classical theory of laughter 8. History and ideology in the English revolution 9. The context of Hobbes's theory of political obligation 10. Conquest and consent: Hobbes and the engagement controversy 11. Hobbes and his disciples in France and England 12. Hobbes and the politics of the early Royal Society 13. Hobbes's last word on politics.

Political Legitimacy and Democracy

Abstract: The term ‘political legitimacy’ is unfortunately ambiguous. One serious source of confusion is the failure to distinguish clearly between political legitimacy and political authority and to conflate political authority with authoritativeness. I will distinguish between (1) political legitimacy, (2) political authority, and (3) authoritativeness. I will also articulate two importantly different variants of the notion of political authority. Having drawn these distinctions, I will argue first that political legitimacy, rather than political authority, is the more central notion for a theory of the morality of political power. My second main conclusion will be that where democratic authorization of the exercise of political power is possible, only a democratic government can be legitimate. Another ambiguity is also a source of confusion. Sometimes it is unclear whether ‘legitimacy’ is being used in a descriptive or a normative sense. In this article I am concerned exclusively with legitimacy in the normative sense, not with the conditions under which an entity is believed to be legitimate. However, a normative account of legitimacy is essential for a descriptive account. Unless one distinguishes carefully between political legitimacy, political authority, and authoritativeness, one will not be clear about what beliefs in legitimacy are beliefs about.

Moral Rationalization and the Integration of Situational Factors and Psychological Processes in Immoral Behavior

Abstract: Moral rationalization is an individual’s ability to reinterpret his or her immoral actions as, in fact, moral. It arises out of a conflict of motivations and a need to see the self as moral. This article presents a model of evil behavior demonstrating how situational factors that obscure moral relevance can interact with moral rationalization and lead to a violation of moral principles. Concepts such as cognitive dissonance and selfaffirmation are used to explain the processes underlying moral rationalization, and different possible methods of moral rationalization are described. Also, research on moral rationalization and its prevention is reviewed. Religious scholars, philosophers, and laypeople alike have been puzzled for centuries over the problem of evil. When horrendous atrocities such as the Holocaust occur, people scramble for explanations, but they seem to raise more questions than answers. How could a group like the Nazis get away with such extreme immorality? Why did entire societies seem to close their eyes to the evil around them? How can we act to prevent such moral monstrosities in the future? To answer these questions, people often turn

Catholic Schools: Mission, Markets, and Morality

Abstract: This is an excellent book that addresses directly many of the challenges facing Catholic educators and leaders of Catholic educational systems and schools in a number of countries. Grace provides the reader with a framework for understanding many of the contemporary dilemmas of Catholic schooling in the 21st century. Catholic schools are challenged to remain relevant and “on the front foot” in an increasingly demanding secular and market-driven global society. Grace offers Catholic educators and leaders valuable insights from the literature and from his own research on how to meet the challenges and contribute to the common good and “to renew the culture of the sacred in a profane and secular world” (2002, p. 5). Grace is urging Catholic educators and leaders to engage, rather than retreat from, the secular and profane so that they can decide “what aspects of the spirit of the world they can legitimately accommodate to and what aspects they must be clearly against” (p. 22). Grace’s framing of Catholic education and schooling as field and habitus are particularly insightful and help place some of the current tensions in Catholic education in a historical context. A major challenge faced by Catholic schools in a number of countries is to demonstrate that they remain distinctive in terms of the cultural messages they carry. Grace poses a core question that is at the heart of this tension:

Morality and Strategy in Stakeholder identification

Abstract: Definitions of what it is to be a stakeholder are divided into "claimant" definitions requiring some sort of claim on the services of a business, "influencer" definitions requiring only a capacity to influence the workings of the business, and "combinatory" definitions allowing for either or both of these requirements. It is argued that for the purposes of business ethics, stakeholding has to be about improving the moral conduct of businesses by directing them at serving more than just the interests of owners. On that basis, influencer definitions are eliminated on the grounds that they only concern morally neutral strategic considerations and combinatory definitions on the grounds that the combining of ethical and strategic considerations they promise can be less confusingly achieved through an exclusively claimant definition. It is concluded that for the purposes of business ethics, stakeholders are claimants towards whom businesses owe perfect or imperfect moral duties beyond those generally owed to people at large.

Moral Judgment and Crime Drama: An Integrated Theory of Enjoyment

Abstract: The article proposes a theoretical framework in which moral reasoning about mediated crime and punishment is defined and combined with existing, affect-driven entertainment theory to yield an integrated theory of enjoyment. The authors analyze how crime dramas serve as statements about justice and then address how moral deliberation about the propriety of those statements impacts enjoyment. The authors report research findings to support the analysis of cognitive processing during crime dramas distinct from affective processing. The article also suggests future means by which the integrated theory of enjoyment can be examined.

Understanding Judgments of Fairness in a Real-World Political Context: A Test of the Value Protection Model of Justice Reasoning

Abstract: Current theories of justice emphasize social identity reasons for why people care about justice to the relative neglect of personal identity concerns, that is, people’s need to express, defend, and live up to personal moral standards. The authors present a value protection model that predicts that self-expressive moral positions or stands (“moral mandates”) are important determinants of how people reason about fairness. Hypotheses were tested and supported in the context of a natural experiment: reactions of a national random sample of adults to the Elian Gonzalez case pre-raid, post-raid, and then post-resolution of the case. Models that included strength of moral mandates, but not pre-raid judgments of procedural fairness, best predicted reactions to the raid and post-resolution judgments of both procedural and outcome fairness and were associated with expressions of moral outrage and attempts to morally cleanse.

Moral hypocrisy: addressing some alternatives.

Abstract: Two studies addressed alternative explanations for 3 pieces of evidence supporting the existence of moral hypocrisy. In Study 1, no support was found for the idea that low salience of social standards accounts for falsifying the result of a coin flip to assign oneself a more desirable task. In Study 2, no support was found for the idea that responses of those who honestly win the flip account for the higher ratings of morality of their action by participants who assign themselves the more desirable task after flipping the coin. Also, no support was found for the idea that responses of those who honestly win the flip account for the inability of personal moral responsibility measures to predict moral action. Instead, results of both studies provided additional evidence of moral hypocrisy.

Rights as trumps

Abstract: Rights are best understood as trumps over some background justification for political decisions that states a goal for the community as a whole. This paper is to put forward such an analysis and theory of rights, that is, rights as overriding I reasons over utilitarian justifications. To this end, the author refers to two kinds of argument against utilitarian background justification: the pluralistic argument and the argument from the right to moral independence. Dworkin argues that further analysis of the grounds that we have for accepting utilitarianism shows utility must yield to some right of moral independence. Utilitarianism owes its appeal to its egalitarian cast in the sense that in the calculation how best to fulfill most preferences overall, preferences of some people should not be weighed more than that of some other. To fulfill such an aim, utilitarianism is bound to accept the right to moral independence as a trump. In the second part of the paper the author replies to professor Hart's criticisms of his theory. In the preface, analyzing the unifying precedent judgment No. 645 by the Iranian Supreme Court, attempts to indicate the necessity of dealing with theories of rights such as the Dworkin's theory of "rights as trumps".

Responsibility in law and morality

Abstract: Lawyers who write about responsibility tend to focus on criminal law at the expense of civil and public law; while philosophers tend to treat responsibility as a moral concept,and either ignore the law or consider legal responsibility to be a more or less distorted reflection of its moral counterpart. This book aims to counteract both of these biases. By adopting a comparative institutional approach to the relationship between law and morality, it challenges the common view that morality stands to law as critical standard to conventional practice. It shows how law and morality interact symbiotically, and how careful study of legal concepts of responsibility can add significantly to our understanding of responsibility more generally. At the heart of this book lie two questions: what does it mean to say we are responsible? And, what are our responsibilities? Its aim is not to answer these questions but to challenge some traditional approaches to answering them and more importantly, to suggest fruitful alternative approaches that take law seriously.

Societal marketing and morality

Abstract: Societal marketing emerged in the early 1970s, promising a more socially responsible and ethical model for marketing. While the societal marketing concept has attracted its adherents and critics, the literature on societal marketing has remained sketchy and underdeveloped, particularly with respect to its underlying (and largely implicit) moral agenda. By making the moral basis of societal marketing more explicit, this article primarily seeks to offer a moral critique of the societal marketing concept. By situating discussion within notions of psychological and ethical egoism, argues that, in moral terms at least, the societal marketing concept is clearly an extension of the marketing concept, rather than a fundamental reconstruction of marketing theory. While acknowledging the use of the societal marketing concept in practice, this use is problematized with respect to a number of critical moral issues. In particular, the question of who should and can decide what is in the public’s best interests, and elucidate the moral deficiencies of the rational‐instrumental process upon which marketing decisions are frequently rationalised. Suggests that attention should be refocused away from prescribing what “moral” or “societal” marketing should be, and towards developing an understanding of the structures, meanings and discourses which shape and explain marketing and consumption decision making and sustain its positive and negative impacts on society.

The Moral Dimensions of Teaching: Language, Power, and Culture in Classroom Interaction

Abstract: Cary Buzzelli and Bill Johnson reinvigorate the enduring question: What is the place of morality in the classroom? Departing from notions of a morality that can only be abstract and absolute, these authors ground their investigation in analyses of actual teacher-student interactions. This approach illuminates the ways in which language, power and culture impact "the moral" in teaching. Buzzelli and Johnson's study addresses a wide range of moral issues in various classroom contexts. Its practical and diverse examples make it a valuable resource for teachers and teacher development programs.

Legitimacy and Politics: A Contribution to the Study of Political Right and Political Responsibility

Abstract: The increase in cases of political corruption, the loss of politicians' credibility, the development of social and political forms of pathology (notably the rise of the extreme right along with exclusionist ideologies), and the role of the State have been at the center of political debates. In one way or another, these problems raise the question of the legitimacy of the established powers. The result is that legitimacy, a key notion of political thought in general, has today become a burning issue. Coicaud examines all these issues and proffers insightful answers to questions such as the connections between morality and politics, how rulers acquire or lose the right to govern, and how one can become the advocate of a theory of political justice that, while establishing limits, respects and even ensures the promotion of plurality within societies.

Adam Smith's marketplace of life

Abstract: Adam Smith wrote two books, one about economics and the other about morality. His Wealth of Nations argues for a largely free-market economy, while his Theory of Moral Sentiments argues that human morality develops out of a mutual sympathy that people seek with one another. How do these books go together? How do markets and morality mix? James Otteson's 2002 book provides a comprehensive examination and interpretation of Smith's moral theory and shows how his conception of the nature of morality applies to his understanding of markets, language and other social institutions. Considering Smith's notions of natural sympathy, the impartial spectator, human nature, and human conscience the author also addresses the issue of whether Smith thinks that moral judgments enjoy a transcendent sanction. James Otteson sees Smith's theory of morality as an institution that develops unintentionally but nevertheless in an orderly way according to a market model.

Walking the Tightrope: Ethical Issues for Qualitative Researchers

Abstract: Will C. van den Hoonaard (ed.), Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002, 240 pages.Reviewer: Tom O'NeillBrock UniversityMost of us who research social and cultural life face an institutional ethics review process that many find alien to the ethnographic tradition. Many anthropologists have been stymied by research ethics boards, and those of us who have sat on REBs often feel pressure to justify our methodological ethos in an environment dominated by the quantitative and medical sciences. As well, ethical review of research often seems an exegesis of the Tri-Council Policy Statement on Ethical Conduct rather than a close consideration on the ethical practice of research. There is, quite appropriately, considerable resentment and resistance to institutional ethical review in Canadian universities, and social scientists are coming forward to voice their concerns. Will van den Hoonaard's edited volume, Walking the Tightrope: Ethical Issues for Qualitative Researchers, aptly encompasses the growing dissatisfaction with the Tri-Council policy, and illustrates the how many ethical issues implicit in qualitative methodology were not anticipated by the policy's architects.Walking the Tightrope is a product of the Qualitative Analysis Conferences of 1999 and 2000, and the editor has taken care to arrange the contributions in such an order that they complement and quite often provocatively contradict one another. The shadow of the Tri-Council Policy looms large in most of the chapters, beginning with van den Hoonaard's introduction that broadly sketches the tensions between qualitative research and institutional ethical review. In some of the chapters, the tension becomes unbearable. Some of the authors air specific grievances over unsympathetic treatment by REBs that reveals their own lack of understanding about ethical review while others provide engaging discussions on the theoretical and practical implications of ethical research.In the first chapter, Patrick O'Neill evaluates several recent cases in which participant confidentiality, a corner-stone of the Tri-Council Policy, could not be adequately maintained by researchers because of the legal implications of the data collected. Most infamously was the Ogden case, in which a Simon Fraser University researcher refused to divulge the identity of a participant of a project on assisted suicide to a provincial coroner. In the aftermath of the legal battle (which the researcher won), SFU began to insist that researchers absolutely guarantee confidentiality before ethical approval was granted. Providing such absolute guarantees, based on our ability to accurately predict the effects of the knowledge that we generate, is, however, often impossible. When SFU judged that the potential for legal suspension of participant confidentiality existed, the institutional response was to censor such research. This had enormous consequences for much research in social work and criminology, as well as anthropological investigations in controversial areas. O'Neill, happily, provides a legal remedy for this dilemma, and argues that universities should be compelled to support their own scholars when they are challenged in the courts.A number of the subsequent chapters take aim at the shortcomings of the Tri-Council policy in Canada, and provide a comparative view of the situation in the United States and the United Kingdom. In her chapter, Florence Kellner argues that the Tri-Council Policy as an ethical code does little to promote the particular morality that obligates researchers to protect the welfare of their participants. Patricia and Peter Adler follow with their charge that Institutional Review Boards in the United States are more concerned about liability to the university than the welfare of participants. They describe an "Orwellian atmosphere" in the United States that polices and inhibits research. Melanie Pearce echoes the Adlers with a personal account of how an ethics committee in the United Kingdom insisted on draconian changes to her dissertation research methodology based on the quantitative format preferred by the committee. …

Why Be Moral? A Conceptual Model from Developmental Psychology

Abstract: This paper is concerned with the relationships among moral reasoning, moral motivation, moral action, and moral identity. It explores how major figures in developmental psychology have understood these relationships, with attention to schematic models or conceptual maps. After treating Piaget, Kohlberg, Rest, Colby and Damon, and Blasi, I present a critical synthesis, a conceptual model of how developmental psychology might best answer the question, Why be moral?

The Ethics of Killing

Abstract: This book is an important contribution to moral philosophy. With respect to the interest of its ideas, and the strength of its arguments, the level of quality is consistently high. Readers will struggle to follow the twists and turns of the discussion, not because it is badly presented or unnecessarily complex, but because it is difficult for us to think as deeply into the issues as McMahan himself does. The book uses the method of testing moral views by appealing to our judgments about particular cases. It does not offer a justification for this methodology, but in my view it practises it in the right way. Usually the examples are ones where we do make confident judgments, rather than being as hard to assess as the ideas they are being used to test. Sometimes when this method is employed as soon as one principle has been questioned on the strength of an example the reader is presented with several alternative principles that might be able to account for our judgment, so that we must consider even more examples to decide between the new contending principles. But McMahan's discussions do not leave the reader with an uneasy feeling that no real progress is being made. Also he is not committed to always following our intuitive judgments. About some issues he thinks that we should hold a view even if it seriously conflicts with our intuitions. For example, he reacts in this way to the proposal that infanticide is not a seriously wrong act of killing, at least not if we assess it in terms of the interests and moral claims of the infant whose life is ended. As its title indicates, the book discusses a wide range of issues concerned with killing and death. The main subjects are the badness of death (ch. 2), comparisons between the morality of death and killing in the case of people and in the case of animals (ch. 3), the ethics of abortion (ch. 4), and the ethics of euthanasia (ch. 5 the book does not discuss killing in self-defense or as punishment). The book is not unified by an allegiance to one moral theory, for example maximizing consequentialism or a moderate deontological view. This distinguishes it from much of the literature about these topics.