The point of view of the universe : Sidgwick and contemporary ethics
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Bibliographic Information
The point of view of the universe : Sidgwick and contemporary ethics
Oxford University Press, 2014
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [383]-398) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
What does the idea of taking 'the point of view of the universe' tell us about ethics? The great nineteenth-century utilitarian Henry Sidgwick used this metaphor to present what he took to be a self-evident moral truth: the good of one individual is of no more importance than the good of any other. Ethical judgments, he held, are objective truths that we can know by reason. The ethical axioms he took to be self-evident provide a foundation for utilitarianism. He
supplements this foundation with an argument that nothing except states of consciousness have ultimate value, which led him to hold that pleasure is the only thing that is intrinsically good.
Are these claims defensible? Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer test them against a variety of views held by contemporary writers in ethics, and conclude that they are. This book is therefore a defence of objectivism in ethics, and of hedonistic utilitarianism. The authors also explore, and in most cases support, Sidgwick's views on many other key questions in ethics: how to justify an ethical theory, the significance of an evolutionary explanation of our moral judgments, the choice
between preference-utilitarianism and hedonistic utilitarianism, the conflict between self-interest and universal benevolence, whether something that it would be wrong to do openly can be right if kept secret, how demanding utilitarianism is, whether we should discount the future, or favor those who
are worse off, the moral status of animals, and what is an optimum population.
Table of Contents
- Preface
- A Biographical Prologue
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Reason and Action
- 3. Intuition and the Morality of Common Sense
- 4. Justification in Ethics
- 5. The Axioms of Ethics
- 6. The Profoundest Problem of Ethics
- 7. The Origins of Ethics and the Unity of Practical Reason
- 8. Ultimate Good, Part I: Perfectionism and Desire Based Theory
- 9. Ultimate Good, Part II: Hedonism
- 10. Rules
- 11. Demandingness
- 12. Distribution
- Conclusion
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