Studies in Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy²⁴

Should the democratic exercise of authority that we take for granted in the realm of government be extended to the managerial sphere? Exploring this question, Christopher McMahon develops a theory of government and management as two...

Patrick Riley traces the forgotten roots of Rousseau's concept to seventeenth-century questions about the justice of God. If He wills that all men be saved, does He have a general will that produces universal salvation? And, if He does...

Abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, war, genetic engineering and fetal experimentation, environmental and animal rights--these topics inspire some of today's most heated public controversies. And it is fashionable to pursue these...

Wertheimer attempts to move beyond previous theories of coercion by conducting a fairly extensive survey of the way in which cases involving coercion have been treated by American courts. This impressive project occupies the first half...

Donald VanDeVeer probes the moral complexities of the question: under what conditions is it permissible to intervene invasively in the lives of competent persons--for example, by deception, force, or coercive threat--for their own good?...

The interpreter of Marx's writings faces the task of reconciling, on the one hand, Marx's frequent explicit condemnations and criticisms of morality and, on the other, the obvious way in which his world-view reflects substantive moral...

The concept of needs works to sort out social policies. Yet the idea is in disrepute with many thinkers who, led by economists, accuse it of being too fluid, or too narrow, or of serving no purpose that the concept of preferences does...

This book completes A. John Simmons's exploration and development of Lockean moral and political philosophy, a project begun in The Lockean Theory of Rights (Princeton paperback edition, 1994). Here Simmons discusses the Lockean view of...

Drawing on previously unexplored sources, Kerry H. Whiteside presents the political theory of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), one of France's best-known twentieth-century philosophers. Whiteside argues that Merleau-Ponty's objective...

This inquiry into the nature of political action concerns what the author describes as the most precarious and uncertain of human endeavors." Focusing on specific themes in Machiavelli, Burke, and Tocqueville, Bruce Smith identifies...

This book explores a much-neglected area of moral philosophy--the typology of immorality. Ronald D. Milo questions the adequacy of Aristotle's suggestion that there are two basic types of immorality--wickedness and moral weakness--and...

Aristotle noted that "equality" is the plea not of those who are satisfied but of those who seek change, and the word has long been invoked in the name of social reform. It retains its force because arguments for equality put arguments...

A valuable and unique contribution both to environmental ethics and public policy analysis of the preservation of species question. Norton provides a critical overview of the range of thought on the issue, presents a new and...

Stephen Salkever shows that reading Aristotle is a starting point for discussing contemporary political problems in new ways that avoid the opposition between liberal individualism and republican communitarianism, between the politics...

The threat to the survival of humankind posed by nuclear weapons has been a frightening and essential focus of public debate for the last four decades and must continue to be so if we are to avoid destroying ourselves and the natural...

What rational justification is there for conceiving of all living things as possessing inherent worth? In Respect for Nature, Paul Taylor draws on biology, moral philosophy, and environmental science to defend a biocentric environmental...

"This is a most timely, intelligent, well-written, and absorbing essay on a central and painful social and political problem of our time."—Isaiah Berlin

"The major achievement of this remarkable book is a critical theory of...

John Locke's political theory has been the subject of many detailed treatments by philosophers and political scientists. But The Lockean Theory of Rights is the first systematic, full-length study of Locke's theory of rights and of its...

Scholars in the "Critical Legal Studies" movement have challenged some of the most cherished ideals of modern Western legal and political thought. CLS thinkers claim that the rule of law is a myth and that its defense by liberal...

Reading Nietzsche's works as the "political biography of his soul," Leslie Thiele presents an original and accessible essay on the great thinker's attempt to lead a heroic life as a philosopher, artist, saint, educator, and solitary. He...

The description for this book, Desert, will be forthcoming.

The description for this book, The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformation, will be forthcoming.

Robert Goodin passionately and cogently defends the welfare state from current attacks by the New Right. But he contends that the welfare state finds false friends in those on the Old Left who would justify it as a hesitant first step...

In recent years serious attempts have been made to systematize and develop the moral and political themes of great philosophers of the past. Kant, Locke, Marx, and the classical utilitarians all have their current defenders and arc...