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Recent years have seen a growth of interest in the great English idealist thinker T. H. Green (1836-82) as philosophers have begun to overturn received opinions of his thought and to rediscover his original and important contributions to ethics, metaphysics, and political philosophy. This collection of essays by leading experts, all but one published here for the first time, introduces and critically examines his ideas both in their context and in their relevance to contemporary debates.

Martin Bunzl considers the prospects for a general and comprehensive account of explanation, given the variety of interests that prompt explanations in science. Bunzl argues that any successful account of explanation must deal with two very different contexts - one static and one dynamic. Traditionally, theories of explanation have been built for the former of these two contexts. That is to say, they are designed to show how it is that a "finished" body of scientific knowledge can be put to expl...

In a short chapter of the Critique of Practical Reason entitled "On the Typic of the Pure Practical Power of Judgment," Kant addresses a crucial problem facing his theory of moral judgment: How can we represent the supersensible moral law so as to apply it to actions in the sensible world? Despite its importance to Kant's project, previous studies of the Typic have been fragmentary, disparate, and contradictory. This book provides a detailed commentary on the Typic, elucidating how it enables mo...

Social Ethics and Governance in Contemporary African Writing is the first book to bring rigorous literary, philosophical, and artistic discourse together to interrogate the ethics of governance and development in postcolonial Africa. It takes literature seriously as a context for philosophical reflection, vividly engaging the human agency, creativity, and resourcefulness of local Nigerians as political and social actors and shedding new light on the dynamics of human flourishing. Drawing on im...

The book deals with a central question for the understanding of reality and the way in which human beings relate to it. Humans are creatures that can deliberate and define their actions by virtue of deliberation. He who deliberates relates himself to elements of reality that speak for or against doing something, and that in some mysterious way require him to act in a certain fashion. This book investigates this normative reality and its ontology. There is no normativity in reality independent fr...

The author argues, as against some very influential contemporary philosophers, that our moral judgements are frequently true. An essential premise in his argument is that God exists, that he has pro and con attitudes towards human behaviour and that these attitudes are constitutive of moral goodness and badness. The author also addresses himself to philosophers who have recently maintained that mainstream academic moral theory is defunct. As against these philosophers, the author defends a novel...

What does it mean to be vulnerable and defiant at the same time? In Deeply Grateful and Entirely Unsatisfied, author and artist Amanda Happe poses this question with disarming honesty and humor. Her colorful marker drawings and quirky hand-lettered sentiments offer an idiosyncratic take on life's challenges, reminding the reader that "you are the sign you've been waiting for." Brimming with compassion, empathy, and a healthy dose of sarcasm, Deeply Grateful and Entirely Unsatisfied is, in Happe'...

This book seeks to elucidate the concept of justice, not so much as it is expressed in law courts (retributive and procedural justice) or in state budgets (distributive justice), but as primary justice - what it means and how it can be grounded in the inalienable rights that each human being possesses qua human being. It draws inspiration from two recent works of philosopher Nicolas Wolterstorff, but also from the groundbreaking Islamic initiative of 2007, the Common Word Letter addressed by 138...

Philosopher John Lachs observes that humans today live lives of comfort but also sees that these comfortable lives come at a cost: our increasing unhappiness. In The Cost of Comfort, Lachs contemplates what humans need in order to live fulfilled lives in today's world. While comfort has not always reached everyone evenly, Lachs acknowledges that most of us who live in the US today reap the benefits of modern life. We live longer, we eat better food, we have access to good medical care, and we ca...

This collection features 26 new essays on character from first-rate scholars in philosophy, psychology, economics, and law. The essays are elegantly written and combine forceful argumentation with original ideas on a wide range of questions, such as: "Is Aristotle's theory of character a moral theory?,""Are character traits in tension with personal autonomy?," "How do traits differ from mental disorders?," "What is the role of gossip in character attribution?," and "Can businessmen be virtuous?"...

This volume is a revised, enlarged, and broadened version of Gert's classic 1970 book, The Moral Rules. Advocating an approach he terms "morality as impartial rationality," Gert here presents a full discussion of his moral theory, adding a wealth of new illuminating detail to his analysis of the concepts--rationality/irrationality, good/evil, and impartiality--by which he defines morality. He constructs a "moral system" that includes rules prohibiting the kinds of actions that cause evil, proced...