Philippa Foot has for many years been one of the most distinctive and influential thinkers in moral philosophy. Long dissatisfied with the moral theories of her contemporaries, she has gradually evolved a theory of her own that is radically opposed not only to emotivism and prescriptivism but also to the whole subjectivist, anti-naturalist movement deriving from David Hume. Dissatisfied with both Kantian and utilitarian ethics, she claims to have isolated a special form of evaluation that predicates goodness and defect (...) only to living things considered as such; she finds this form of evaluation in moral judgements. Her vivid discussion covers topics such as practical rationality, erring conscience, and the relation between virtue and happiness, ending with a critique of Nietzsche's immoralism. This long-awaited book exposes a highly original approach to moral philosophy and represents a fundamental break from the assumptions of recent debates. Foot challenges many prominent philosophical arguments and attitudes; but hers is a work full of life and feeling, written for anyone intrigued by the deepest questions about goodness and human. (shrink)

One of the reasons why most of us feel puzzled about the problem of abortion is that we want, and do not want, to allow to the unborn child the rights that belong to adults and children. When we think of a baby about to be born it seems absurd to think that the next few minutes or even hours could make so radical a difference to its status; yet as we go back in the life of the fetus we (...) are more and more reluctant to say that this is a human being and must be treated as such. No doubt this is the deepest source of our dilemma, but it is not the only one. For we are also confused about the general question of what we may and may not do where the interests of human beings conflict. We have strong intuitions about certain cases; saying, for instance, that it is all right to raise the level of education in our country, though statistics allow us to predict that a rise in the suicide rate will follow, while it is not all right to kill the feeble-minded to aid cancer research. It is not easy, however, to see the principles involved, and one way of throwing light on the abortion issue will be by setting up parallels involving adults or children once born. So we will be able to isolate the “equal rights” issue and should be able to make some advance... (shrink)

Moral Dilemmas is the second volume of collected essays by the eminent moral philosopher Philippa Foot, gathering the best of her work from the late 1970s to the 1990s. It fills the gap between her famous 1978 collection Virtues and Vices and her acclaimed monograph Natural Goodness, published in 2001. In this new collection Professor Foot develops further her critique of the dominant ethical theories of the last fifty years, and discusses such topics as the nature of moral judgement, (...) practical rationality, and the conflict of virtue with desire and self-interest. Moral Dilemmas, alongside her other two books, completes the summation of her distinctive and lasting contribution to twentieth-century moral philosophy. (shrink)

Philippa Lang - Medicine and Philosophy in Classical Antiquity: Doctors and Philosophers on Nature, Soul, Health and Disease - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.1 151-152 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Philippa Lang Emory University Philip van der Eijk. Medicine and Philosophy in Classical Antiquity: Doctors and Philosophers on Nature, Soul, Health and Disease. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xiv + 404. Cloth, $95.00. This immaculately (...) edited volume usefully collects ten significant articles by van der Eijk, together with one chapter based on other previously published material. They appear here slightly revised,.. (shrink)

'Foot stands out among contemporary ethical theorists because of her conviction that virtues and vices are more central ethical notions than rights, duties, justice, or consequences - the primary focus of most other contemporary theorists. This volume brings together a dozen essays published between 1957 and 1977, and includes two new ones as well. In the first, Foot argues explicitly for an ethic of virtue, and in the next five discusses abortion, euthanasia, free will/determination, and the ethics of Hume and (...) Nietzsche. The final eight essays chart her growing disenchantment with emotivism and prescriptivism and their account of moral arguments. All the essays embody to some extent her commitment to an ethics of virtue... Foot's style is straightforward and readable, her arguments subtle, ingenious, and some of them important.' Choice. (shrink)

This article addresses the unique role performed by social foundations programs in colleges of education and in addressing broader issues facing education today, which fundamentally include the development of interpretive, normative, and critical perspectives in academia. All three perspectives serve to create a scholarly framework within which students and academicians interpret and normatively reflect upon existing educational, political, historical, religious, economic, and social institutions critically. In other words, although many departments in colleges of education tend to fulfill the functional, professional, (...) and institutional requirements essential in preparing future teachers to enter public and private schools, social foundations programs utilize interdisciplinary expertise, primarily from the social sciences and humanities, to explicate extrainstitutional critiques, interpretations, and normative analyses of existing social structures, including schools. Although social foundations programs perform a variety of academic functions, it is this unique reflexive and normatively critical capacity?what critical theorists refer to as ideology critique?that augments social foundations programs and informs present and future scholars in the field. (shrink)

Kantian moral concepts concerning respect for human dignity have played a central role in articulating ethical guidelines for medical practice and research, and for articulating some central positions within bioethical debates more generally. The most common of these Kantian moral concepts is the obligation to respect the dignity of patients and of human research subjects as autonomous, self-determining individuals. This article describes Kant’s conceptual distinction between dignity and autonomy as values, and draws on the work of several contemporary Kantian philosophers (...) who employ the distinction to make sense of some common moral intuitions, feelings, and norms. Drawing on this work, the article argues that the conceptual distinction between dignity and autonomy as values is indispensable in the context of considering our obligations to those who are dependent and vulnerable. (shrink)

By illuminating the striking affinity between the most innovative aspects of postmodern thought and religious mystical discourse, Shadow of Spirit challenges the long established assumption that western thought is committed to nihilism. This collection of essays by internationally recognized scholars explores the implications of the fascination with the "sacred," "divine" or "infinite" which characterizes much contemporary thought. It shows how these concerns have surfaced in the work of Derrida, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Kristeva, Irigaray and others. Examining the connection between this postmodern (...) "turn" and the current search for a new discourse of ethics and politics, it also stresses the contribution made by feminist thought to this unexpected intellectual direction. (shrink)

The radical Democratic-Republican Societies that emerged during the 1790s not only challenged conventional interpretations of the civic republican tradition, they also adopted Enlightenment principles in their advocacy for universal public education. Brian W. Dotts’ The Political Education of Democratus: Negotiating Civic Virtue during the Early Republic shows that, unlike mainstream educational philosophy of the period, radical democrats supported universal political education as essential in protecting liberty and political equality.

Moral Dilemmas is the second volume of collected essays by the eminent moral philosopher Philippa Foot, gathering the best of her work from the late 1970s to the 1990s. It fills the gap between her famous 1978 collection Virtues and Vices and her acclaimed monograph Natural Goodness, published in 2001. In this new collection Professor Foot develops further her critique of the dominant ethical theories of the last fifty years, and discusses such topics as the nature of moral judgement, (...) practical rationality, and the conflict of virtue with desire and self-interest. Moral Dilemmas, alongside her other two books, completes the summation of her distinctive and lasting contribution to twentieth-century moral philosophy. (shrink)

Philippa Foot; V—Moral Beliefs, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 59, Issue 1, 1 June 1959, Pages 83–104, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/59.

In this book Philippa Hoskin offers an account of the pastoral theory and practice of Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln 1235-1253, within his diocese. Grosseteste has been considered as an eminent medieval philosopher and theologian, and as a bishop focused on pastoral care, but there has been no attempt to consider how his scholarship influenced his pastoral practice. Making use of Grosseteste's own writings - philosophical and theological as well as pastoral and administrative - Hoskin demonstrates how Grosseteste's famous (...) interventions in his diocese grew from his own theory of personal obligation in pastoral care as well as how his personal involvement in his diocese could threaten well-developed clerical and lay networks. (shrink)

I have asked that this article should be reprinted in the volume dedicated to Elizabeth Anscombe because it in particular reflects throughout my great indebtedness to her. I remember, as long ago as the late 1940s confidently referring to ‘the difference between descriptive and evaluative reasoning’ in one of the many discussions that we began to have from that time on. She, genuinely puzzled, simply asked, ‘What do you mean?’.

Of unparalleled importance in John Dewey’s democratic philosophy is his focus on the process of change, or the “continuous reconstruction of experience.”1 But how is change to take place and under what circumstances does it best occur? What are the ramifications of Dewey’s theory of change and reconstruction on representative government and political rule? Is change expected to occur pragmatically as a planned process, or is change understood as inchoate phenomena occurring sporadically in Dewey’s philosophy? Who determines change and the (...) degree to which it shall take place? Why does Dewey prioritize democratic communication over other forms of communication?Dewey clearly connects his philosophy of change and... (shrink)

There is ongoing contestation around greenhouse gas emissions from ruminant livestock and how society should respond. Media discourses play a key role in agenda setting for the general public and policymakers, and may contribute to polarisation. This paper examines how UK news media portrayed ruminant livestock’s impact on climate change between 2016 and 2021. The analysis addresses a gap in the literature by comparing discourses in national and farming sector newspapers using a qualitative approach. Four national and two farming sector (...) news outlets were searched for articles published between 2016 and 2021. A corpus of 996 relevant articles was assembled, from which 154 were selected for in-depth examination using Critical Discourse Analysis. Four ‘Critical Discourse Moments’ (CDMs), each signifying a discursive shift in the debate, were identified over the 6-year studied period: 1) Low salience, diverging discourses, 2) We must eat far less meat, 3) Fighting the anti-meat agenda, and 4) Policy (in)action at COP26. There was a large increase in the number of published articles from January 2019 onward, partly associated with publication of the EAT/Lancet Commission report. CDM 2 (We must eat far less meat) occurred mainly in the national media, while CDM 3 (Fighting the anti-meat agenda) occurred mainly in the farming media. Our findings reveal both opinion polarisation and intergroup polarisation between national and farming sector media, and low engagement with food system power imbalances. Addressing polarisation will be important to enhance capacity for collective decision-making regarding methane emissions from ruminant livestock. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive look at the philosophy and history of education, going beyond traditional educational foundations books.

In what Arjun Appadurai has dubbed the ‘colonial imaginary’ issues of femininity, and who possessed it, were of prime importance. An orientalizing sociology sought to distinguish, and indeed to fix, differences between metropolitan and indigenous women as a rhetoric of hierarchy which secured proper and western femininity to white women. One critical route which colonial commentators and authorities took to produce that knowledge was to measure women's proximity to the practice of prostitution, a means which permitted discussion and judgement of (...) racialized sexualities as well as of proper models of feminine behaviour. This article will explore the ways in which the new sociology of the Victorian period, wielded in a colonial context, served to separate women through race-based ideas of sexual behaviour and sexual order. It will deal with British India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (shrink)

Personalisation is the new mantra in social care; this article focuses on how personalisation can be achieved in practice, by presenting an analysis of data from people with learning disabilities and their personal assistants, where traditional care relationships have often been shown to be disempowering. The focus here is on the ways in which both parties use references to shared knowledge, joint experiences or personal-life information. These strategies can be used for various social goals, and instances are given where shared (...) references are used during non task-related talk. Both parties are seen on occasion to attempt to refer to shared information, and dense layers of inference can result, which move the interaction onto an ordinary, more symmetrical and friendly footing. The article concludes that shared knowledge referencing creates a way to shift between the personal and the professional, to blur the boundaries, and to create a new and more personalised relationship. (shrink)