Egoism and altruism

By Kraut, Richard

Henry Sidgwick conceived of egoism as an ethical theory parallel to utilitarianism: the utilitarian holds that one should maximize the good of all beings in the universe; the ...

Reasons for action

By Wiland, Eric

There are many reasons for wanting to understand what reasons for action are. Moral philosophers, for instance, consider the question of whether everyone has a reason to comply ...

Hedonism

By Gosling, Justin

Hedonism is the doctrine that pleasure is the good. It was important in ancient discussions, and many positions were taken, from the view that pleasure is to be ...

Moral psychology, empirical work in

By May, Joshua

How do we form our moral judgments, and how do they influence behaviour? What ultimately motivates kind versus malicious action? Moral psychology is the interdisciplinary study of such ...

Moral psychology, empirical work in

How do we form our moral judgments, and how do they influence behaviour? What ultimately motivates kind versus malicious action? Moral psychology is the interdisciplinary study of such ...

Kozlov, Aleksei Aleksandrovich (1831–1901)

By Poole, Randall A.

One of the forerunners of the idealist revival in Russian philosophy at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, Aleksei Kozlov was the founder ...

Moral motivation

By Wallace, R. Jay

Questions about the possibility and nature of moral motivation occupy a central place in the history of ethics. Philosophers disagree, however, about the role that motivational investigations should ...

Moral scepticism

By Nelson, Mark T.

Scepticism in general is the view that we can have little or no knowledge; thus moral scepticism is the view that we can have little or no moral ...

Perfectionism

In philosophy, unlike in everyday English, ‘perfectionism’ does not refer to a concern to get every detail right. It is the name of an ethical theory with deep ...

Perfectionism

By Hurka, Thomas

Perfectionism is a moral theory according to which certain states or activities of human beings, such as knowledge, achievement and artistic creation, are good apart from any pleasure ...

Shaftesbury, Third Earl of (Anthony Ashley Cooper) (1671–1713)

By McNaughton, David

Shaftesbury, whose influence on eighteenth-century thought was enormous, was the last great representative of the Platonic tradition in England. He argued that by natural reason we can see ...

Supererogation

By Trianosky, Gregory Velazco Y

Supererogatory actions are usually characterized as ‘actions above and beyond the call of duty’. Historically, Catholic thinkers defended the doctrine of supererogation by distinguishing what God commands from ...

Utilitarianism

By Chappell, Tim; Crisp, Roger

Utilitarianism is a theory about rightness, according to which the only good thing is welfare (wellbeing or ‘utility’). Welfare should, in some way, be maximized, and agents are ...

Consequentialism

By McNaughton, David; Rawling, Piers

Consequentialism assesses the rightness or wrongness of actions in terms of the value of their consequences. The most popular version is act-consequentialism, which states that, of all the ...

Sexuality, philosophy of

By Soble, Alan

The philosophy of sexuality, like the philosophy of science, art or law, is the study of the concepts and propositions surrounding its central protagonist, in this case ‘sex’. ...

Business ethics

By Sorell, Tom

Business ethics is the application of theories of right and wrong to activity within and between commercial enterprises, and between commercial enterprises and their broader environment. It is ...

Business ethics

Business ethics is the application of ethical theories to activity within and between commercial enterprises, and between commercial enterprises and their broader environment. It is a wide range ...

Campbell, Archibald (1691–1756)

By Maurer, Christian

Archibald Campbell was a Scottish moral philosopher and theologian. Like his more famous contemporary Francis Hutcheson, Campbell studied with the controversial theologian John Simson in Glasgow. In his ...

Hutcheson, Francis (1694–1746)

By Maurer, Christian

Francis Hutcheson was an Irish–Scottish moral philosopher. He is best known for his epistemological claim that a disinterested moral sense is the source of our ideas of moral ...

Mill, John Stuart (1806–73)

By Skorupski, John

John Stuart Mill, Britain’s major philosopher of the nineteenth century, gave formulations of his country’s empiricist and liberal traditions of comparable importance to those of John Locke. He ...

Mill, John Stuart (1806–73)

John Stuart Mill, Britain’s major philosopher of the nineteenth century, gave formulations of his country’s empiricist and liberal traditions of comparable importance to those of John Locke. He ...

Moral psychology

By Slote, Michael

Moral psychology as a discipline is centrally concerned with psychological issues that arise in connection with the moral evaluation of actions. It deals with the psychological presuppositions of ...

Native American philosophy

By Whiteley, Peter M.

Native American philosophies are multiple and multiply different, though with some palpable commonalities. Cosmologically, Native American thought posits phased differentiations of form from a primordial void. Form is ...

Prudence

By Hughes, Gerard J.

The word ‘prudence’ is used in several ways in contemporary English, and its different philosophical senses to some extent reflect that variety. Traditionally, prudence is the ability to ...

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is a theory about rightness, according to which the only good thing is welfare (well-being or ‘utility’). Welfare should, in some way, be maximized, and agents are ...