John Kekes

Morality of Pluralism (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Controversies about abortion, the environment, pornography, AIDS, and similar issues naturally lead to the question of whether there are any values that can be ultimately justified, or whether values are simply conventional. John Kekes argues that the present moral and political uncertainties are due to a deep change in our society from a dogmatic to a pluralistic view of values. Dogmatism is committed to there being only one justifiable system of values. Pluralism recognizes many such systems, and yet it avoids a chaotic relativism according to which all values are in the end arbitrary. Maintaining that good lives must be reasonable, but denying that they must conform to one true pattern, Kekes develops and justifies a pluralistic account of good lives and values, and works out its political, moral, and personal implications.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Princeton University Press
• Seitenzahl: 238
• Erscheinungstermin: 4. März 1996
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781400821105
• Artikelnr.: 64118258

Autorenporträt

John Kekes is Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy at the State University of New York, Albany. He is author of Moral Tradition and Individuality (Princeton) and Facing Evil (Princeton).

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgments
Ch. 1
Introduction: Setting the Stage
3
Ch. 2
The Six Theses of Pluralism
17
Ch. 3
The Plurality and Conditionality of Values
38
Ch. 4
The Unavoidability of Conflicts
53
Ch. 5
The Nature of Reasonable Conflict-Resolution
76
Ch. 6
The Possibilities of Life
99
Ch. 7
The Need for Limits
118
Ch. 8
The Prospects for Moral Progress
139
Ch. 9
Some Moral Implications of Pluralism: On There Being Some Limits
Even to Morality
161
Ch. 10
Some Personal Implications of Pluralism: Innocence Lost and
Regained
179
Ch. 11
Some Political Implications of Pluralism: The Conflict with
Liberalism
199
Works Cited
219
Index
225

Rezensionen

Kekes's presentation of pluralism is the first sustained account of an important new moral theory and a formidable attempt to refute the claim that `our morality is disintegrating.'