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59I became interested in normative ethics in my last term as a philosophy undergraduate at the University of Toronto. Influenced by a traditional conception of the discipline, I’d till then studied mostly history of philosophy, with a special interest in, of all things, Hegel. But seeing the value of a balanced philosophy program, I enrolled in an ethics seminar in the winter of 1975. I’d studied the ethics of Plato, Leibniz, Hegel, and others in my history courses, but this was my first exposure …Read more
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59The Grasshopper - Third Edition: Games, Life and UtopiaBroadview Press. 2014.In the mid twentieth century the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously asserted that games are indefinable; there are no common threads that link them all. “Nonsense,” said the sensible Bernard Suits: “playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” The short book Suits wrote demonstrating precisely that is as playful as it is insightful, as stimulating as it is delightful. Through the jocular voice of Aesop's Grasshopper, a “shiftless but thoughtful practitioner of …Read more
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51British Ethical Theorists from Sidgwick to EwingOxford University Press. 2014.Thomas Hurka presents the first full historical study of an important strand in the development of modern moral philosophy. His subject is a series of British ethical theorists from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, who shared key assumptions that made them a unified and distinctive school. The best-known of them are Henry Sidgwick, G. E. Moore, and W. D. Ross; others include Hastings Rashdall, H. A. Prichard, C. D. Broad, and A. C. Ewing. They disagreed on some important…Read more
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49Equality, Liberty and Perfectionism (review)Canadian Journal of Philosophy 13 (3): 449-470. 1983.
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47The Well-Rounded LifeJournal of Philosophy 84 (12): 727-46. 1987.This paper discusses the idea, which arises within perfectionist theories of the good, that there can be special value in a well-rounded life, one that contains a balance of different intrinsic goods, e.g. knowledge and achievement, rather than specializing narrowly on just one. It uses the economists' device of indifference graphs to 1) formulate the view the well-roundedness is other things equal a good, and 2) to combine that view with empirical theses about the (at times) instrumental benefi…Read more
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46Desert: Individualistic and holisticIn Serena Olsaretti (ed.), Desert and justice, Oxford University Press. pp. 45--45. 2003.Serena Olsaretti brings together new essays by leading moral and political philosophers on the nature of desert and justice, their relations with each other and with other values.
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41Creation and abortion: a study in moral and legal philosophyJournal of Medical Ethics 20 (2): 121-122. 1994.
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40The consequences of warIn N. Ann Davis, Richard Keshen & Jeff McMahan (eds.), Ethics and humanity: themes from the philosophy of Jonathan Glover, Oxford University Press. 2010.to appear in N. Ann Davis, Richard Keshen, and Jeff McMahan, eds., Ethics and Humanity: Themes From the Writing of Jonathan Glover (New York: Oxford University Press).
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39The differences between journalism and scholarly writingThe Chesterton Review 18 (2): 284-285. 1992.
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37On Judged SportsJournal of the Philosophy of Sport 42 (3): 317-325. 2015.Whereas Bernard Suits argued that judged sports such as diving and figure skating are aesthetic performances rather than games, I argue that they’re simultaneously performances and games. Moreover, their two aspects are connected, since their prelusory goal is to dive or skate beautifully and the requirement to do somersaults or triple jumps makes achieving that goal more difficult. This analysis is similar to one given by Scott Kretchmar, but by locating these sports’ aesthetic side in their go…Read more
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34Self-Interest, Altruism, and VirtueSocial Philosophy and Policy 14 (1): 286. 1997.My topic in this essay is the comparative moral value of self-interest and altruism. I take self-interest to consist in a positive attitude toward one's own good and altruism to consist in a similar attitude toward the good of others, and I assess these attitudes within a general theory of the intrinsic value of attitudes toward goods and evils. The first two sections of the essay apply this theory in a simple form, one that treats self-interest and altruism symmetrically. The third section exam…Read more
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34Kamm on Intention and Proportionality in WarJournal of Moral Philosophy 11 (4): 411-427. 2014.This paper discusses the novel versions of the right intention and proportionality conditions in the ius ad bellum proposed in Chapter 3 of Frances Kamm’s Ethics for Enemies. It argues that Kamm is right to weaken the right intention condition to require, not positively intending a war’s just cause, but only having that cause’s presence be a necessary condition for war, but wrong to place no limits on why one makes a just cause necessary. It then argues that the weakening she proposes of Jeff Mc…Read more
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32Though primarily focussed on philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology, Scott Soames’s Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century contains several discussions of ethics. Volume 1 contains two chapters on Moore’s ethics, one on the emotivism of Ayer and Stevenson, and one on Ross; Volume 2 adds a chapter on Hare’s prescriptivism. The bulk of the Moore chapters as well as the ones on emotivism and Hare concern metaethics, but there is also discussion of Moore’s normative views and…Read more
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29Perfectionism and Neutrality: Essays in Liberal TheoryRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2003.Editors provide a substantive introduction to the history and theories of perfectionism and neutrality, expertly contextualizing the essays and making the collection accessible
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28Games, Sports, and Play: Philosophical Essays (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2019.A distinguished group of philosophers discuss a wide range of issues about games, sport, and play - a topic largely neglected in recent philosophical literature. They ask consider what games and sports have in common, pose questions about their value, and add philosophical voices to the on-going debates in game studies.
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24Drawing Morals: Essays in Ethical TheoryOup Usa. 2011.This volume contains selected essays in moral and political philosophy by Thomas Hurka. The essays address a wide variety of topics, from the well-rounded life and the value of playing games to proportionality in war and the ethics of nationalism. They also share a common aim: to illuminate the surprising richness and subtlety of our everyday moral thought by revealing its underlying structure, which they often do by representing that structure on graphs. More specifically, the essays all give w…Read more
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23Sumner on Natural RightsDialogue 28 (1): 117-. 1989.I am pleased to participate in this joint Critical Notice, in part because it is an opportunity to pay a debt of gratitude. Thirteen years ago, as a Toronto undergraduate with interests in things like Hegelian metaphysics, I enrolled in an ethics seminar with Wayne Sumner. I had not done any ethics before, and took this course largely because I thought I ought to. But it turned out to be the best course of my undergraduate career, and permanently changed my philosophical interests. Having learne…Read more
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17Making Sense of Human Rights: Philosophical Reflections on the Universal Declaration of Human RightsPhilosophical Books 30 (1): 54-56. 1987.
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17Review of Gabriele Taylor, Deadly Vices (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (4). 2007.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Areas of Interest
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |
20th Century Philosophy |