David McNaughton

Simon Blackburn can be seen as challenging those committed to sui generis moral facts to explain the supervenience of the moral on the descriptive. We hold that normative facts in general are sui generis. We also hold that the normative supervenes on the descriptive, and we here endeavour to answer the generalization of Blackburn's challenge. In the course of pursuing this answer, we suggest that Frank Jackson's descriptivism rests on a conception of properties inappropriate to discussions of normativity, and we see reason to reject descriptivism generally. We also discuss the views of David Brink, Jonathan Dancy and Bernard Williams in this area.

Iris Murdoch has long been known as one of the most deeply insightful and morally passionate novelists of our time. This attention has often eclipsed Murdoch's sophisticated and influential work as a philosopher, which has had a wide-ranging impact on thinkers in moral philosophy as well as religious ethics and political theory. Yet it has never been the subject of a book-length study in its own right. Picturing the Human seeks to fill this gap. In this groundbreaking book, author Maria Antonaccio presents the first systematic and comprehensive treatment of Murdoch's moral philosophy. Unlike literary critical studies of her novels, it offers a general philosophical framework for assessing Murdoch's thought as a whole. Antonaccio also suggests a new interpretive method for reading Murdoch's philosophy and outlines the significance of her thought in the context of current debates in ethics. This vital study will appeal to those interested in moral philosophy, religious ethics, and literary criticism, and grants those who have long loved Murdoch's novels a closer look at her remarkable philosophy

I wish from my Heart, I could avoid concluding, that since Morality, according to your Opinion as well as mine, is determin'd merely by Sentiment, it regards only human Nature & human Life. … If Morality were determin'd by Reason, that is the same to all rational Beings: But nothing but Experience can assure us, that the Sentiments are the same. What Experience have we with regard to superior Beings? How can we ascribe to them any Sentiments at all? They have implanted those Sentiments in us for the Conduct of Life like our bodily Sensations, which they possess not themselves. When we ask whether morality ‘regards only human nature and human life’ we might be concerned with one of two kinds of question. We may be asking what kinds of being could share our moral point of view. What is the potential scope of the community of moral agents and assessors? Is the moral point of view essentially a human point of view? Could we, or should we, adopt a wider standpoint which would leave room for a significant moral dialogue with non-human moral agents, if there are any? Alternatively, we could be asking whether only human beings should be the objects of moral concern or whether we should widen the circle of concern to include other kinds of being. We may make the same point using a helpful device of Cora Diamond's. We may be concerned with what should replace x or with what should replace y in the formula: We x s assess together conduct and character in so far as it affects ourselves and our fellow y s

Guy Fletcher has written an excellent and much needed book about prudence—lucid, thoughtful, and, to my mind, persuasive. He is well acquainted with all the contemporary literature on his topic, and his treatment of the contributions of others is fair, sympathetic, and helpful. While the discussion becomes increasingly subtle and complex, Fletcher remains admirably clear throughout. Signposts and reminders help the reader, as do outlines and summaries. He follows the excellent ‘rule of three’ as taught (I am informed) to prospective preachers: first you tell them what you are going to tell them; then you tell them; and then you tell them what you have just told them. In all these respects, this book is exemplary.His topic is the nature of prudential discourse, i.e., thought and talk about what benefits or harms someone, and about what someone prudentially ought to do, has reason to do, needs to do, etc. While much has been written about what makes one's life go well, or whether ‘morality and self-interest can be reconciled’, little, he claims, has been written about these meta-prudential questions, and it is this omission he seeks to rectify (p. 1). But is this project, Fletcher asks, really necessary? After all, isn’t it obvious that prudential discourse is normative in the way that moral discourse is? And since philosophers have written extensively about meta-normative issues, the matter has already been more than adequately discussed. Fletcher's response is that while many philosophers think that the answer to the question whether prudential discourse is normative is obvious; unfortunately, they do not agree about what the obvious answer is.

McNaughton and Rawling's anti-reductionist intentions are to be welcomed, but are not well served by their continuing adherence to a neo-Humean notion of the 'descriptive'. Their too-willing acceptance of this notion is reflected in a denial of appropriate dialectical weight to considerations about the way 'pattern' disappears from the domain of value when we try to characterize the constituent features of the latter in non-evaluative terms. The need for a satisfactory account of the immanence of value in nature is real enough, but such an account can be given without recourse to the problematic idea of a class of subvenient 'descriptive' properties. Likewise, McNaughton and Rawling's recognition of 'normative facts' is to be endorsed, but such facts are a more widespread and everyday phenomenon than they would have us think

McNaughton and Rawling present a view on which practical reasons are facts, such as the fact that the rubbish bin is full. This is a non-normative fact, but it is a reason for you to do something, namely take the rubbish out. They see rationality as a matter of consistency. And they see duty as neither purely a matter of rationality nor of practical reason: on the one hand, the rational sociopath is immoral; but, on the other, morality does not require that we always act on the weightiest moral reasons. McNaughton and Rawling criticize various forms of internalism, including Williams’s, and they tentatively propose a view of duty that is neither purely subjective in Prichard’s sense, nor purely objective.

Sextus Empiricus: Outlines of Scepticism Translated by Julia Annas & Jonathan Barnes Cambridge University Press 1994 ISBN‐0–521–30950–6 Hardback ISBN 0–521–31205‐X Paperback Republicanism, Liberty and Commercial Society 1649–1776 David Wootton Stanford University Press, 1994 viii, 497 pp. £35 ISBN 0804723567 John Marshall: John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility Cambridge University Press, 1994 Pp. xxi + 485. ISBN 0–521–44380–6 £55 0–521–44687–3 £22.95 Ian Harris: The Mind of John Locke: A Study of Political Theory in its Intellectual Setting Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 Pp. xv + 429. ISBN 0–521–35603–2 Lawrence E. Klein: Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness Cambridge University Press, xii, 217 pp. £30 Cahiers Montesquieu: Lectures de Montesquieu, Actes du Colloque de Wolfenbuttel réunis par Edgar Mass et Alberto Postigliola Liguori Editore, Napoli; Universitas, Paris; Voltaire Foundation, Oxford, 1993. ISBN 0–7294–0462–5. £18.00 George Armstrong Kelly: The Humane Comedy: Constant, Tocqueville, and French Liberalism with a foreword by Stephen R. Graubard, Cambridge University Press, 1992. ISBN 0–521–41227–7. £35.00 Christopher J. Berry: The Idea of Luxury. A Conceptual and Historical Investigation Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 xiv + 271 pp., 0–521–466911 pbk Sarah Gibbons: Kant's Theory of Imagination. Bridging Gaps in Judgement and Experience Oxford Philosophical Monographs. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1994 pp. 205 plus x. £27.50 Andrew Brook: Kant and the Mind Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1994. pp. 327 plus xii. £35.00 The Correspondence of John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte trans. and ed. by Oscar A. Haac New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1995 pp. xxvi + 403. £31.95 ISBN 1–56000–148–8 Alan P. F. Sell: Philosophical Idealism and Christian Belief University of Wales Press, 1995 ISBN 0–7083–1310–8. 338 pp. £35.00 Agnosticism: Contemporary Responses to Spencer and Huxley Ed. Andrew Pyle Thoemmes Press, Bristol, 1995, pp. xxvi + 301 ISBN 1–85506–404–9 £14.95, 1–85506–405–7 £45.00

Forgiveness usually gets a very good press in our culture: we are deluged with self-help books and television shows all delivering the same message, that forgiveness is good for everyone, and is always the right thing to do. But those who have suffered seriously at the hands of others often and rightly feel that this boosterism about forgiveness is glib and facile. Perhaps forgiveness is not always desirable, especially where the wrongdoing is terrible or the wrongdoer unrepentant. In this book, Garrard and McNaughton suggest that the whole debate suffers from a crippling lack of clarity about what forgiveness really amounts to. They argue that it is more difficult, complex and troubling than many of its advocates suppose. Nevertheless, they conclude, a proper understanding of forgiveness allows us to avoid cheap and shallow forms of it, and enables us to see why it is right and admirable to forgive even unrepentant wrongdoers