This volume contains a selection of essays on the structure and methods of normative ethics by eminent philosopher Shelly Kagan. Its successor, Rethinking Intrinsic Value: And Other Essays on the Good, collects essays on value, well-being, and desert.
The volume opens with a cluster of essays that concern the structure of normative ethics. A general theme of these essays is that, by carving ethics at the joints, we can glean a better idea of what the main moral theories are up to, whether they are offering up competing hypotheses, or whether they are answering different questions that arise at different levels. The second Part explores the various methods of normative ethics, critically examining the role of thought experiments and the practical difficulty of following moral principles given various epistemic limitations. The final section brings together essays on practical ethics. Strictly speaking, the essays in this section are not themselves essays in practical or applied ethics. Instead, these essays are more accurately described as theoretical papers that address various conceptual issues which, in turn, have important implications for practical disciplines such as environmental ethics and animal ethics.
The edited collection is put together in such a way that, within each respective part, much of the analysis in the earlier essays is then developed or put to use in the latter ones. It contains a preface by Professor Kagan, an introduction co-written by the two editors, as well as an editorial commentary that identifies interrelations between Kagan's published works and points out the way to criticisms and developments of Kagan's work by other philosophers.
Shelly Kagan's essays have been extremely influential in shaping the field of normative ethics, a branch of moral philosophy concerned with the criteria of what is morally right and wrong. This volume collects the essential essays by Kagan in this area and traces the evolution of his thinking over the course of his remarkable career.
