Structure of Normative Ethics

This volume contains a selection of essays on the structure and methods of normative ethics by Shelly Kagan. The essays are grouped in three parts. Part I contains a cluster of essays on the structure of normative ethics. These essays provide a systematic survey of the basic normative factors, introduce the concept of evaluative focal points, and examine competing theories about the foundations of normative ethics. The essays in Part II explore 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. Part III brings together two essays relating to practical ethics, in particular on whether consequentialist theories can adequately deal with collective action problems, and on whether speciesism is morally wrong. The volume also contains a preface by Kagan, an introduction co-written by the two editors, and a commentary by the two editors that identifies interrelations between Kagans published works and points to criticisms and developments of his work by other philosophers. This volume is the first in a two-volume collection of Kagans essays. Its successor, Rethinking Intrinsic Value & Other Essays on the Good, collects essays on value, well-being, and desert.

Shelly Kagan is Clark Professor at Yale University. He is the author of The Limits of Morality (1989), Normative Ethics (1998), Death (2012), The Geometry of Desert (2012), How to Count Animals, more or less (2019), and Answering Moral Skepticism (2023). His work has appeared in various journals, including Ethics, Philosophy & Public Affairs, and Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. Videos of Kagan's course on death have been very popular online. Kagan is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Huub Brouwer is Assistant Professor of Ethics and Political Philosophy at Tilburg University. His work has appeared in various journals, including the Journal of Applied Philosophy, the Journal of Ethics, Philosophical Studies, and the Journal of Moral Philosophy. Professor Brouwer received an individual research grant (Veni) from the Netherlands Research Council to work on a four-year research project on philosophy of taxation. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Ethics. Benjamin Mullins is a PhD candidate at Erasmus University Rotterdam, and a member of the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics. His current work analyses how well both consequentialist and non-consequentialist theories fare with respect to various collective action problems. He has been a visitor at Yale University and at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. He is editor of the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics.