Ethics: Twelve Lectures on the Philosophy of Morality

Almost everyone has wondered at some time or another why morality requires what it appears to require and how, if at all, it speaks to us.

In Ethics: Twelve Lectures on the Philosophy of Morality, David Wiggins surveys the answers most commonly proposed for such questions-gathering insights from Hume, Kant, the utilitarians and the post-utilitaritarian thinkers of the twentieth century.

The view of morality he then proposes draws not only on Hume but on other sources as diverse as Aristotle, Simone Weil, and present day thinkers such as Philippa Foot. As need arises, he pursues a variety of related issues and engages additional thinkers-Plato and Bernard Williams on egoism, altruism and benevolence, Schopenhauer and Kolnai on evil, Leibniz and Rawls on impartiality, and Montaigne and Mackie on 'moral relativism' among others.

After pointing to the special role within morality of the sentiments of solidarity and reciprocity that human beings find within themselves, and the part that these and cognate sentiments play in sustaining our ordinary ideas of agency and responsibility, Wiggins turns to the political sphere and looks for a neo-Aristotelian conception of justice that secures it to some of the same sentiments. Finally, he confronts the question of the objectivity or reality of ethical demands, insisting on the emptiness of any 'metaethics' that ignores the rootedness of morality and the multiplicity of its persuasive resources.

The result is an illuminating and original book that makes a compelling introduction to ethics for anyone who looks to philosophy to expand their own thoughts or to husband the whole variety of our ethical ideas, study their provenance, and ascertain their collective reach and aggregated power.

Simon Blackburn - Times Higher Education Supplement

There are few moral philosophers who will not learn something by studying this book and giving it the concentration it demands. Whether he is talking about Kant or John Stuart Mill, Rawls or John Mackie, Wiggins has subtle and interesting things to say.

David Wiggins retired in 2000 from the Wykeham Chair of Logic at the University of Oxford after 40 years teaching philosophy in the universities of Oxford and London.