Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning

Why do we behave as we do? Can we improve? Is our ethics at war with our passions, or is it an upshot of those passions? Distinguished philosopher Simon Blackburn seeks the answers to such questions in this brilliant exploration of the nature of moral emotions and the structures of human motivation. Ruling Passions reveals how ethics can maintain its authority even though it is rooted in the very emotions and motivations that it exists to control.

Simon Blackburn is the Edna J. Koury Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He also holds an adjunct Chair at the Australian National University's Research School of Social Sciences. From 1969 to 1990 he was Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Pembroke College, Oxford, and from 1984 to 1990 he edited the journal Mind. He is the author of the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy.