Volume 46, Number 7 · April 22, 1999
The Reason Why Not
By Stuart Hampshire
What We Owe to Each Other
by T.M. Scanlon
Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 420 pp., $35.00
Moral philosophy in English-speaking countries is an inquiry now pursued principally in universities. This is accidental rather than essential; the great reforming philosophers, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, were not professors. But still the present fact determines much of the style and form of contemporary moral philosophy, and determines specifically the very high standards of clear argument, apt for education in seminar and lecture rooms, which are imposed on moral philosophy. The sentimental seductions and unashamed fantasies of Rousseau and of other writers of his century, however influential within the discipline, are not now encouraged.
Review, 3854 words
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