The Idea of an Ethical Community / / John Charvet.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Archive Pre-2000
• VerfasserIn: Charvet, John,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2019]; ©1995
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (280 p.)

John Charvet presents an original philosophical theory that transcends the liberal-communitarian debate and justifies universally valid principles of prudential and moral reason.The Idea of an Ethical Community rejects contemporary positions—the liberal theorist's politically neutral stance toward alternative conceptions of good on the one hand, and the communitarian's moral relativism on the other. Charvet espouses what he calls an "antirealist" view of shared norms and maintains that although reason cannot be unconditionally authoritative, there can be conditionally definitive rational principles. His book advances a view of the ethical community consistent both with the contractarian idea of John Rawls's early work A Theory of Justice and a due emphasis on communitarian values. But he grounds this view of the ethical community in a theory of the autonomous person and a theory of value.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: The Possibility of Ethical Life -- Part One: Self-Interest -- 1. Desire, Reason, and Value -- 2. Prudential Rationality -- 3. Personal Identity -- 4. Autonomy -- Part Two: Morality -- 5. The Self-Interest Theory of Morality -- 6. Moral Rationalism -- 7. Utilitarianism -- Part Three: Community -- 8. Morality as a Common Good -- 9. Political Association -- 10. The Principles of Just Cooperation -- Index