Ethics: Twelve Lectures on the Philosophy of Morality

by Wiggins

Almost every thoughtful person wonders at some time why morality says what it says and how, if at all, it speaks to us. David Wiggins surveys the answers most commonly proposed for such questions--and does so in a way that the thinking reader, increasingly perplexed by the everyday problem of moral philosophy, can follow. His work is thus an introduction to ethics that presupposes nothing more than the reader's willingness to read philosophical proposals closely and literally.

Gathering insights from Hume, Kant, the utilitarians, and a twentieth-century assortment of post-utilitarian thinkers, and drawing on sources as diverse as Aristotle, Simone Weil, and Philippa Foot, Wiggins points to the special role of the sentiments of solidarity and reciprocity that human beings will find within themselves. After examining the part such sentiments play in sustaining our ordinary ideas of agency and responsibility, he searches the political sphere for a neo-Aristotelian account of justice that will cohere with such an account of morality. Finally, Wiggins turns to the standing of morality and the question of the objectivity or reality of ethical demands. As the need arises at various points in the book, he pursues a variety of related issues and engages additional thinkers--Plato, C. S. Peirce, Darwin, Schopenhauer, Leibniz, John Rawls, Montaigne and others--always emphasizing the words of the philosophers under discussion, and giving readers the resources to arrive at their own viewpoint of why and how ethics matters.

Genres: Philosophy

408 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Arnout · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is a pain to get through. The reasons for this are: a) moral philosophy is inherently abstract, thus requiring some level of effort from the reader to follow along the reasoning; b) many moral philosophers (of the ones cited in this book at least) get tangled up in moral theories that are full of 'absurdity and metaphysical excess'; and c) Wiggins is just not a good writer.
He might be very knowledgable about ethics, it's a whole other thing to communicate the knowledge clearly. (Perhaps, as is often the case with academics, his knowledgability is indirectly the cause of his bad writing.) His language is unnecessarily complicated, with ridiculously long sentences and excessive use of parentheses. The subtitle of the book made me belief the text would resemble spoken language. It is misleading in that sense. Reminds me of Foucaults mandatory "10 percent incomprehensible" writing.
What also strikes me is Wiggins' shallow understanding of utilitarianism, which becomes clear when he suggests that "all the divers ideas of need, entitlement, or desert over which every human civilization has contended ... can not run alongside the principle of utility."

[Ainar Miyata · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book completely revamped my understanding of philosophical ethics. It requires concentration and time, but it is more than worth it. If you are interested in the philosophy of morality, you need to read this.

[Zedder · Rating 4 out of 5]

I agree with more in this than I agreed with in his essays on ethics.