Over the course of its first seven editions, Principles of Biomedical Ethics has proved to be, globally, the most widely used, authored work in biomedical ethics. It is unique in being a book in bioethics used in numerous disciplines for purposes of instruction in bioethics. Its framework of moral principles is authoritative for many professional associations and biomedical institutions-for instruction in both clinical ethics and research ethics. It has been widely used in several disciplines for purposes of teaching in the (...) classroom, during conferences, etc. (shrink)

This volume will collect Tom Beauchamp's 15 most important published articles in bioethics, most of which were published over the last 25 years, and most of ...

For forty years, successive editions of Ethical Theory and Business have helped to define the field of business ethics. The 10th edition reflects the current, multidisciplinary nature of the field by explicitly embracing a variety of perspectives on business ethics, including philosophy, management, and legal studies. Chapters integrate theoretical readings, case studies, and summaries of key legal cases to guide students to a rich understanding of business ethics, corporate responsibility, and sustainability. The 10th edition has been entirely updated, ensuring that (...) students are exposed to key ethical questions in the current business environment. New chapters cover the ethics of IT, ethical markets, and ethical management and leadership. Coverage includes climate change, sustainability, international business ethics, sexual harassment, diversity, and LGBTQ discrimination. New case studies draw students directly into recent business ethics controversies, such as sexual harassment at Fox News, consumer fraud at Wells Fargo, and business practices at Uber. (shrink)

This accessible overview of classical and modern moral theory with short readings provides comprehensive coverage of ethics and unique coverage of rights, justice, liberty and law. Real-life cases introduce each chapter. While the book's content is theoretical rather than applied ethics, Beauchamp consistently applies the theories to practical moral problems. Aristotle, Hume, Kant, and Mill are at the book;s core and they are placed in the context of moral philosophical controversies of the last 30 years. In this edition one-third (...) of the reading selections are new and all the selections in chapter 8 on rights are new. Chapter 7 on Hume has been heavily reshaped. Chapter 1 has been reduced to get students past introductory material and into the philosophers. (shrink)

: Phenomena of moral conflict and disagreement have led writers in ethics to two antithetical conclusions: Either valid moral distinctions hold universally or they hold relative to a particular and contingent moral framework, and so cannot be applied with universal validly. Responding to three articles in this issue of the Journal that criticize his previously published views on the common morality, the author maintains that one can consistently deny universality to some justified moral norms and claim universality for others. Universality (...) is located in the common morality and nonuniversality in other parts of the moral life, called "particular moralities." The existence of universal moral standards is defended in terms of: (1) a theory of the objectives of morality, (2) an account of the norms that achieve those objectives, and (3) an account of normative justification (both pragmatic and coherentist). (shrink)

Tom Beauchamp presents a new edition, designed especially for the student reader, of An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, the classic work in which David Hume gave a general exposition of his philosophy to a broad educated readership. An authoritative new version of the text is preceded by a substantial introduction explaining the historical and intellectual background to the work and surveying its main themes. The volume also includes detailed explanatory notes on the text, a glossary of terms, and a (...) section of supplementary readings. (shrink)

The practice of obtaining informed consent has its history in, and gains its meaning from, medicine and biomedical research. Discussions of disclosure and justified nondisclosure have played a significant role throughout the history of medical ethics, but the term “informed consent” emerged only in the 1950s. Serious discussion of the meaning and ethics of informed consent began in medicine, research, law, and philosophy only around 1972.

Principles that provide general normative frameworks in bioethics have been criticized since the late 1980s, when several different methods and types of moral philosophy began to be proposed as alternatives or substitutes. Several accounts have emerged in recent years, including: (1) Impartial Rule Theory (supported in this issue by K. Danner Clouser), (2) Casuistry (supported in this issue by Albert Jonsen), and (3) Virtue Ethics (supported in this issue by Edmund D. Pellegrino). Although often presented as rival methods or theories, (...) these approaches are consistent with and should not be considered adversaries of a principle-based account. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 11, November 2019, Page 9-12.

The last twenty-five years of published literature and curriculum development in bioethics suggest that the field enjoys a successful and stable marriage to philosophical ethical theory. However, the next twenty-five years could be very different. I believe the marriage is troubled. Divorce is conceivable and perhaps likely. The most philosophical parts of bioethics may retreat to philosophy departments, while bioethics continues on its current course toward a more interdisciplinary and practical field.I make no presumption that bioethics is integrally linked to (...) philosophical ethical theory. Indeed, I assume that the connection is contingent and fragile. Many individuals in law, theological ethics, political theory, the social and behavioral sciences, and the health professions carefully address mainstream issues of bioethics without finding ethical theory essential or breathtakingly attractive. This is not surprising. Moral philosophers have traditionally formulated theories of the right, the good, and the virtuous in the most general terms. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Principles of Biomedical Ethics. By Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress.

“Applied ethics” has been the major growth area in North American philosophy in the last decade, yet a robust confidence and enthusiasm over its promise is far from universal in academic philosophy. It is considered nonphilosophical in West Germany, and has largely failed to penetrate British departments of philosophy. Whether it has any intellectually or pedagogically redeeming value is still widely debated in North America, where many who have tried to teach some area of applied ethics for the first time (...) have seen their courses grind to a halt in unresolvable quandaries, practical exigencies, or unavailable technical information. Consequently, some departments are at war over whether to hire or confer tenure on those who teach these subjects. Many also remain unconvinced that philosophical generalizations or theories can play any significant role in applied contexts. They may even doubt both that applied ethics is really ethics and that philosophy should accomodate this creature in its curriculum. (shrink)

After expressing our gratitude to the commentators for their valuable analyses and assessments of Principles of Biomedical Ethics, we respond to several particular critiques raised by the commentators under the following rubrics: the compatibility of different sets of principles and rules; challenges to the principle of respect for autonomy; connecting principles to cases and resolving their conflicts; the value of and compatibility of virtues and principles; common morality theory; and moral status. We point to areas where we see common agreement (...) with our commentators and respond to their critical evaluations. (shrink)

The distinction between clinical research and clinical practice directs how we partition medicine and biomedical science. Reasons for a sharp distinction date historically to the work of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, especially to its analysis of the “boundaries” between research and practice in the Belmont Report (1978). Belmont presents a segregation model of the research-practice distinction, according to which research and practice form conceptually exclusive sets of activities and interventions. This (...) model is still the standard in federal regulations today. However, the Commission’s deliberations and conclusions about the boundaries are more complicated, nuanced, and instructive than has generally been appreciated. The National Commission did not conclude that practice needs no oversight comparable to the regulation of research. It debated the matter and inclined to the view that the oversight of practice needed to be upgraded, though the Commission stopped short of proposing new regulations for its oversight, largely for prudential political reasons. (shrink)

Humans encounter and use animals in a stunning number of ways. The nature of these animals and the justifiability or unjustifiabilitly of human uses of them are the subject matter of this volume.Philosophers have long been intrigued by animal minds and vegetarianism, but only around the last quarter of the twentieth century did a significant philosophical literature begin to be developed on both the scientific study of animals and the ethics of human uses of animals. This literature had a primary (...) focus on discussion of animal psychology, the moral status of animals, the nature and significance of species, and a number of practical problems. This Oxford Handbook is designed to capture the nature of the questions as they stand today and to propose solutions to many of the major problems. Several chapters in this volume explore matters that have never previously been examined by philosophers.The authors of the thirty-five chapters come from a diverse set of philosophical interests in the History of Philosophy, the Philosophy of Mind, the Philosophy of Biology, the Philosophy of Cognitive Science, the Philosophy of Language, Ethical Theory, and Practical Ethics. They explore many theoretical issues about animal minds and an array of practical concerns about animal products, farm animals, hunting, circuses, zoos, the entertainment industry, safety-testing on animals, the status and moral significance of species, environmental ethics, the nature and significance of the minds of animals, and so on. They also investigate what the future may be expected to bring in the way of new scientific developments and new moral problems.This book of original essays is the most comprehensive single volume ever published on animal minds and the ethics of our use of animals. (shrink)

This anthology represents all of the most important points of view on the most pressing topics in bioethics. Containing current essays and actual medical and legal cases written by outstanding scholars from around the globe, this book provides readers with diverse range of standpoints, including those of medical researchers and practitioners, legal exerts, and philosophers.

Literature on the mental capacities and cognitive mechanisms of the great apes has been silent about whether they can act autonomously. This paper provides a philosophical theory of autonomy supported by psychological studies of the cognitive mechanisms that underlie chimpanzee behavior to argue that chimpanzees can act autonomously even though their psychological mechanisms differ from those of humans. Chimpanzees satisfy the two basic conditions of autonomy: (1) liberty (the absence of controlling influences) and (2) agency (self-initiated intentional action), each of (...) which is specified here in terms of conditions of understanding, intention, and self-control. In this account, chimpanzees make knowledge-based choices reflecting a richly information-based and socially sophisticated understanding of the world. Finally, two major theories of autonomy (Kantian theory and two-level theory) are rejected as too narrow to adequately address these issues, necessitating the modifications made in the present approach. (shrink)

Discussions of research involving vulnerable populations have left the homeless comparatively ignored. Participation by these subjects in drug studies has the potential to be upsetting, inconvenient, or unpleasant. Participation occasionally produces injury, health emergencies, and chronic health problems. Nonetheless, no ethical justification exists for the categorical exclusion of homeless persons from research. The appropriate framework for informed consent for these subjects of pharmaceutical research is not a single event of oral or written consent, but a multi-staged arrangement of disclosure, dialogue, (...) and permission-giving. Payments and other rewards in biomedical research raise issues of whether it is ethical to offer inducements to the homeless in exchange for participation in drug studies. Such inducements can influence desperate persons who are seriously lacking in resources. The key is to strike a balance between a rate of payment high enough that it does not exploit subjects by underpayment and low enough that it does not create an irresistible inducement. This proposal does not underestimate the risks of research, which are often overestimated and need to be appraised in light of the relevant empirical literature. (shrink)

Humans encounter and use animals in a stunning number of ways. The nature of these animals and the justifiability or unjustifiabilitly of human uses of them are the subject matter of this volume.

What grounds and justifies conclusions in medical ethics? Is the source external or internal to medicine? Thee influential types of answer have appeared in recent literature: an internal account, an external account, and a mixed internal / external account. The first defends an ethic derived from either the ends of medicine or professional practice standards. The second maintains that precepts in medical ethics rely upon and require justification by external standards such as those of public opinion, law, religious ethics, or (...) philosophical ethics. The third claims that distinct medical ethics have emerged from distinct cultural frameworks, each with norms that govern physicians. There is merit in each perspective, but each overreaches its supporting arguments and fails to appreciate what is legitimate in the theses of its competitors. I propose a fourth account that offers a way to escape limitations of the other three, while retaining their most attractive features. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:36. A DISCUSSION ON PERSONAL IDENTITY Jane L. Mclntyre's original paper "Is Hume's Self Consistent?" was presented at the MoGiIl Hume Conference; it will be published in the forthcoming volume devoted to those preceedings. Tom Beauchamp" s paper is presented here as delivered. John Biro's paper has been revised since its original presentation. 37. SELF INCONSISTENCY OR MERE SELF PERPLEXITY? Professor Mclntyre's imaginative and constructive paper has three (...) primary parts (despite its division into six sections). First, she offers an interpretation of Hume's view of the self in Book I of the Treatise. Second, she explains why his own reservations in the Appendix create problems not only for this theory of self identity but for other parts of his philosophy as well. Finally, she tries to ease him out of these difficulties with her overlap interpretation of the bundle theory. My comments follow exactly this outline, though my conclusions, for the most part, do not coincide with hers. My reservations do not derive from her attempt to render Hume consistent. Rather, I question the foundations of the entire enterprise in which she, Robison, Nathanson, et. al. are engaged. That is, I remain unconvinced that the alleged problem, as presently framed, is more than a pseudo-problem. I. Hume's Theory in Book I In Book I Hume offers a variety of arguments about the nature of the self, most of which rely on other theories, such as those of causation, the association of ideas, and substance. Whatever the exact arguments and positions he may be advancing, at least the following six propositions are integral to his theory of personal identity: 1)The self is entirely reducible to a collection of perceptions. 2)The self is not characterized by strict identity. 3)There is nothing simple in which the collection of perceptions inheres. 4)Both identity and simplicity are attributed to the self because of relations between perceptions--the relations of causation and resemblance. 5)The relations of resemblance and causation unite these perceptions. 38. 6) There are no real (non-associational) connections or relations among these perceptions which unite them. Half of these six claims are critical denials of other philosophical claims; the other half are constructive philosophical theories. Hume's entire philosophical program in Book I is tied up with these claims. The criticisms are directed at numerous metaphysical theories of mind, substance and causation; and the constructive account of personai identity requires his theories of perception and association of ideas. I mention these obvious points only because it is so important to note that if_ the interpretation is correct which Professor Mclntyre and others give to (roughly) five sentences in the Appendix, where Hume mentions a possible inconsistency, then Hume is not only questioning his theory of personal identity in Book I, he is calling Book I itself into question. To be convinced that this strikingly implausible turnabout occurs in five sentences of the Appendix, we must be given a most compelling argument—one which I doubt is forthcoming. II. Hume's Alleged Inconsistency The alleged problem of inconsistency arises because Hume says in the Appendix that he does not know how to render his own former opinions consistent (T633, 636). However, when he comes to a formal statement of the inconsistency, as everyone is agreed, the propositions said to be inconsistent are not inconsistent. In the attempt to grasp Hume's meaning, a general consensus has emerged in recent Hume scholarship, including Professor Mclntyre in its company, that we ought both to move backward and forward a sentence or two in Hume's text. Hume says in those passages that his hopes for his theory are diminished because he is unable to explain the principles, that unite our successive perceptions in our thought or consciousness (T636) ; and he then indicates that i_f perceptions could be shown to inhere in something simple or to be really connected, these prob- 39. lems would vanish. It is this textual setting which Robison, Nathanson, and Professor Mclntyre turn into the claim that "the concept of a self which is affected by experience, and therefore must persist through experience— is precisely the concept of the self that... (shrink)

: The belief persists in philosophy, religion, science, and popular culture that some special cognitive property of persons like self-consciousness confers a unique moral standing. However, no set of cognitive properties confers moral standing, and metaphysical personhood is not sufficient for either moral personhood or moral standing. Cognitive theories all fail to capture the depth of commitments embedded in using the language of "person." It is more assumed than demonstrated in these theories that nonhuman animals lack a relevant form of (...) self-consciousness or its functional equivalent. Although nonhuman animals are not plausible candidates for moral personhood, humans too fail to qualify as moral persons if they lack one or more of the conditions of moral personhood. If moral personhood were the sole basis of moral rights, then these humans would lack rights--and precisely for the reasons that nonhuman animals would. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Mettle of Moral Fundamentalism: A Reply to Robert Baker*Tom L. Beauchamp (bio)AbstractThis article is a reply to Robert Baker’s attempt to rebut moral fundamentalism, while grounding international bioethics in a form of contractarianism. Baker is mistaken in several of his interpretations of the alleged moral fundamentalism and findings of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. He also misunderstands moral fundamentalism generally and wrongly categorizes it as (...) morally bankrupt. His negotiated contract model is, in the final analysis, itself a form of the moral fundamentalism he declares bankrupt.Robert baker’s imaginative and incisive articles on international bioethics (Baker 1998a & b) are rich in history and philosophy, but they are as profoundly misguided as they are misdirected. In this comment, I will concentrate both on a pivotal interpretation and criticism that he offers of the Report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE 1996) and on his philosophical thesis that a moral fundamentalism of principles and rights is bankrupt. Baker seriously misinterprets the ACHRE report, distorts and fails to refute moral fundamentalism, and ultimately embraces a form of the very fundamentalism that he declares bankrupt. These three topics are connected in that Baker’s misconceptions of the ACHRE report launch his critique of moral fundamentalism and his mistaken understanding of moral fundamentalism drives his critique of the ACHRE report. 1 [End Page 389]Some Misunderstandings of the Human Radiation CommitteeBaker proclaims a conflict between ACHRE’s moral fundamentalism and multiculturalism. He presents this conflict as primarily a factual issue regarding whether different cultures and eras accept different moral principles—“the difference claim,” in his vernacular (Baker 1998a, pp. 208–9). This interpretation eventuates in a critique of the work of both ACHRE and Ruth Macklin:[W]hen Macklin and the Radiation Committee consider the challenge of multiculturalism, they construe this challenge, not as dispute about anthropological fact, but as a dispute about philosophical theory. More specifically, they treat any assertion of the difference claim as a form of “ethical relativism.”... They thus respond to the multiculturalist’s factual observations—even to factual observations by anthropologists—as if they were philosophical analyses.(Baker 1998a, p. 209)Baker thinks that a factual question has been fallaciously transformed into a philosophical one. However, this false dilemma is a figment of his fancy. He provides no citation to ACHRE to show that it holds this view, and for an understandable reason: This position is neither stated nor presumed in the Report. ACHRE is quite clear that relativism involves both an anthropological (I would prefer to say historical) dispute about fact and a philosophical dispute about value—and that they are not the same.The Committee and its staff proceeded as follows: They first collected a large body of historical documents and facts about the practices, policies, and values that prevailed during the period they were studying. Chapters 1 through 3 and 5 through 13, 12 of the Report’s 18 chapters, display the results of this empirical work. The Committee concluded, on this basis, that research investigators and government officials were aware of the obligations generated by universal principles. The ACHRE report specifically lists six “basic” moral principles and maintains that these principles were pervasively recognized at the time of the radiation experiments (ACHRE 1996, pp. 114ff, 124). ACHRE received testimony, conducted interviews, and compiled documents that indicated how deeply these principles were woven into the fabric of American culture at the time, so deeply that no responsible research investigator could have been unaware of them. ACHRE did not move beyond its list of six principles to a broader thesis about the (factual) universality of other principles and did not examine other cultures or periods of history; such work would [End Page 390] have exceeded ACHRE’s mandate and would have done more to obscure than to further its arguments.ACHRE also found that some government officials had attempted to hide their wrongdoing—a clear indication that these officials were aware of the relevant moral principles and knew that they should not have been treating persons as they did (ACHRE 1996, pp. 152–53; Chapman 1946). These factual findings were not armchair philosophy or empirical guesswork... (shrink)

Animals have moral standing; that is, they have properties (including the ability to feel pain) that qualify them for the protections of morality. It follows from this that humans have moral obligations toward animals, and because rights are logically correlative to obligations, animals have rights.

This new edition of Hume's Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, published in the Oxford Philosophical Texts series, has been designed especially for the student reader. The text is preceded by a substantial introduction explaining the historical and intellectual background to the work and its relationship to the rest of Hume's philosophy. The volume also includes detailed explanatory notes on the text, a glossary of terms, and a section of supplementary readings.

On December 15, 2011, a final report was issued by the Committee on the Use of Chimpanzees in Biomedical and Behavioral Research, which had been convened by the U. S. Institute of Medicine (IOM) in collaboration with National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies. Within a month of its release, this report was designated by Wired Science one of the “top scientific discoveries of 2011” (Wired Science Staff 2011). The ad hoc Committee responsible for this report was formed at (...) the request of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in response to congressional inquiry that had been prompted by expressions of public concern.1 The issues addressed in the report are profoundly ethical, despite NIH’s .. (shrink)

Written by epidemiologists, ethicists and legal scholars, this book provides an in-depth account of the moral problems that often confront epidemiologists, including both theoretical and practical issues. The first edition has sold almost three thousand copies since it was published in 1996. This edition is fully revised and includes three new chapters:Ethical Issues in Public Health Practice, Ethical Issues in Genetic Epidemiology, and Ethical Issues in International Health Research and Epidemiology. These chapters collectively address important developments of the past decade. (...) Three chapters from the first edition have also been reorganized: Ethicall Optimized Study Deisgns in Epidemiology, Ethical Issues in Epidemiologic Research with Children, and The Ethics of Epidemiologic Research with Older Populations. Instead of standing alone, these chapters have been integrated into chapters on informed consent, confidentiality and privacy protection, and community-based intervention studies. (shrink)

The Belmont Report of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research was essentially mandated in a public law on July 12, 1974. The publications of this Commission have turned out to be the most influential of all US ethics and bioethics commissions on US public policy and federal regulation. The reason for its influence is that this Commission was allowed—indeed required—to draft federal regulations governing research with vulnerable subjects and to produce a general (...) framework of moral principles that quickly became established as the only framework of general principles of research ethics for the government of the United States.The public law mandated that the... (shrink)

Two positions that Rosamund Rhodes puts forward are the proper starting point for this commentary: 1. Medical ethics based on the common morality that uses a body of abstract principles or rules are not ‘an adequate and appropriate guide for physicians’ actions’. 2. We need, but do not have, a true professional medical ethics for physicians, which must be ‘distinctly different’ from ethics based on common morality. I will argue that both positions are mistaken. Rhodes does not analyse what she (...) means by a professional ‘medical ethics’ and does not supply content for what she calls ‘medical professionalism’. ‘Common morality‘ is also not given a precise meaning. However, I set aside these problems of conceptual clarity and concentrate on a paradigm case of professional ethics for physicians in interactions with patients. My example is The Belmont Report. Belmont is almost certainly a document that, in the USA, has for four decades been highly influential on physicians, especially physicians engaged in clinical research. It is not merely research ethics. In full satisfaction of the American Board of Medical Specialties’ ‘definition of medical professionalism’, The Belmont Report puts forward a system of ethical principles showing that physicians and other health professionals must conduct research in the service of the public interest and the well-being of patient–subjects. The Belmont Report also satisfies the earlier delineated conditions of medical professionalism in the American Board of Internal Medicine’s ‘Physician Charter’, which are stated in terms of the ‘fundamental principles’ of the primacy of patient welfare, patient autonomy and social justice.1,1–3 Belmont more than satisfies these conditions of medical professionalism. Indeed Belmont may well be the source of the principles …. (shrink)

In the relatively short time since 2006—when Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics published an issue on moral issues relevant to the use of nonhuman animals in research [1]—significant changes have occurred for nonhuman animals in many quarters. Public sentiment, new policy initiatives, and scientific studies of nonhuman animals’ capacities have all influenced the ways in which nonhuman animals are perceived and treated in research. Today, a large body of information is available for use in decision making about the acceptability of using (...) nonhuman animals in research. The articles in this issue assess how moral argument and empirical studies stand to guide animal research policies and practices in future years.Many in bioethics have come to regard issues of animal research as a subfield of research ethics, bringing it closer to human research ethics. Animal ethics, like public health ethics, has struggled for recognition in bioethics. As the contributions to this issue show, some in bioe. (shrink)

Robert Baker and Laurence McCullough argue that the "applied ethics model" is deficient and in need of a replacement model. However, they supply no clear meaning to "applied ethics" and miss most of what is important in the literature on methodology that treats this question. The Baker-McCullough account of medical and applied ethics is a straw man that has had no influence in these fields or in philosophical ethics. The authors are also on shaky historical grounds in dealing with two (...) problems: (1) the historical source of the notion of "practical ethics" and (2) the historical source of and the assimilation of the term "autonomy" into applied philosophy and professional ethics. They mistakenly hold (1) that the expression "practical ethics" was first used in a publication by Thomas Percival and (2) that Kant is the primary historical source of the notion of autonomy as that notion is used in contemporary applied ethics. (shrink)

About HumeDavid Hume is one of the greatest of philosophers. Today he probably ranks highest of all British philosophers in terms of influence and philosophical standing. His philosophical work ranges across morals, the mind, metaphysics, epistemology, and aesthetics; he had broad interests not only in philosophy as it is now conceived but in history, politics, economics, religion, and the arts. He was a master of English prose. The Clarendon Hume Edition General Editors: Professor T. L. Beauchamp, Georgetown University, USA, (...) Professor D. F. Norton, McGill University, Canada, and Professor M. A. Stewart, University of Lancaster, EnglandThe Clarendon Hume will include all of his works except his History of England and minor historical writings; it will be the only thorough critical edition, and will provide a far more extensive scholarly treatment than any previous editions. This edition offers authoritative annotation, bibliographical information, and indexes, and draws upon the major advances in textual scholarship that have been made since the publication of earlier editions--advances both in the understanding of editorial principle and practice and in knowledge of the history of Hume's own texts. The Edition will comprise: Volumes 1 and 2: A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by D. F. Norton Volume 3: An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, edited by T. L. Beauchamp Volume 4: An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, edited by T. L. Beauchamp Volume 5: The Natural History of Religion and the Dissertation on the PassionsVolumes 6 and 7: EssaysVolume 8: Dialogues concerning Natural Religion and other posthumous publications, edited by M. A. Stewart About this workAn Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals was Hume's third great philosophical work, first published in 1751. Hume's aim in this elegant and lucid work was to present in an accessible way his theory of the foundation of morality in human nature, which had developed significantly since he first addressed the subject in the Treatise of Human Nature. He discusses moral psychology; freedom, necessity, and causation; practical reasoning; justice; virtues and other moral qualities. He considered this Enquiry to be 'of all my writings, historical, philosophical, or literary, incomparably the best'. About this volumeThe authoritative version of the text, based upon the 1772 edition that was seen through the press by Hume himself, is presented here accurately and clearly. The editor's introduction sets the work in its historical context; the annotation and glossary provide information about Hume's sources, allusions, citations, and meanings, to help readers towards a full understanding of the text. A biographical appendix identifies the many people mentioned by Hume in the Enquiry. Bibliographies list the works cited by Hume and a selection of the secondary literature. Hume's original index is reproduced, together with a new general index by the editor. (shrink)