Abstract

In recent years there has been a revolt in moral philosophy against the idea that the purpose of moral philosophy is to produce the kind of highly abstract, universalistic, formal theories of morality that have been developed by such philosophers as Hare, Gewirth, and Rawls. Instead, it has been argued, moral philosophers should undertake more limited, contextualized, nonformal projects that focus on "local practices," moral traditions, and the role of the emotions in moral perception and action. This volume contains twelve of the best essays in this new style. In addition, there is an excellent introduction and a short "Guide to Recent Literature" that, save for its near exclusive focus on work done in the analytic tradition, is nicely comprehensive. The selections are what one might expect, with a few notable exceptions. For example, it contains no essay by Isaiah Berlin, despite the editors' acknowledgment of the importance to this body of work of the idea of moral pluralism. On the other hand, it does contain MacIntyre's "Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narratives, and the Philosophy of Science," which is only tangentially related to moral philosophy, rather than, for example, a chapter from his more directly related After Virtue.