A Metaphysical EthicsMan's Freedom [Book Review]
Abstract
Yet ethical theorists seem perennially to be drawn off into lengthy debates about side issues, with the result that the important questions are lost in the confusion and are dealt with more or less absent-mindedly. Amid the endless arguments about naturalism, the definability of good, the verifiability of ethical judgments, the scientific, extra-scientific or super-scientific status of ethics, it is difficult to locate the fundamental issues, the issues which all of us resolve, reflectively or absentmindedly, in one way or another, and the resolution of which influences profoundly, for better or worse, the directions taken in dealing with specific moral, social, and political problems. There are, nevertheless, important problems in ethics; and different solutions of them have extensive consequences for practice.