Real Ethics
Reconsidering the Foundations of Morality

This 2001 book is a powerful defence of an ethical theory based on a revised version of Platonic realism.

John M. Rist (Author)

9780521006088, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 8 November 2001

304 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.5 kg

"To say that this work is profound is almost an understatement. Real Ethics is the work of a mature scholar steeped in history who is also an acute observer of contemporary manners and morals." - Jude P. Dougherty, The Catholic University of America

John Rist surveys the history of ethics from Plato to the present and offers a vigorous defence of an ethical theory based on a revised version of Platonic realism. In a wide-ranging discussion he examines well-known alternatives to Platonism, in particular Epicurus, Hobbes, Hume and Kant as well as contemporary 'practical reasoners', and argues that most post-Enlightenment theories of morality (as well as Nietzschean subversions of such theories) depend on an abandoned Christian metaphysic and are unintelligible without such grounding. He also argues that contemporary choice-based theories, whether they take a strictly ethical or more obviously political form, are ultimately arbitrary in nature. His lively and accessible 2001 study is informed by a powerful sense of philosophical history, and will be of interest to both students and scholars of ethics.

Introduction
1. Moral nihilism: Socrates vs. Thrasymachus
2. Morals and metaphysics
3. The soul and the self
4. Division and its remedies
5. Rules and applications
6. The past, present and future of practical reasoning
7. Autonomy and choice
8. Ethics and ideology
9. God and ethics.

Subject Areas: Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ]