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Dimensions of Moral Agency

Dimensions of Moral Agency addresses and exemplifies the multi-dimensionality of modern moral philosophy. The book is a collection of papers originally presented at the Northwest Philosophy Conference in October 2013. The papers encompass a wide variety of topics within moral philosophy, including metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics, and broadly fall within the areas of the nature of moral agency and moral agency as it is played out in particular aspects of people’s lived experiences. The papers include assessments of the contributions of historical figures, such as Aristotle, Epictetus, Confucius, Berkeley, and Descartes, as well as analyses of agency as it relates to individual and social moral issues like mental illness, the ethics of debt, prostitution, eco-consumerism, oppression, and species egalitarianism, among others. Also covered are concerns related to the nature of moral reasoning at the individual and social level, the relevance of love and emotion to moral agency, and moral responsibility and efficacy. Interwoven with these topics and issues are concerns related to what sorts of things are, or could be, moral agents and what constitutes a moral good; the possibility of the existence of moral knowledge or moral facts or moral truth; and what constitutes moral motivation and how that is, or is not, related to questions of moral justification.


David Boersema is Professor of Philosophy at Pacific University, in Forest Grove, Oregon, where he has taught since 1985. He is the general editor of the journal Essays in Philosophy. His publications include Pragmatism and Reference, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Human Rights, and Philosophy of Art.

“Pluralist scholars of meta-ethics, normative ethics, moral psychology, and philosophy of agency will find many useful resources in David Boersema’s Dimensions of Moral Agency. In this single volume, he’s managed to bring together fascinating research on emotion and virtue, the nature of reasons, moral belief, political freedom and freedom of the will, happiness, policy, and environmental ethics. These papers cross a variety of supposedly insurmountable divides. For instance, some focus on major historical figures (Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, the Stoics); others focus on very contemporary issues, such as environmental degradation. Some originate from phenomenological perspectives, drawing on Habermas and Hegel; others employ empirically-informed philosophy or good old fashioned conceptual analysis. Everything is original, in the best sense of the term. Philosophers and others who are interested in what agency can be in the emerging global economy, with ironic combination of iterated levels of dependency and anonymity, will not be disappointed.”
—Mark Alfano, University of Oregon

“David Boersema has brought together an engaging, challenging, and, at times, controversial collection of essays on moral agency. Though not a systematic analysis, this book very nicely highlights the major issues of agency – from free will, to emotions, to responsibility, to desire. It covers subjects as diverse as mental illness, Chinese philosophy, feminism, the environmental crisis, prostitution, animal rights, Stoicism, debt, and virtue ethics. In other words, this book will provide fruitful engagement to anyone interested in moral agency.”
—Andrew Fitz-Gibbon, State University of New York, College at Cortland

“Consisting of papers that cover a wide range of issues, Dimensions of Moral Agency nicely highlights the diversity and richness of modern moral philosophy. The wide range of topics included illustrates the richness of the terrain of modern moral philosophy, but also highlights interesting threads in the current literature – that is, it illustrates how ethicists are seeking to understand moral philosophy in its historical context while also recognizing that it needs to adapt to changes in our social context and our physical environment, and in our empirically informed understanding of what it means to be human.”
—Elizabeth Foreman, Saint Louis University

Chiara Bandini

Noell Birondo

Mary I. Bockover

Brandon Bowen

Jeffrey Gauthier

Colton Markham

Kari Middleton

Ryan Michael Murphy

Howard Nye

Kate Padgett Walsh

Morgan Rempel

Pierson Tse

Sarah Vincent

Buy This Book

ISBN: 1-4438-6692-X

ISBN13: 978-1-4438-6692-7

Release Date: 17th November 2014

Pages: 205

Price: £47.99

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