What is Justice? Classic and Contemporary Readings, 2/e, brings together many of the most prominent and influential writings on the topic of justice, providing an exceptionally comprehensive introduction to the subject. It places special emphasis on "social contract" theories of justice, both ancient and modern, culminating in the monumental work of John Rawls and various responses to his work. It also deals with questions of retributive justice and punishment, topics that are often excluded from other volumes on justice. This new edition features expanded and updated readings on justice and punishment and includes more recent responses to John Rawls's work. Part One of the book features selections from classical sources including Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Mencius, as well as excerpts from the Bible and the Koran. Part Two provides readings on the state of nature and the social contract, from Hobbes and Locke to Rawls, Nozick, Gauthier, and Baier. Part Three includes the Declaration of Independence and Amendments to the U.S. Constitution in addition to selections on property and social justice by Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Engels, Marx, Mill, and several contemporary authors. Part Four offers a wide variety of readings on punishment, several of which address the death penalty. Part Five begins with selections from Rawls's work and includes responses from Dworkin, Nagel, Nozick, MacIntyre, Sandel, Walzer, Okin, and Rawls himself. Each selection is preceded by a brief introduction and each of the five parts opens with an introduction. The volume is further enhanced by a general introduction and an updated and extensive bibliography. Ideal for a wide variety of courses including social and political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of law, and contemporary moral problems, What Is Justice?, 2/e, does not assume any philosophical or specialized background. It is also engaging reading for anyone interested in justice.

What Is Justice?: Classic and Contemporary Readings

Politics & Social Sciences

SOLOMON, ROBERT C.

Murphy, Mark C.

Philosophy

Oxford University Press

What Is Justice?: Classic and Contemporary Readings, Second Edition and An Introduction to Political Philosophy

Wolff, Jonathan

Does God's existence make a difference to how we explain morality? Mark C. Murphy critiques the two dominant theistic accounts of morality--natural law theory and divine command theory--and presents a novel third view. He argues that we can value natural facts about humans and their good, while keeping God at the centre of our moral explanations. The characteristic methodology of theistic ethics is to proceed by asking whether there are features of moral norms that can be adequately explained only if we hold that such norms have some sort of theistic foundation. But this methodology, fruitful as it has been, is one-sided. God and Moral Law proceeds not from the side of the moral norms, so to speak, but from the God side of things: what sort of explanatory relationship should we expect between God and moral norms given the existence of the God of orthodox theism? Mark C. Murphy asks whether the conception of God in orthodox theism as an absolutely perfect being militates in favor of a particular view of the explanation of morality by appeal to theistic facts. He puts this methodology to work and shows that, surprisingly, natural law theory and divine command theory fail to offer the sort of explanation of morality that we would expect given the existence of the God of orthodox theism. Drawing on the discussion of a structurally similar problem--that of the relationship between God and the laws of nature--Murphy articulates his new account of the relationship between God and morality, one in which facts about God and facts about nature cooperate in the explanation of moral law.

God and Moral Law: On the Theistic Explanation of Morality

Every version of the argument from evil requires a premise concerning God's motivation - about the actions that God is motivated to perform or the states of affairs that God is motivated to bring about. The typical source of this premise is a conviction that God is, obviously, morally perfect, where God's moral perfection consists in God's being motivated to act in accordance with the norms of morality by which both we and God are governed. The aim of God's Own Ethics is to challenge this understanding by giving arguments against this view of God as morally perfect and by offering an alternative account of what God's own ethics is like. According to this alternative account, God is in no way required to promote the well-being of sentient creatures, though God may rationally do so. Any norms of conduct that favor the promotion of creaturely well-being that govern God's conduct are norms that are contingently self-imposed by God. This revised understanding of divine ethics should lead us to revise sharply downward our assessment of the force of the argument from evil while leaving intact our conception of God as an absolutely perfect being, supremely worthy of worship.

God's Own Ethics: Norms of divine agency and the argument from evil

Holiness is the attribute most emphatically ascribed to God in Scripturem, but there has been little attention devoted to characterizing and considering the entailments of divine holiness. In Divine Holiness and Divine Action, Mark C. Murphy defends an account of holiness indebted to RudolfOtto's description of the experience of the holy as that of a mysterium tremendum et fascinans. God's being holy consists in God's being someone with whom intimate union is both extremely desirable for us and yet something for which we - and indeed any limited beings - are unfit. This notion ofdivine holiness is useful for addressing disputed theological questions regarding divine action. In contrast to standard accounts of divine action that begin with assumptions regarding God's moral perfection or God's maximal love, the appeal to divine holiness supports a rival framework forexplaining and predicting divine action - the holiness framework - according to which God is motivated to act in ways that are a response to God's own value by keeping distance from that which is deficient, defective, or in any way limited in goodness. This study exhibits the fruitfulness of areorientation from the morality and love frameworks to the holiness framework by showing how such a reorientation suggests distinct approaches to perennial problems of divine action regarding creation, incarnation, atonement, and salvation. From the treatment of these perennial problems, a generaltheme regarding divine action emerges: that God's interaction with the world exhibits a radical sort of humility.

Divine Holiness and Divine Action (Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology)

Does God's existence make a difference to how we explain morality? Mark C. Murphy critiques the two dominant theistic accounts of morality--natural law theory and divine command theory--and presents a novel third view. He argues that we can value natural facts about humans and their good, while keeping God at the centre of our moral explanations. The characteristic methodology of theistic ethics is to proceed by asking whether there are features of moral norms that can be adequately explained only if we hold that such norms have some sort of theistic foundation. But this methodology, fruitful as it has been, is one-sided. God and Moral Law proceeds not from the side of the moral norms, so to speak, but from the God side of things: what sort of explanatory relationship should we expect between God and moral norms given the existence of the God of orthodox theism? Mark C. Murphy asks whether the conception of God in orthodox theism as an absolutely perfect being militates in favor of a particular view of the explanation of morality by appeal to theistic facts. He puts this methodology to work and shows that, surprisingly, natural law theory and divine command theory fail to offer the sort of explanation of morality that we would expect given the existence of the God of orthodox theism. Drawing on the discussion of a structurally similar problem--that of the relationship between God and the laws of nature--Murphy articulates his new account of the relationship between God and morality, one in which facts about God and facts about nature cooperate in the explanation of moral law.

Natural Law and Practical Rationality (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Law)

According to the natural law account of practical rationality, the basic reasons for actions are basic goods that are grounded in the nature of human beings. Practical rationality aims to identify and characterize reasons for action and to explain how choice between actions worth performing can be appropriately governed by rational standards. Natural Law and Practical Rationality is a defense of a contemporary natural law theory of practical rationality, demonstrating its inherent plausibility and engaging systematically with rival egoist, consequentialist, Kantian and virtue accounts.

Cambridge University Press

Natural law is a perennial though poorly represented and understood issue in political philosophy and the philosophy of law. Mark C. Murphy argues that the central thesis of natural law jurisprudence--that law is backed by decisive reasons for compliance--sets the agenda for natural law political philosophy, which demonstrates how law gains its binding force by way of the common good of the political community. Murphy's work ranges over the central questions of natural law jurisprudence and political philosophy, including the formulation and defense of the natural law jurisprudential thesis, the nature of the common good, the connection between the promotion of the common good and requirement of obedience to law, and the justification of punishment.

Natural Law in Jurisprudence and Politics (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Law)

In the first book wholly concerned with divine authority, Mark C. Murphy explores the extent of God's rule over created rational beings. The author challenges the view―widely supported by theists and nontheists alike―that if God exists, then humans must be bound by an obligation of obedience to this being. He demonstrates that this view, the "authority thesis," cannot be sustained by any of the arguments routinely advanced on its behalf, including those drawn from perfect being theology, metaethical theory, normative principles, and even Scripture and tradition. After exposing the inadequacies of the various arguments for the authority thesis, he develops his own solution to the problem of whether, and to what extent, God is authoritative.
For Murphy, divine authority is a contingent matter: while created rational beings have decisive reason to subject themselves to the divine rule, they are under divine authority only insofar as they have chosen to allow God's decisions to take the place of their own in their practical reasoning. The author formulates and defends his arguments for this view, and notes its implications for understanding the distinctiveness of Christian ethics.

An Essay on Divine Authority (Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion)

Cornell University Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Murphy, Mark C.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Murphy, Mark C.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Murphy, Mark C.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

What Is Justice?: Classic and Contemporary Readings

What Is Justice?: Classic and Contemporary Readings, Second Edition and An Introduction to Political Philosophy

God and Moral Law: On the Theistic Explanation of Morality

God's Own Ethics: Norms of divine agency and the argument from evil

Divine Holiness and Divine Action (Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology)

God and Moral Law: On the Theistic Explanation of Morality

Natural Law and Practical Rationality (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Law)

Natural Law in Jurisprudence and Politics (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Law)

Natural Law and Practical Rationality (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Law)

An Essay on Divine Authority (Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion)