Today's Moral Issues

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Preface

• Introduction: Moral Arguments and Moral Relativism

• Relativism
• Arguments
• Evaluating Arguments: Three Arguments for Cultural Relativism
• Arguments Against Cultural Relativism
• Making Moral Arguments
• Exceptions to Moral Principles

• Part I: First Principles

• Theoretical Approaches

• Aristotle, from Nicomachean Ethics
• St. Thomas Aquinas, from Summa Theologica
• David Hume, from A Treatise of Human Nature
• Immanuel Kant, from Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals
• John Stuart Mill, from Utilitarianism
• *John Stuart Mill, A Letter to John Venn
• Simone de Beauvoir, from The Ethics of Ambiguity

• Sexual Behavior

• Bertrand Russell, "Our Sexual Ethics"
• Thomas A. Mappes, "Sexual Morality and the Concept of Using Another Person"
• Sydney Callahan, "Abortion and the Sexual Agenda"
• Roger Scruton, from Sexual Desire

• Animals

• International League of the Rights of Animals, "Universal Declaration of the Rights of Animals"
• Peter Singer, from Animal Liberation
• Tom Regan, "The Case for Animal Rights"
• Carl Cohen, "The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research"

• The Environment

• Garrett Hardin, from "The Tragedy of the Commons"
• Richard Stroup and John Baden, with David Fractor, "Property Rights: The Real Issue"
• Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, "Risks, Costs, and Benefits"
• Bill Devall and George Sessions, from Deep Ecology
• Karen J. Warren, "The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism"
• *Bjorn Lomborg, "Predicament or Progress"

• Part II: Liberty

• Theoretical Approaches

• Plato, from The Republic
• Aristotle, from Nicomachean Ethics
• Edmund Burke, from Reflections on the Revolution in France
• John Stuart Mill, from On Liberty

• Drug Legalization

• Milton Friedman, "An Open Letter to Bill Bennett"
• William J. Bennett, "A Response to Milton Friedman"
• Ethan A. Nadelmann, "The Case for Legalization"
• James Q. Wilson, "Against the Legalization of Drugs"

• Pornography

• Catherine MacKinnon, "Pornography, Civil Rights, and Speech"
• The Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, "The Question of Harm"
• Wendy McElroy, from Sexual Correctness

• Offensive Speech and Behavior

• Justice Antonin Scalia, Majority Opinion in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, Minnesota
• Stanley Fish, from "There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It's a Good Thing, Too"
• Johnathan Rauch, "Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought"
• *Justice William Brennan, Majority Opinion in Texas v. Johnson
• *Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Dissenting Opinion in Texas v. Johnson

• Sexual Orientation and Gay Marriage

• *Justice Byron White, Majority Opinion in Bowers v. Hardwick
• *Justice Anthony Kennedy, Majority Opinion in Lawrence v. Texas
• *Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall, Majority Opinion in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health
• *Justice Robert J. Cordy, Dissenting Opinion in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health
• *Jonathan Rauch, "Objections to These Unions"
• *Stanley Kurtz, "The Libertarian Question"

• Part III: Rights and Responsibilities

• Theoretical Approaches

• Thomas Hobbes, from Leviathan
• John Locke, from Second Treatise of Government
• Edmund Burke, from Reflections on the Revolution in France
• John Stuart Mill, from Utilitarianism

• Privacy

• Samuel Warren and Louis D. Brandeis, "The Right to Privacy"
• Richard Posner, from The Economics of Justice
• Jeffrey H. Reiman, "Driving to the Panopticon: A Philosophical Exploration of the Risks to Privacy Posed by the Information Technology of the Future"
• Rita C. Manning, "Liberal and Communitarian Defenses of Workplace Privacy"
• G. Randolph Mayes and Mark Alfino, "Rationality and the Right to Privacy"

• Abortion

• Justice Harry Blackmun, Majority Opinion in Roe v. Wade
• Judith Jarvis Thomson, "A Defense of Abortion"
• Mary Anne Warren, "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion"
• Jane English, "Abortion and the Concept of a Person"
• Don Marquis, "Why Abortion Is Immoral"
• *Robert P. George, "Public Reason and Political Conflict: Abortion"

• Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide

• Matter of Quinlan
• J. Gay-Williams, "The Wrongfulness of Euthanasia"
• James Rachels, "The Morality of Euthanasia"
• Ronald Dworkin, Thomas Nagel, Robert Nozick, John Rawls, Thomas Scanlon, and Judith Jarvis Thomson, "The Brief of the Amici Curiae"
• Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Majority Opinion in Washington v. Glucksberg et al.

• Capital Punishment

• *Cesare Beccaria, from On Crimes and Punishment
• *Immanuel Kant, "The Right of Punishing"
• Albert Camus, from "Reflections on the Guillotine"
• Justice William Brennan, Concurring Opinion in Furman v. Georgia
• Justices Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, Majority Opinion in Gregg v. Georgia
• Ernest van den Haag, from The Death Penalty: A Debate
• Hugo Adam Bedau, "The Case against the Death Penalty"
• William Tucker, "Why the Death Penalty Works"

• War

• *St. Thomas Aquinas, "Whether It Is Always Sinful to Wage War"
• *Hugo Grotius, from On the Law of War and Peace
• *Carl von Clausewitz, from On War
• *Mahatma Gandhi, "Non-Violence in Various Aspects"
• *Michael Walzer, from Just and Unjust Wars
• *Richard A. Posner and Gary Becker, "Preventive War"

• Part IV: Justice and Equality

• Theoretical Approaches

• Aristotle, from Nicomachean Ethics
• Aristotle, from Politics
• John Locke, from Second Treatise of Government
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from On the Social Contract
• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, from Manifesto of the Communist Party
• Albert Camus, "Bread and Freedom"
• John Rawls, from A Theory of Justice
• Robert Nozick, from Anarchy, State, and Utopia

• Economic Equality

• *Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Commonwealth Club Address
• Kai Nielsen, "Egalitarian Justice: Equality as a Goal and Equality as a Right"
• John Hospers "What Libertarianism Is"
• Ronald Dworkin, "Liberalism"
• Michael Walzer, "Welfare, Membership and Need"
• Charles Murray, from Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980
• Michael Tanner and Stephen Moore, "Why Welfare Pays"

• Racial Equality

• Chief Justice Earl Warren, Majority Opinion in Brown v. Board of Education
• Justice Lewis Powell, Majority Opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
• Antonin Scalia, "The Disease as a Cure"
• Bernard R. Boxill, from Blacks and Social Justice
• Thomas Sowell, "'Affirmative Action': A Worldwide Disaster"
• William G. Bowen and Derek Bok, from The Shape of the River
• *Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Majority Opinion in Gratz v. Bollinger
• *Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Majority Opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger

• Sexual Equality

• Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Antonin Scalia, Majority Opinion in United States v. Virginia et al.
• Mary Wollstonecraft, from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
• Alison M. Jaggar, "Sexual Difference and Sexual Equality"
• Christine A. Littleton, "Reconstructing Sexual Equality"
• Christina Hoff Sommers, from Who Stole Feminism?
• *F. Carolyn Graglia, from Domestic Tranquility

Asterisks denote readings new to this edition.