I defend a modified version of Marc Fleurbaey and Alex Voorhoeve's Competing Claims View that captures an additional consideration of fairness in the context of variable populations. I call this consideration `worthwhileness'. Part 1 goes on to argue that this view describes the expected value of a lottery in a way that is consistent with the axiological framework of Averagism. Also, I propose a novel definition of `overpopulation', and explain why considerations of fairness so-described by Averagism support our other moral reasons for avoiding overpopulating the world. In part 2, I design and run a toy model to determine which development policy-option is best in terms of satisfying the Competing Claims View. One of these options is ambiguous insofar as it combines two intuitions which have time and again proven themselves rather diffcult to jointly pin down. Putting them together forms what I will hereafter call, after its leading proponent, Broome's Intuition About Neutrality (`BN'). I argue that there is at least one combination of a (mathematically) well-behaved axiology and bridge principle that yields a moral theory which satisfies the normative reading of BN. Armed with all the right ingredients, we can now run the model. Based on some conservative assumptions, we find that we ought to take steps towards: (a) militating against the threat of a broken world; and (b) prolonging humankind's place in the stars (to some extent).

The aim of this thesis is to defend a version of volitionism from objections concerning the epistemic condition of moral responsibility (especially of moral culpability). My view states that an agent is morally blameworthy for her action only if (a) the action is morally wrong and (b) she has performed the action against her better judgement that the action is wrong or from a state of culpable ignorance. In chapter 1 I provide reason in favour of volitionism and against attributionism to motivate further articulation of volitionism. In chapter 2 I discuss when it is appropriate to blame an agent for holding a false belief. In chapter 3 I defend the thesis that an agent is blameworthy for performing an action only if the action is objectively wrong (the Objective View). In chapter 4 I defend the thesis that whenever an agent acts from ignorance, she is culpable for the act only if she is culpable for the ignorance from which she acts (the Ignorance Thesis). In chapter 5 I defend the thesis that moral culpability always involves akrasia (the Akrasia Thesis). Finally, in chapter 6 I will conclude the defence of my version of volitionism by undermining the thesis that in order for an agent to be morally responsible for an action, it is necessary (and sufficient when the other conditions are met) that some facts she takes to be playing a role in explaining why the action is good or bad be personally available to her (The Consciousness Thesis).

This thesis will argue that a significant part of our moral experience can be explained by an analogy with the phenomenon of aspect perception discussed by Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations. I will argue that projectivism cannot give a satisfactory account of moral perception. This difficulty constitutes an argument against projectivism; namely that projectivism is hopeless as an account of the phenomenology of morality, because it is at variance with the way we actually think and talk morally. It will be shown how quasi-realism is an attempt to remove the most important range of objections to projectivism - namely that it cannot account for the phenomena of serious moral thought and talk. I argue that the project of quasi-realism ultimately fails, leaving realism as the theory most able to account for our moral experience. I shall reveal the untenable assumptions of the ‘Absolute’ viewpoint entailed by the non-realist arguments of J.L.Mackie, and reveal the perpectival outlook that lies behind an aspect-seeing account of moral perception, and also illuminate why the key issue for moral realism is the question of whether we can establish moral objectivity. I shall then go on to say how much objectivity is possible. Finally, I shall show how a Wittgensteinian analogy between moral values and aspects helps to explain our common moral experience. The ability to perceive moral values will be shown to be tied in with the concept-dependency of moral perception, relying on discriminations that can only be made through the use of language, and hence through a shared form of life. The account will be shown to be fully capable of giving an account of our common moral experience

Protectionism: Applying Ethics Consistently focuses on the discrepancy between morality amongst human beings as opposed to morality with regard to all other life forms. The introduction explains important terminology, terms, methods and goals. The chapters that follow examine four prominent contemporary ethical theories that extend ethics to protect other life forms. Each chapter presents one of the four theories, immediately followed by a discussion of that theory. The first chapter discusses the work of Tom Regan, a philosopher who asserts that certain non-human animals hold rights, and that people are obligated to uphold corresponding duties to respect these rights. The second chapter examines the work of the philosopher Peter Singer, who recommends protection for some non-human animals based on sentience and utilitarian principles. The third chapter is dedicated to the work of Andrew Linzey, a theologian, who indicates a Christian obligation of servitude toward non-human animals based on Jewish and Christian scripture. The fourth chapter presents and examines the work of Paul Taylor, a philosopher who offers a theory of environmental ethics based on the inherent worth of certain plants and animals. The fifth chapter has two sections. Section A expands on Linzey's work to demonstrate consistency across faith traditions. Without focusing on any one tradition, this section highlights protectionist qualities within the Vedic/Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Islamic, and Indigenous religious traditions. Section B is an exercise in consistency in applied philosophy, which offers an ethical theory, the Minimize Harm Maxim. This theory is not my personal theory, but merely results from philosophic consistency and impartiality in applied ethics, based on current Western ethics regarding human life. The conclusion restates the ethical dilemma - a discrepancy in our current ethical system - and reaffirms the need for continued philosophical explorations of ethical theory and practice with regard to life, toward a morality that is less partial and more consistent.

Deleuze opposes ethics to Morality. He claims that an ethics develops immanent criteria to evaluate modes of existence, while a Morality imposes transcendent principles. This thesis explores the question of ethics, and I investigate the possibilities of an ethics of the pre-individual. Consequently this enterprise involves the development of an alternative ontology of becoming corresponding to a philosophy of difference. By taking this trajectory, I seek to show that an anti-human humanism is possible and demonstrate how this might work. Deleuze and Guattari always emphasise the practical and concrete nature of philosophy; therefore, in order to situate their concepts I begin the thesis with an examination of different theoretical approaches to the question of difference. However, I suggest that difference and heterogeneity cannot be simply affirmed in and of themselves since new forms of domination also affirm difference. My next chapter follows up on this idea by interrogating the allegation that philosophies of difference have made a political covenant with global capitalism. I draw on a distinction between power (potentia) and Power (Potestas) in order to explain how different modes of social organisation and domination can minimise the creative and transformational capacities of humans. By analysing a number of theoretical accounts of capitalism I demonstrate how and why it differs from other social formations. Nonetheless, I conclude that philosophy can indeed be distinguished from capitalism. Philosophy, as the art of inventing concepts, develops the conditions for real experimentation and new ways of thinking, being and existing. By turning to Spinoza's Ethics I propose that by thinking about the human differentially, as a part of nature, we can develop an immanent ethics. I explain how Spinoza's ontology operates especially in terms of its renovated conception of the human.In generating an ontology that is not centred on the individuated individual but grasps instead the individual as both relational and a degree of power, the pre-individual and transindividual dimensions of the human are emphasised and she is opened up to her non-human becomings. Simondon's account of metastable being explores this in greater detail. He argues that we have tended to extrapolate from the individuated individual in order to try to understand its conditions of existence. Alternatively, we have relied upon a principle of individuation that pre-exists the process of individuation. By intertwining his focus on the process of individuation with his idea that being is more than unity, more than identity and fundamentally incompatible with itself, I present Simondon's account of an ontology of becoming and his correlative conception of a pre-individual field. Residing at the core of his endeavour is a theory of difference and disparateness that understands identity to be emergent, partial, relative and derivative. Simondon's emphasis on disparateness recurs in Deleuze's work 'Difference and Repetition' mobilise this idea in order to distinguish between a created possible and a realisable possible, and to elucidate the ethico-political implications of this distinction. The concept of the 'image of thought' that rests on a series of non-philosophical pre-suppositions helps us to critique dominant modes of thinking and acting. In addition to critique, I seek to construct other ways of thinking and existing. Once again I focus upon the preindividual and transindividual dimensions of the human when in my concluding chapter I map the different conceptions of ethics and subjectivity, that emerge once we transform our understanding of ontology. An ethics of the pre-individual relies on immanent criteria for evaluating modes of existence, does not fetishise the human, and ultimately constructs the possibility, of things being otherwise.

The thesis asks the following question: If determinism cannot give an adequate account of freedom, but conversely, an appeal to freedom as such is unacceptable to determinism, how to formulate an alternative philosophy that would be acceptable to both? What are the conditions such an alternative would have to meet? It is within this overall problematic that we situate the though of Fichte and Bergson. A first step to the solution Fichte finds in Kant’s appeal to a original and synthetic act of consciousness, something said to be a necessary transcendental condition of experience. We situate this appeal to something both original and synthetic as motivated by the perceived failure of a radically reductivist empiricist project (i.e., determinism). But Kant was criticised for not having supplied a proof for such a principle. Fichte takes up this challenge but not in the way his project has ordinarily been understood. Fichte tries to show that a foundational synthetic act can only ever be adequately understood when taking the form of an opposition of I and notI. The I and notI are cogenetic in that they must be seen to stand in a relation of reciprocal determination. We are then able to demonstrate that the three principles of the Foundations (selfpositing, opposition and reciprocal determination) are simultaneous and not successive. For all their differences and for all his critique of Kant, Bergson is confronted with a similarly structured problem. Departing from an experience that is said to be continuous (duration), how now to account for the very real difference of the organised and the unorganised? Bergson will have to show that, although life/experience is continuous progress, this can only take the form of an opposition of “that which is making” and “that which is already made”, between habit and effort. Fichte and Bergson may be discussed in one thesis because both give a very sustained account of how to think relationally. They prioritise the question of the Verhältnis (dynamic relation, reciprocity) of subject and object as something that precedes the question of the Beziehung (directed relation, intentionality) of subject and object. The second question already assumes subject and object and is therefore dependent on the first. For Fichte and Bergson to understand subject and object means to understand them as different activities, different temporalities, different forms of organisation, as parts of a relation. Such a relational thought is what ultimately allows us to mediate the conflict of determinism and freedom.

This thesis is an attempt to answer the following question: Do our moral commitments commit us to constraints on what meta-ethical theories we find attractive? In order to answer this question, I first demonstrate that meta-ethical theories can be criticised on moral grounds. I then argue that correctness conditions for moral claims imply the thesis of explanatory moral realism. I do not claim that this is an argument for the truth of explanatory moral realism. Rather, I claim that this is an argument that moral realism is a moral commitment. I then look at two objections to the claim that moral claims can have built in commitments to a meta-ethical theory that takes a stand on the issue of moral realism. The first of these is a set of arguments that Simon Blackburn gives for quasi-realism. The second objection is a set of arguments given by Ronald Dworkin that attack the presuppositions of debates about realism in meta-ethics.

In recent decades, Aristotelian virtue ethics has reemerged as an alternative to deduction-based moral theories. Yet, Aristotelian virtue ethics has often been conceived by its proponents as well as its detractors, as an approach to ethical thinking that is neither normative in nature nor capable of being formulated in normative terms. In this thesis, I argue that the fundamental elements of Aristotelian virtue ethics, examined and modified in light of modern thinking, provide the basis for a systematized, normative ethical theory. I further argue that such a theory can be grounded in induction, rather than deduction, and that it can fully acknowledge and incorporate the ethical significance of particulars, particular relationships, and human experience. I suggest that an induction-informed normative theory not only avoids such logical pitfalls as Hume's "is-ought" objection and concerns pertaining to the truth-value of moral claims, but also that it provides an accurate account of our moral and non-moral experience, as well as of their areas of intersection. I propose methods for evaluating the acceptability of general guidelines and singular moral judgements, and I argue that these methods can be successfully achieved within, and enhanced by, the framework of Aristotelian virtue ethics. I examine various aspects of moral theory in general and Aristotelian virtue ethics in particular (e.g. principles and guidelines, human nature and telos, virtue, partially and universalizability), and argue for their place within and relationship to an induction-informed normative moral theory. I reply to criticisms levelled against Aristotelian ethical theory and, in so doing, argue that Aristotle's classification of arete as a dunamis in the Rhetoric has significant implications for moral theory, argue for the claims and obligations generated by particular relationships, and reevaluate the role of the phronimos. I review the logical and practical implications of an inductive model, and suggest not only that such a model is more consistent and more practicable than are current deduction-based normative theories, but also that it calls into question our standard conceptualization of normativity. In closing, I suggest a reexamination of "normativity" in terms of the function of normative theory.

Guy Debord (1931-1994) was the director of the International situationniste journal and de facto leader of the group of artists, writers, filmmakers and political agitators who went by the same name. This thesis will consider his many articles, signed and unsigned, that he contributed to the journal alongside his films and the theoretical work for which he is best known, La Société du spectacle (1967) in order to analyse and critique his written, filmic and organisational contribution to the group. The notion of ‘Situationism’, one Debord and the Situationists disdained, will be examined in the course of an assessment of the Situationists’ enduring relevance to contemporary debates in thought and politics as well as to the theory and practice of protest. In resistance to attempts to cast the Situationists as Romantic idealists who founded their critique of society upon a notion of unalienated human nature in need of freeing from the fetters of a capitalistic spectacle, it will be argued that the Situationists presented a radical rejection of such notions in elaborating their own conception of the capacities for egalitarian political subjectivation. The first chapter deals with the formative influence of Marx and Marxism on Debord’s La Société du spectacle and Situationist theory more generally. The second chapter examines the Situationist concept of détournement, the diversion or hijacking of pre-existing cultural elements in new works, with particular reference to Debord’s films. A third chapter presents a particular conception of ethics which emerges from both the writings and the organisational practice of the Situationist International before a final chapter assessing the Situationists’ pertinence to twenty-first century emancipatory politics.

This thesis addresses the question of what Nyerere’s particular version of Ujamaa (socialism) is. It answers that question by focusing on themes which surround and feed into Ujamaa, in order to provide its conceptual account. The thesis is an account of the ideology of Ujamaa in both theory and practice. Thus while the writings of Nyerere have been a primary source along with contemporary and subsequent commentators, the thesis is not about Nyerere, the person or the body of his work, but about the development and construction of the particular social, cultural, and political theory and practice. Therefore, only the elements of Nyerere’s thought which speak directly about this have been included. Data was collected from the writings of Nyerere as a primary source and supplemented with the work of other commentators in order to argue that Ujamaa was not just a development theory but it was also an ideology, a reconstruction of an imaginary relationship at the level of the state, which should be reinstated in order to free Tanzanians from the yoke of domination. Thus, as well as being interesting historically and conceptually, the thesis might also be relevant considering the contemporary political situation in Tanzania.