The primary aim of this thesis is to examine whether and how Kantian ethicists can accommodate the intuitions that motivate moral particularism: the intuition that the moral domain is very complex, that our moral obligations vary with circumstances in ways that are hard to codify, and that there are exceptions to most, if not all, moral principles that we can think of or formulate (Part One). The secondary aim of this thesis is to draw on the insights gained in the course of this investigation in order to contribute to the solution of two other problems that occupy contemporary Kantian ethicists (Part Two). To begin with, I discuss and reject a number of existing attempts to account for the circumstance-dependence of our moral obligations within a Kantian framework. What all these attempts have in common is the assumption that, for Kant, a principle of duty is universally valid only if it is valid in all cases or situations. I call this the “Case-Scope Reading” of Kant’s conception of universal validity. When combined with the requirements that emerge from the challenge mounted by their particularist opponents, this reading throws Kantians on the horns of a trilemma. In response, I suggest that we should rethink this understanding of universal validity in light of the distinctive role and significance assigned to universal rules within Kant’s theory of objective knowledge. If we do, we are led to what I call the “Agent-Scope Reading” of Kant’s conception of universal validity: the view that a principle is universally valid if and only if it can be agreed to hold by all rational agents (qua judging subjects) and for all such agents (qua objects judged) in the same circumstances. This reading has a number of advantages. Not only does it expose the trilemma mentioned above as merely apparent, it also helps Kantians to dissolve the so-called Problem of Relevant Descriptions and to defend Kantian Constructivism against its Humean critics.

The thesis proposes an ethics centred on the notion of human dignity. In Chapter One I introduce the position the thesis proposes, Agent Particularism, according to which who you are is relevant to determining what you ought to do. I reject the thesis of the universalizability of moral judgements that says that if you judge that X is the right thing for you to do, you are necessarily committed to the view that X is the right thing for everybody to do in relevantly similar circumstances. In Chapter Two I present an Agent-Particularist conception of freedom. I offer an Agent-Particularist conception of the self. I make a distinction between negative freedom, which is being free from external interference, and positive freedom, which is developing into the ideal version of yourself (in accord with your particular nature). In Chapter Three I present Agent Particularism as a kind of virtue ethics. I offer a solution to an epistemological problem that the thesis faces: once I have rejected the existence of exceptionless moral principles, how can there be moral knowledge and what kind of knowledge that would be? I argue that the problem can be solved by understanding moral knowledge as consisting on the deliverances of a perceptual capacity. I position Agent Particularism in relation to traditional virtue ethics. In Chapter Four I present the Agent-Particularist conception of human dignity. I show that the Agent-Particularist position developed in the first three chapters issues in a peculiar conception of human dignity. I present the basic elements of an Agent-Particularist conception of dignity. I present Kant's conception of dignity and contrast it with the Agent-Particularist conception.

The thesis considers the rôle of the concept of attention in modern moral philosophy. In Part I of the thesis I argue that the structure of much modern moral philosophy neglects or distorts the issue of the attention the good man offers others as individuals, taking as examples the works of David Gauthier, Charles Fried and Bernard Williams. In Part II I turn to the study of affection and of love for an alternative account of the attention we should offer others, and the place of such an attention within a good life. I first consider two theological studies of the loves of Eros, Agape and Philia; that of M.C.D’Arcy, and that of Aelred of Rieveaulx as amplified by Andrew Sullivan. I then progress to an account of compassion and of friendship seen outside of any theological context. I argue that the attention to others found in certain forms of love gives us an altered sense of the other as an individual, and indeed an altered sense of self. I argue that this changed sense of self and other conditions our wider moral understanding, including our sense of what we owe to others outside of relations of compassion and friendship.

The aim of this study is to reach a philosophical understanding of the concept of morality. The contemporary literature is dominated by a series of contrasts; 'individual' morality and 'social' morality, a morality of 'sensibility' and 'insight' and one of 'rules' and 'principles' , 'formal' as against 'material' characterisations. In reviewing it the suggestion arises that this dualism is systematic and depends upon some more fundamental feature of the concept. A point of general agreement is that there is an intimate relationship between. morality and the world of human actions and activities. This world makes two major intellectual demands on us. There is the need to decide how to act in particular Situations, and there is the need to see one's actions as invested with a larger significance, as elements in a meaningful pattern. Morality is a response to both demands. Thus, it consists of a dimension of assessment of action, a sphere of practical judgement, and of a way of interpreting its significance, a mode of vision. These aspects may be distinguished by speaking of 'moral assessment' on the one hand and of 'moral understanding' on the other. Moral understanding may be characterised in terms of the kind of significance it offers and the kind of reasons it can recognise. A striking feature of the distinction between moral and non-moral forms of 'understanding is its tendency to cut across conventional categories. This can be illustrated in the case of religious belief and of what may, loosely and provisionally, be called 'humanism'. But it is also possible to find familiar modes of thought l"1hichbelong wholly and unequivocally to each side. When the lesser contrasts are examined in the light of the understanding-assessment distinction it is found that the claims made for the fundamental significance of that between the 'individual' and the 'social' cannot be sustained. Only the 'individual' half can comprise both understanding and assessment and so qualify as a wholly adequate conception of morality. There are some residual problems here which involve the issue of 'form 'versus' content'. This controversy dissolves, in its turn, once it is recognised that while moral understanding is contentless, moral assessmentt is necessarily tied to certain material considerations. The stress on the contrast between 'sensibility' and 'rules' may be interpreted as an oblique way of drawing attention to that between understanding and assessment, and, more specifically, of warning against the danger of identifying morality with practical reason. The element of truth in this is safeguarded by assigning talk of 'sensibility' to understanding and of 'rules' t~ assessment. A general conclusion that emerges from the discussion of these antitheses concerns the need for moral philosophy to work with an adequate conception of what it is to be human, a philosophical theory of man. The final task is to draw together the elements of the fundamental distinction, and so exhibit the unity of the concept of morality. It is best pursued through a discussion of some problems connected with education. There is an important tendency in the philosophical literature which may be interpreted as a recognition of the conceptual link between education and moral understanding. Moreover the concept of education provides a bridge between the category provisionally known as 'humanism' and a reconstructed one from which the non-moral elements have been excluded. What remains are moral understanding and moral assessment. The essential link between them is that they constitute a coherent and systematic approach to a particular area of experience. Using a terminology that needs careful explication, morality may be characterised as the response of humanism to the demands of the practical world.

This thesis analyses the ways in which desire has been traditionally configured in terms of its relation to both being and becoming. Techniques for the domestication of desire through idealized concepts of community, the subject, the body, life and ethics, are analyzed in respect of their transcendental construction and the practices of power which they legitimate. The critical texts of Immanuel Kant are taken as the primary focus of an attempt to separate the negative values implicit in Humanism from the positive project of Enlightenment thinking. This separation, it is argued, effects a reconceptualization of the classical opposition between Man and Nature, allowing us to elaborate new definitional structures of the above themes (community, the subject, the body, life and ethics). In a postmodern era, these new formulations enable philosophical thought to accept the de-centering and dispersal of the subject without abandoning the critical project of self-experimentation, together with the political and ethical demands produced in the interactions and associations of selves in becoming. In the attempt to open up a space for thinking the desiring self of post-humanism, this writing follows a two-fold course. On the one hand, it argues against the internal organization and rationality of subject-producing ideologies. On the other, it seeks to elucidate the points of resistance in and against the power structures inherent in our societies and at work in our procedures of representation and objectification.

Global climate change has important implications for the way in which benefits and burdens will be distributed amongst present and future generations. As a result, it raises important questions of intergenerational distributive ethics, which is the issue of how benefits and burdens should be distributed across generations. It is shown that two serious problems arise for those who wish to approach these questions by utilising familiar ethical principles. The first (the Non-Reciprocity Problem) arises from the apparent lack of reciprocity evident in dealings between members of different generations. The second (the Non-Identity Problem) arises from the fact that the very social policies which climatologists and scientists claim will reduce the risks of climate change will also predictably, if indirectly, determine which individuals will live in the future. The troubling questions which these problems raise for theorising about intergenerational ethics are discussed at length, and it is argued that they do not, ultimately, pose an insurmountable barrier for such theorising, and in particular for the idea that present persons have wide ranging obligations to members of future generations. It is argued, however, that these two problems do severely limit the extent to which theories which are reciprocity-based and/or identity-dependent can be extended to cover issues of intergenerational distribution. Reciprocity-based theories assume that obligations of distributive ethics are owed only to those who can benefit others; whereas identity-dependent theories assume that acts, or social policies, cannot violate the requirements of distributive ethics if they do not harm, or disadvantage, particular individuals. Some positive grounds for our obligations to future generations are also outlined. In particular, the idea that members of existing generations ought not act so as to undermine the integrity of various future communities, such as nations or cultures, is defended.

This is the study of the extent of the patternability of the reason-giving behaviour of morally relevant features in different ethical contexts. Whether or not the way in which a morally relevant feature contributes to the moral evaluation of different cases is generalis able is examined in this research. I argue in favour of a core and constitutive modest-generalistic theme, according to which there are general patterns of word use, to which the reason-giving behaviour of moral vocabulary in different contexts is answerable. To this end, I reject the constitutive particularistic claim which holds that the way in which a morally relevant feature behaves in different cases is fully context-dependent. An account drawn from Wittgenstein with regard to the nature of concepts which emphasises the key role of the concept 'practice' is presented to give an account of how the reason-giving behaviour of a morally relevant feature in different contexts is answerable to general patterns of word use. Ross's ethics is introduced as an example of the modest-generalistic position. To substantiate this modest-generalistic position, an apparent dilemma is presented for particularists, e.g. Dancy. In order to resolve the second horn of the dilemma, which is an example of a general problem with which any generalistic account is confronted, the account drawn from Wittgenstein with regard to the nature of concepts is again used. Finally, a distinction between the first order and the second order account of the concept 'practice' is presented to give a more plausible account of the concept 'practice' which has an indispensable role in the Wittgensteinian account.

This thesis is about the relationship between ethics and language in the work of the contemporary French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. The approach taken is to place his work in the context of a current debate in philosophy about the limits of language and the end(s) of philosophy. In the first chapter it looks at the place and significance of the thinking of Hegel, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Derrida in this debate, and locates Levinas' thinking within it by examining his reading of Descartes. The thesis then goes on to examine the major themes in Levinas' work and offers an interpretation of his claims for the `primacy' of the ethics which demonstrates their bearing on the traditional concern with the relationship between metaphysics and the other. The thesis makes special reference throughout to Jacques Derrida's first major essay on Levinas, `Violence and Metaphysics'. The thesis demonstrates the sense in which in Levinas `ethics' is the `enactment' of the philosophical concern with the other. It explores in detail the overlap between this concern with the other in philosophy and the relationship to the other person, in Levinas' thinking. This is undertaken, in this thesis, in the form of a detailed analysis of the relationship between the key notions of the face to face and the third party as is found in his first major work Totality and Infinity. The analysis is then extended to the later work Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. In this context, the thesis demonstrates how the beyond being is held to signify within philosophy, by inspiring philosophy with the thought of the other. The thesis as a whole considers how, in Levinas, the beyond being and the relation to the other are antecedent to their thematic representation in philosophy. It examines how the necessity of their representation is related, in Levinas, to a certain injustice vis a vis the other person.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the nature of moral thinking and thus to arrive at some conclusions as to the nature of moral thinkers. My starting point is that investigation of the ways we think in moral terms, particularly with respect to the way that the truth of thoughts constrains the claims we can make in moral discourse. That is, I want to start with the ways of thinking and the sorts of claims we make in moral terms, and see what those ways of thinking and claims tell us about the sorts of people we are and the environment we find ourselves in. This approach depends on a picture of our interaction and connection with our environment in conceptual terms that allows us to investigate one part of this interaction, our language and thought, and use it to give us information about the other parts of the interaction, the thinkers and what is thought about. The important element of this interaction is that it is an interaction responsive to the truth of the beliefs we hold and the claims we make. This requires me to defend the thesis that moral language and thought can be candidates for truth, and that the truth they respond to is not some particular truth relative to moral discourse, but truth tout court, as it applies to all discourses. Using the distinction I claim is made in moral language and thought between moral judgments and their truth I show that we need to be able to recognise moral agents as engaged or embedded in a network of personal relationships that are made up of commitments, responsibilities and expectations. It is these personal relationships that provide both justification and motivation for moral action and this is sufficient for morality.

The introduction of the new Glasgow medical curriculum provided an opportunity for evaluation of ethics education in the context of a modern curriculum.  The constraints imposed prevented a comprehensive evaluation of ethics teaching in the new curriculum.  Its focus had to be narrowed. This thesis builds on a dissertation submitted for a MMEd Degree at Dundee University, which covered the evaluation of ethics education in the first year of the new curriculum and produced the first three papers in the series being presented. It was decided to perform both process and outcome evaluation in year 1, where the largest proportion of formal curricular ethics sessions takes place.  Outcome evaluation continued throughout the curriculum.  The aims of the first year process evaluation were: 1) To judge the value of the curricular experiences provided for students in terms of: a) Acceptability to both students and tutors.  b) Feasibility.  c) Relevance of material to aims of teaching. 2) To judge the effectiveness of clinical tutors as facilitators of learning. The aim of the outcome evaluation was to test the following hypotheses: 1.  Small group ethics teaching, in the first year of an integrated medical curriculum, will have a positive impact on students’ potential behaviour when facing ethical dilemmas. 2.  The effect will be greater than that produced by a discrete lecture and large group teaching based course early in a traditional curriculum. 3.  Students’ performance will be adversely affected as they progress through the medical curriculum. 4.  The effect will be less pronounced in students undertaking the modern curriculum compared to those undertaking the traditional curriculum.