The Development of Ethics: Volume 1: From Socrates to the Reformation - Softcover

Review from previous edition A remarkable work of scholarship. Very few philosophers could produce a work of such scale and such erudition. Professor Irwin has studied his chosen authors with minute precision, and has read exhaustively in the secondary literature. Sources are conscientiously recorded and ample quotations provided in footnotes. The treatment of controversial issues is always balanced, and the eventual verdicts are always judicious ... This book is a monument of erudition and patience, and gives promise of similar virtues in the forthcoming successor volume. (Anthony Kenny, Times Literary Supplement)

For it truly is a great book, and I doubt that we will see a history of ethics similar in scope and ambition for some time to come. (Mark Eli Kalderon, Ethics)

Para concluir, é preciso enfatizar a erudição, a clareza, a elegância com que os argumentos são apresentados e, sobretudo, a excepcional fecundidade que eles possuem para o debate sobre os destinos da ética como disciplina filosófica. Os estudos acadêmicos em ética e, em geral, em filosofia encontrarão nesta obra uma referência segura e uma fonte importante de freeiração e direção. (Marco Zingano, Journal of Ancient Philosophy)

Development ... provides the novice in ethics with a challenging introduction to moral philosophical thinking and the more experienced scholar with a host of bold yet clear positions that invite philosophical consideration and reflection. We can look forward to more of the same in the upcoming volumes that continue and conclude Irwin's extensive project. (Dimitrios Dentsoras, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews)

The Development of Ethics is a selective historical and critical study of moral philosophy in the Socratic tradition, with special attention to Aristotelian naturalism, its formation, elaboration, criticism, and defence. It discusses the main topics of moral philosophy as they have developed historically, including: the human good, human nature, justice, friendship, and morality; the methods of moral inquiry; the virtues and their connexions; will, freedom, and responsibility; reason and emotion; relativism, subjectivism, and realism; the theological aspect of morality. This volume examines ancient and medieval philosophy up to the sixteenth century; Volumes 2 and 3 will continue the story up to Rawls's Theory of Justice.
The present volume begins with Socrates, the Cyrenaics and Cynics, and Plato, and then offers a fuller account of Aristotle, stressing the systematic naturalism of his position. The Stoic position is compared with the Aristotelian at some length; Epicureans and Sceptics are discussed more briefly. Chapters on early Christianity and on Augustine introduce a fuller examination of Aquinas' revision, elaboration, and defence of Aristotelian naturalism. The volume closes with an account of some criticisms of the Aristotelian outlook by Scotus, Ockham, Machiavelli, and some sixteenth-century Reformers.
The emphasis of the book is not purely descriptive, narrative, or exegetical, but also philosophical. Irwin discusses the comparative merits of different views, the difficulties that they raise, and how some of the difficulties might be resolved. The book tries to present the leading moral philosophers of the past as participants in a rational discussion that is still being carried on, and tries to help the reader to participate in this discussion.