Moral Objectives, Rules and the Forms of Social Change (Toronto Studies in Philosophy) - Hardcover

Fruit From Forty Years' Writing, these Essays by David Braybrooke Take up an assortment of practical concerns that ethics brings into politics: people's interests, needs along with preferences, work and commitment to work, participation in social life. Essays follow on justice and the common good. One essay (new in this collection) explodes the oddly entrenched belief that utilitarianism sacrifices happiness for some people to greater pleasure for others. Parts Two and Three of the book deal with settled social rules, devices for securing the objectives just treated. Part two shows that rules go hand in hand with virtues, and, in social phenomena, with causal regularities. Part Three captures dialectic in history in a logical analysis of how rules (policies) can be prudent by keeping within incremental limits, yet imaginative enough to escape the recent embarrassments generated by social choice theory.Versatile in topic and style, Braybrooke lights up all these subjects. One reader has commented, 'Braybrooke's prose is elegant and always a pleasure to read. Some of the pieces are nothing short of brilliant.'

DAVID BRAYBROOKE is a professor emeritus in the department of philosophy at Dalhousie University and holds the Centennial Commission Chair in the Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.