Philosophy Bites Daily

Kwame Anthony Appiah on Stamping Out Evil

Footbinding, dueling, and the Atlantic slave trade have more or less died out. Why is this? Read more...

Donor Baby or Saviour Sibling?

In France a child who will help his sister live has been born. His birth has sparked a heated ethical debate. Read more...

It's a Dog's Life, and It Matters

 Animal suffering matters. A brief survey of key thinkers' contributions to the animal welfare movement. Read more...

Alexander McCall Smith on Forgiveness

The novelist Alexander McCall Smith, a former professor of medical law, suggests that forgiveness of the right kind and at the right time can be an important social emollient. Read more...

Are Ethicists Courteous?

Preliminary experimental evidence has produced some unsurprising yet amusing results concerning ethicists' behaviour. It's a long-running professional joke that those who study it are often the least well-behaved. Or is this paper a parody? Read more...

Michael Sandel on Tax and Justice

What's the point of taxation? To raise revenue for the common good, says Michael Sandel. Read more...

Avoiding the Implications of Just War Theory

President Obama knows all about just war theory, but is he, perhaps, avoiding the consequence of defining U.S. actions in terms of it? Read more...

Should you let the goatherds go?

Michael Sandel explores a real moral dilemma with cadets at a military academy. Read more...

The Moral Psychology of War

Nancy Sherman explores the moral anguish of soldiers and the psychological consequences of stoicism. Read more...

Eugenics and Liberty

Julian Savulescu argues that choosing the eye and hair colour of your baby is not eugenics, whereas choosing healthy rather than diseased embryos is. He's for free parental choice using genetic testing provided the child will have a life worth living. Read more...

Genetic Tests and Designer-Baby Fears in Germany

Although Angela Merkel has expressed her own opposition to preimplantation genetic testing, a recent scientific report strongly recommends such testing for parents with a known genetic risk of incurable disease. The report's conclusion: the state shouldn't interfere in this sort of personal decision. Read more...

On Forgiveness

Forgiveness is not simply about lightening the burden of toxic resentment: it expresses fundamental moral ideas. Does that mean 'unforgiveable' is an oxymoron? Read more...

The Ethics of Sex Selection

Should parents be allowed to choose their offsprings' sex? Julian Savulescu challenges liberals to bite the bullet and accept the implications of their position for sex selection. Read more...

The Ethics of DIY Enhancement

Is it morally acceptable to attempt to enhance yourself by self-experimentation? Read more...

Elizabeth Anscombe - Renaissance or Back to the Dark Ages?

G.E.M. Anscombe, friend and executor of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and outspoken Catholic moraliser, is having a renaissance in the U.S. Anscombe famously opposed homosexual acts and a whole range of other common sexual practices because they were 'unapt for generation'. Well, apart from the fact that Elton John may have produced a counterexample, her moral standpoint is pretty ridiculous. Let's hope her followers focus on her work on intention rather than her moralising. Read more...

Can Pharmaceutical Companies Keep Their Hands Clean?

Companies that manufacture drugs used in US executions want to distance themselves from the effects of their sales. Are they right to deny moral responsibility? Read more...

The Moral Psychology of War

Philosophers have traditionally focused on just war theory. But what is needed is an understanding of the moral psychology of combattants. Psychological anguish is often moral anguish, argues Nancy Sherman. Read more...

Examined Lives

Socrates famously declared that the unexamined life was not worth living for a human being. Most philosophers have concluded that the examined life is better, though that doesn't necessarily follow, as their lives perhaps reveal. Read more...

Learning from Odysseus

As you come to terms with your New Year's resolutions, you might want to muse on the possible conflicts between first and second order desires and how best to achieve what at some level you want (and yet at another you don't). One solution is to take a steer from Odysseus and find a way of restraining yourself in advance. Read more...

Hate Speech and Free Expression

In the US, the First Amendment provides extensive protection for freedom of expression, more extensive protection than exists in the UK. In Jeremy Waldron's 2009 Lectures 'Dignity and Defamation: the Visibility of Hate' he argues (against Ronald Dworkin) that racial and some other forms of hate speech should be prohibited. These lectures can be downloaded as a PDF. Read more...