Actual Ethics

James Otteson is associate professor in and chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. The author of Adam Smith's Marketplace of Life, he has held research fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, at the Centre for the Study of Scottish Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen, and at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University, Ohio. He has also received grants from the University of Alabama, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Earhart Foundation.

• Part I. Working out the Position: 1. Personhood and judgment; 2. A matter of principle, Part I. The betrayal of personhood; 3. A matter of principle, Part II. Personhood writ large; 4. The demands of poverty; 5. The wealth of nations; Part II. Applying the Principles: 6. Schooling, religion, and other things you should be in charge of; 7. Moral hobgoblins: inclusion and exclusion; 8. More moral hobgoblins: extending rights; Part III. The End: 9. What is good for the goose.

"Here is classical liberalism made sensible, understandable, and attractive by an author who can think and can write. James Otteson deserves our admiration and gratitude for his apt examples, ease of style, and flow of thought." Harvey Mansfield, Harvard University