Michael B. GillThe British Moralists on Human Nature and the Birth of Secular Ethics
Michael Gill is assistant professor at the University of Arizona. He has written on the history of ethics, contemporary meta-ethics, and biomedical ethics, and has contributed to The Journal of the History of Philosophy, Hume Studies, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, and The Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, among other publications.
Introduction
Part I. Whichcote and cudworth: 1. The negative answer of English Calvinism
2. Whichcote and Cudworth's positive answer
3 Whichcote and Cudworth on religious liberty
4. Rationalism, sentimentalism, and Ralph Cudworth
5. The emergence of non-Christian ethics
Part II. Shaftesbury: 6. Shaftesbury and the Cambridge Platonists
7. Shaftesbury's Inquiry: a misanthropic faith in human nature
8. The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody
9. A philosophical faultline
Part III. Hutcheson: 10. Early influences on Francis Hutcheson
11. Hutcheson's attack on egoism
12. Hutcheson's attack on moral rationalism
13. A Copernican positive answer, an attenuated moral realism
14. Explaining away vice
Part IV. Hume: 15. David Hume's new 'science of man'
16. Hume's arguments against moral rationalism
17. Hume's associative moral sentiments
18. Hume's progressive view of human nature
19. Comparison and contingency in Hume's moral account
20. What is a Humean account, and what difference does it make?
