In Face of the Facts: Moral Inquiry in American Scholarship

by Richard Wightman Fox, Robert B. Westbrook

Overview

Recently there has been a renewed interest in moral inquiry among American scholars in a variety of disciplines. This collection of accessible essays affords a view of the current state of moral inquiry in the American academy, and it offers fresh departures for ethically informed, interdisciplinary scholarship. Seeking neither to reduce values to facts nor facts to values, these essays aim to foster discussion about inquiry and moral judgment, and demonstrate that moral inquiry need not be either dispassionate and value-free or moralistic and preachy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521621335
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/28/1998
Series:	Woodrow Wilson Center Press
Pages:	316
Product dimensions:	6.38(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.98(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. Pragmatism, science, and moral inquiry; 2. Political theory and moral responsibility; 3. Moral inquiry within the bounds of politics: a question of victimhood; 4. Moral confidence: three cheers for naturalized ethics; 5. Fighting (over) words: speech, power, and the moral imagination in American history; 6. 'Of the standard of moral taste': literary criticism as moral inquiry; 7. The moral force field of Haitian Vodou; 8. Snakes alive: resituating the moral in the study of religion; 9. Social science and the moral revival: dilemmas and difficulties; 10. Religion, morality, and other unmentionables: the revival of moral discourse in the law.

Editorial Reviews

"...each paper is excellent, equally insightful about 'moral inquiry' in general and in the particular discipline discussed." The Virginia Quarterly Review

From the Publisher