Reason and Emotion in International Ethics - Softcover

Jeffery, Renée

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1316633047 ISBN 13: 9781316633045

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2016

Synopsis

The study of international ethics is marked by an overwhelming bias towards reasoned reflection at the expense of emotionally driven moral deliberation. For rationalist cosmopolitans in particular, reason alone provides the means by which we can arrive at the truly impartial moral judgments a cosmopolitan ethic demands. However, are the emotions as irrational, selfish and partial as most rationalist cosmopolitans would have us believe? By re-examining the central claims of the eighteenth-century moral sentiment theorists in light of cutting-edge discoveries in the fields of neuroscience and psychology, Renée Jeffery argues that the dominance of rationalism and marginalisation of emotions from theories of global ethics cannot be justified. In its place she develops a sentimentalist cosmopolitan ethic that does not simply provide a framework for identifying injustices and prescribing how we ought to respond to them, but which actually motivates action in response to international injustices such as global poverty.

About this title

Book Description:

Renée Jeffery examines the role played by the emotions in making moral judgments and motivating ethical actions. Focusing on the problem of world poverty, she draws on the work of eighteenth-century moral sentiment theorists and recent advances in the neurosciences to develop an original account of international ethics.

About the Author:

Renée Jeffery is an Associate Professor of International Relations at the Australian National University, Canberra. She is the author of Amnesty and Accountability: Persistence and Change from Athens to Aceh, Indonesia (2014), Evil and International Relations: Human Suffering in an Age of Terror (2008) and Hugo Grotius in International Thought (2006), and the editor of Confronting Evil in International Relations: Ethical Responses to Problems of Moral Agency (2008) and, with Hun Joon Kim, Transitional Justice in the Asia-Pacific (Cambridge, 2013).

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1316633047
• ISBN 13: 9781316633045
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 264