Biology and the foundation of ethics / edited by Jane Maienschein, Michael Ruse.

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Aristotle on the biological roots of virtue : the natural history of natural virtue / James G. Lennox -- The moral status of animals in eighteenth-century British philosophy / Michael Bradie -- From natural law to evolutionary ethics in enlightenment French natural history / Phillip R. Sloan -- French evolutionary ethics during the third republic : Jean de Lanessan / Paul Lawrence Farber -- The state and nature of unity and freedom : German romantic biology and ethics / Myles W. Jackson -- Darwin's romantic biology : the foundation of his evolutionary ethics / Robert J. Richards -- Nietzsche and Darwin / Jean Gayon -- Evolutionary ethics in the twentieth century : Julian Sorell Huxley and George Gaylord Simpson / Michael Ruse -- The laws of inheritance and the rules of morality : early geneticists on evolution and ethics / Marga Vicedo -- Scientific responsibility and political context : the case of genetics under the swastika / Diane B. Paul and Raphael Falk -- The case against evolutionary ethics today / Peter G. Woolcock -- Biology and value theory / Robert J. McShea and Daniel W. McShea.

There has been much attention devoted in recent years to the question of whether our moral principles can be related to our biological nature. This collection of essays focuses on the connection between biology, in particular evolutionary biology, and foundational questions in ethics. The book asks such questions as whether humans are innately selfish, and whether there are particular facets of human nature that bear directly on social practices. The volume is organised historically beginning with Aristotle and covering such major figures as Hume and Darwin down to the present and the work of Harvard sociobiologist, E. O. Wilson. This is the first book to offer this historical perspective on the relation of biology and ethics, and has been written by some of the leading figures in the history and philosophy of science, whose work stands very much at the cutting edge of these disciplines.