Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Irish Philosophy

Philip Pettit & The Birth of Ethics

Peter Stone thinks about a thought experiment about how ethics evolved.

Philip Pettit is perhaps the most important Irish moral and political philosopher alive today. Born in Ballygar, County Galway in 1945, Pettit studied at Maynooth College, the National University of Ireland, and Queen’s University, Belfast. He began his teaching career at University College Dublin in 1968, and held numerous other teaching positions before arriving at Princeton University, where he is currently Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Human Values. He also serves as Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at Australian National University.

…