What is the human good? What are the primary virtues that make a good person? What makes an action right? Must we try to maximize good consequences? How can we know what is right and good? Can morality be rationally justified? In Ethics Through History, Terence Irwin addresses such fundamental questions, making these central debates intelligible to readers without an extensive background in philosophy. He provides a historical and philosophical discussion of major questions and key philosophers in the history of ethics, in the tradition that begins with Socrates onwards. Irwin covers ancient, medieval, and modern moral philosophers whose views have helped to form the agenda for contemporary ethical theory, paying attention to the strengths and weaknesses of their respective positions.

The first comprehensive exploration of the development and use of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions' (IFLA) newly released model for subject authority data, covering everything from the rationale for creating the model to practical steps for implementing it. FRSAD: Conceptual Modeling of Aboutness explores the full dimensions of the IFLA's Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Data model, showing how putting the model to work can ease information sharing across systems, domains, and environments. Written by three leading members of the IFLA working group that developed the model, FRSAD moves from the theoretical foundations of knowledge organization to a complete conceptual overview of the model, to specific working guidelines for its implementation. The book is filled with insights into the factors driving the model's development, as well as numerous illustrative examples of its practical applications in real-world settings. It also focuses on the benefits of using the model when developing knowledge organization systems (KOS) within the library domain and beyond.

Desiring the Good defends a novel and distinctive approach in ethics that is inspired by ancient philosophy. Ethics, according to this approach, starts from one question and its most immediate answer: "what is the good for human beings?"--"a well-going human life." Ethics thus conceived is broader than moral philosophy. It includes a range of topics in psychology and metaphysics. Plato's Philebus is the ancestor of this approach. Its first premise, defended in Book I of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, is that the final agential good is the good human life. Though Aristotle introduces this premise while analyzing human activities, it is absent from approaches in the theory of action that self-identify as Aristotelian. This absence, Vogt argues, is a deep and far-reaching mistake, one that can be traced back to Elizabeth Anscombe's influential proposals. And yet, the book is Anscombian in spirit. It engages with ancient texts in order to contribute to philosophy today, and it takes questions about the human mind to be prior to, and relevant to, substantive normative matters. In this spirit, Desiring the Good puts forward a new version of the Guise of the Good, namely that desire to have one's life go well shapes and sustains mid- and small-scale motivations. A theory of good human lives, it is argued, must make room for a plurality of good lives. Along these lines, the book lays out a non-relativist version of Protagoras's Measure Doctrine and defends a new kind of realism about good human lives.

This book explores the justification of our beliefs about intrinsic value.