The Theory of Deliberative Wisdom
From a leading ethicist, a workable and inspiring model of ethics, showing not only why ethics matters but also how it can be used to improve human welfare.

Humanity faces a multitude of profound challenges at present: technological advances, environmental changes, rising inequality, and deep social and political pluralism. These transformations raise moral questions—questions about how we view ourselves and how we ought to engage with the world in the pursuit of human flourishing. In The Theory of Deliberative Wisdom, Eric Racine puts forward an original interdisciplinary ethics theory that offers both an explanation of the workings of human morality and a model for deliberation-based imaginative processes to tackle moral problems.

Drawing from a wide array of disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, sociology, political science, neuroscience, and economics, this book offers an engaging account of situated moral agency and of ethical life as the pursuit of human flourishing. Moral experience, Racine explains, is accounted for in the form of situational units—morally problematic situations. These units are, in turn, theorized as actionable and participatory building blocks of moral existence mapping to mechanisms of episodic memory and to the construction of personal identity. Such explanations pave the way for an understanding of the social and psychological mechanisms of the awareness and neglect of morally problematic situations as well as of the imaginative ethical deliberation needed to respond to these situations. Deliberative wisdom is explained as an engaged and ongoing learning process about human flourishing.
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The Theory of Deliberative Wisdom
From a leading ethicist, a workable and inspiring model of ethics, showing not only why ethics matters but also how it can be used to improve human welfare.

Humanity faces a multitude of profound challenges at present: technological advances, environmental changes, rising inequality, and deep social and political pluralism. These transformations raise moral questions—questions about how we view ourselves and how we ought to engage with the world in the pursuit of human flourishing. In The Theory of Deliberative Wisdom, Eric Racine puts forward an original interdisciplinary ethics theory that offers both an explanation of the workings of human morality and a model for deliberation-based imaginative processes to tackle moral problems.

Drawing from a wide array of disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, sociology, political science, neuroscience, and economics, this book offers an engaging account of situated moral agency and of ethical life as the pursuit of human flourishing. Moral experience, Racine explains, is accounted for in the form of situational units—morally problematic situations. These units are, in turn, theorized as actionable and participatory building blocks of moral existence mapping to mechanisms of episodic memory and to the construction of personal identity. Such explanations pave the way for an understanding of the social and psychological mechanisms of the awareness and neglect of morally problematic situations as well as of the imaginative ethical deliberation needed to respond to these situations. Deliberative wisdom is explained as an engaged and ongoing learning process about human flourishing.
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The Theory of Deliberative Wisdom

The Theory of Deliberative Wisdom

by Eric Racine
The Theory of Deliberative Wisdom

The Theory of Deliberative Wisdom

by Eric Racine

Paperback

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Overview

From a leading ethicist, a workable and inspiring model of ethics, showing not only why ethics matters but also how it can be used to improve human welfare.

Humanity faces a multitude of profound challenges at present: technological advances, environmental changes, rising inequality, and deep social and political pluralism. These transformations raise moral questions—questions about how we view ourselves and how we ought to engage with the world in the pursuit of human flourishing. In The Theory of Deliberative Wisdom, Eric Racine puts forward an original interdisciplinary ethics theory that offers both an explanation of the workings of human morality and a model for deliberation-based imaginative processes to tackle moral problems.

Drawing from a wide array of disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, sociology, political science, neuroscience, and economics, this book offers an engaging account of situated moral agency and of ethical life as the pursuit of human flourishing. Moral experience, Racine explains, is accounted for in the form of situational units—morally problematic situations. These units are, in turn, theorized as actionable and participatory building blocks of moral existence mapping to mechanisms of episodic memory and to the construction of personal identity. Such explanations pave the way for an understanding of the social and psychological mechanisms of the awareness and neglect of morally problematic situations as well as of the imaginative ethical deliberation needed to respond to these situations. Deliberative wisdom is explained as an engaged and ongoing learning process about human flourishing.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780262551618
Publisher: MIT Press
Publication date: 05/13/2025
Series: Basic Bioethics
Pages: 472
Product dimensions: 5.95(w) x 8.95(h) x 1.31(d)

About the Author

Eric Racine is Director of the Pragmatic Health Ethics Research Unit and Full Research Professor at the Montreal Clinical Research Institute. He also holds appointments at the University of Montreal (Medicine, Preventive and Social Medicine, Bioethics) and McGill University (Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Medicine).

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction and Overview
1 Situated Moral Agency and the Ethical Life
2 Deliberative Wisdom and Human Flourishing
3 Situated Moral Experience
4 Morally Problematic Situations: Primary Objects of Moral Experience and Ethics
5 Morally Problematic Situations: Their Open-Ended Nature
6 Morally Problematic Situations: Their Experiential Nature
7 Morally Problematic Situations: Actionable and Participatory Units of Situational Insight
8 Moral and Ethical Awareness
9 Barriers to Moral Awareness and Gateways to Ethical Awareness
10 Scenario-Based Ethical Deliberation and Ethical Imagination
11 Key Moments in Ethical Deliberation
12 Ethical Enactments
13 Evaluating Ethical Enactments
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Eric Racine deftly integrates moral philosophy and social psychology into a distinctive and illuminating account of moral agency. The Theory of Deliberative Wisdom is an original contribution to multidisciplinary discussion of the normative dimensions of human behavior.”
—Walter Glannon, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Calgary
 
“In The Theory of Deliberative Wisdom, Racine provides a powerful new humanistic approach to ethical deliberation. This inclusive and uplifting work offers practical solutions to socially, culturally and historically embedded moral dilemmas. Racine provides a cohesive synthesis of scholarship across a range of disciplines to develop something that is truly novel.”
—Adrian Carter, Associate Professor of Psychological Sciences, Monash University

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