The sources of moral agency : essays in moral psychology /

Deigh (Northwestern Univ.) has published interesting work over the last 15 years about moral feelings and motivations, broadly speaking. The essays in this collection are, with one exception, reprinted from journals and other collections. The thematic common thread, a reflective anti-rationalism in moral theory, is outlined in the preface but not reiterated, and readers may need to remind themselves why the essays have been collected here. Deigh addresses issues in moral psychology as construed by some philosophers who are concerned to render their discussions of moral concepts and systems psychologically realistic, but he has not in these essays engaged the work of empirical psychology, as does Owen Flanagan (e.g., Varieties of Moral Personality, 1991, and Consciousness Reconsidered, 1992). In three of 11 essays, Deigh discusses Freud's later theoretical account of moral development, especially that offered in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), and these help correct a lack of attention to Freud by contemporary moral theorists. These three form the core of what could have been an excellent book had the themes of the essays in this collection been woven together more explicitly. Still, these essays will repay the attention of philosophers and psychologists alike. Upper-division undergraduate; graduate; faculty. D. R. C. Reed Wittenberg University