This volume honors Jonathan Glover, whose writing and influence as a teacher have greatly contributed to the growth of practical ethics over the past 40 years.
Even before Glover entered Oxford in 1960, he identified himself with the philosophical tradition that traces its origins to David Hume, J.S. Mill, and Bertrand Russell. A vital role of philosophy in this tradition is to understand ethics in purely secular terms. It is also characteristic of these philosophers that they wrote for, and successfully reached, a wide public.
The lectures of H.L.A. Hart supporting legal rights for gays, which Glover attended as an undergraduate, consolidated his commitment to the kind of philosophy he wanted to write. Later, “the stimulating and demanding standards” of A.J. Ayer, his graduate supervisor, were an important influence, not least on Glover’s lucid philosophical prose: try to find a redundant word or a slack sentence in a Gloverian paragraph.
Glover’s ideas on moral responsibility, abortion, euthanasia, war, genetic engineering, adoption policies for same-sex couples, and genocide have influenced both academic and public debate. Running through his work is the view that moral practices and beliefs are to be judged mainly in terms of their consequences for human well-being. Glover has sought to undermine doctrines and intuitions, however sanctified by tradition or conventional wisdom, which obscure the way our actions cause harm. At the same time, he has emphasized the centrality to human life of values such as self-creation, autonomy, imagination, spontaneity, respect for human dignity, friendship, and love. In weighing and balancing these diverse values, Glover’s writing achieves an exemplary richness and subtlety. These virtues are manifest in his recent book about the atrocities of the last century, Humanity: A Moral History of the 20th Century. The papers that follow are connected in one way or another with the themes of that book, and many developed directly from reflections on it.
As Alan Ryan’s essay testifies, Glover was a memorable undergraduate tutor at New College, Oxford. As a number of the other contributions testify, including those of the three editors, Glover has also influenced generations of graduate students. In the late 60s and through the 70s, Glover offered, along with Jim Griffin and Derek Parfit, a legendary and pioneering seminar on practical ethics. The ideas that Glover worked through in that setting had an enormous impact on other philosophers in the field, a number of whom are represented in this volume. Over many years, Glover’s friendship has meant a great deal to both his colleagues and his former students. This volume pays tribute to Jonathan Glover as a philosopher, teacher, and friend.