It is difficult to overestimate the profundity of the third and final volume of Terence Irwin's The Development of Ethics. It is now the most significant work on the period in the history of ethics to which it directs its attention. It exhibits a rich and detailed understanding of its principal figures and of the concepts utilized in modern philosophical ethics. It is astute and penetrating. It is not enough to say that it is excellent. For reasons of space, this review will concentrate on registering dissent from some of this work's main arguments.
This volume comprises thirty-one chapters beginning with Kant, to whom seven chapters are devoted, and ending with Rawls, who is covered in two chapters. Of the remaining twenty-two chapters, seventeen discuss influential figures in the Western tradition of ethical thinking, including Hegel, Mill, Sidgwick, Nietzsche, Green, Moore, Ross, and Hare, and five detail specific philosophical...