Thomas Hurka is Chancellor Henry N.R. Jackman Distinguished Professor of Philosophical Studies at the University of Toronto and taught previously at the University of Calgary. He is the author of several books primarily in the theory of value--Perfectionism (OUP, 1993), Virtue, Vice, and Value (OUP, 2001), and The Best Things in Life (OUP, 2011)--and is the author of Underivative Duty: British Moral Philosophers from Sidgwick to Ewing (OUP, 2011), as well as numerous articles in moral and political philosophy. For a time he was a weekly ethics columnist for the Globe and Mail newspaper.

"Hurka's study is a valuable contribution to the literature and will surely succeed in stimulating more discussion of this period of moral philosophy...Highly Recommended." --Choice

"This is a remarkable book. Thomas Hurka offers us an extraordinarily rich account of the views of a century of British moral philosophers...he also offers characteristically forceful assessments of who was right and which changes of view were for the better and which for the worse...Hurka's book is a wonderful resource." -- Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews Online

"...an absolutely marvelous book: chock-full of interesting discussions of philosophically important ideas of a group of relatively neglected philosophers who deserve to be much better known. Hurka writes with enviable acuity, efficiency, and flair. And he makes a convincing case that these figures constitute a golden age of British ethical philosophy...filled with wonderfully interesting philosophy, both the school's and Hurka's, presented with great clarity and lively and masterful prose. It is an important book, both for the light it sheds on this rich philosophical period and for the significance the school's ideas have for continuing debates today. I could not recommend it more highly." -- Ethics

"The quality of scholarship is tremendously high...Hurka's book leaves no doubt that the school from Sidgwick to Ewing marks a peak in the history of moral philosophy...Every moral philosopher should read it." -- Utilitas

"...the value of this book...is immense. The penetrating discussions of such matters as Ross's different formulations of his position on prima facie duties, of the Broad-Ewing defence of 'fittingness' as the fundamental thin moral concept...and so on and on are deft, scholarly, and wonderfully informative." -- Australasian Journal of Philosophy