Abstract

At the end of the Nicomachean Ethics , the most in uential secular ethics text in the West (a set of lecture notes dutifully copied by Aristotle’s son Nicomachus), Aristotle wrote (or taught) that he would next take up politics, which in any case he ought to have done before the ethics. It would have been equally sensible if Aristotle had written (or taught) the Politics rst, that he might have had the reverse a erthought – namely, that he should now turn to moral psychology and ethics, to providing a theory of individual ourishing ( eudaimonia ) as well as a theory of human agency, the virtues, moral development, moral education, and weakness of the will ( akrasia ), which in any case he ought to have done rst, before providing a theory of social or political good. So which really comes rst – or what is di erent, should come rst – ethics, including what we now call moral psychology – moral development, a ective and cognitive components of moral competence, and so on – or politics, including what we now call the theories of justice and social good? e answer to both the descriptive and normative questions is that ethics, moral psychology, and a conception of social and political good typically co-evolve and depend upon each other conceptually. us this messy feature of interdependency is as it should be, as it must be. In the domain of morality, as a lived phenomenon and as an area of inquiry, neither philosophy nor psychology nor social and political theory serves as the foundation for any other. ere is instead massive, and necessary, interpenetration among psychology, ethics, and politics, between the descriptive and the normative, even, as we shall see, between the psychophysical and the metaphysicalError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMapError: Illegal entry in bfrange block in ToUnicode CMap. It follows that the only sensible aim of anyone seriously concerned with the good life, with questions of how we individually and collectively....