In Satires 1.1 Horace asks the question why people are discontented and praise the fortunes of others, and he gives the answer that they are greedy. The precise connection between question and answer is however far from clear, and some commentators have felt that Horace has combined two separate themes of avarice and discontent without establishing a causal link between them. The great obstacle for critics who argue for thematic unity is to explain how it is that the malcontents (...) of 1–19 are motivated by greed, for Horace is not explicit but merely asserts baldly that it is so , and leaves the reader to work out the logic. The direct method is to identify to some degree praise of the fortunes of others with an envious desire to outstrip them in wealth. In support we may quote two of the most influential recent interpreters of the Satires, to whom all interested in the poems owe a great debt: ‘It is avaritia that is at the bottom of the misguided yearning after other men's lot. All those people would not be prepared to have a change; rather will they, out of greed, put up with any toil or danger.’. (shrink)

This paper aims at looking at Shakespeare’s character Falstaff through the prism of some of the seven deadly sins. The paper doesn’t claim that it explores all the sins present in Falstaff’s personality. The main sins that this paper examines in Falstaff’s personality are the sins of gluttony, lust, avarice, sloth, and pride. The presence of so many sins in the personality of one character that are interconnected is known as concatenation of sins. As Bernard Spivack and David Wiles (...) have explained, in many ways Falstaff serves as the Vice figure from the morality plays tempting Prince Hal. Since in the morality plays the Vice figure stems and is associated mainly to the seven deadly sins, this paper will try to show that the fact that Falstaff possesses so many sins can facilitate the possibility of him being identified as stemming from the Vice figure from the morality plays. I will try to find each of the afore-mentioned sins by analyzing Falstaff actions and inactions and by trying to find characteristics of the sins present in Falstaff’s behavior. This paper will also look at Falstaff’s fate and whether there is any similarity between the fate of the Vice figure in the morality plays and the fate of Falstaff in the second part. (shrink)

This paper takes a historical approach to describing theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s concept of Christian Realism, and its consequences for political thought in America. In the aftermath of World War I many people in America, especially Protestant clergy, became disillusioned with the idea of political intervention, focussing on domestic rather than international disputes. However, as National Socialism gained a foothold in Germany, culminating in the Second World War, the Protestant theology of Social Gospel Liberalism that gained popularity in the 1920’s would (...) not suffice for explaining the conduct of the Nazi party, nor the political action that America should take towards it. Niebuhr’s Christian Realism, emphasizing the inevitability of sin in individuals and social institutions alike, provided a philosophy that emphasized action towards this political power, influencing American conduct and discourse as the war broke out across the Atlantic at the turn of the decade. (shrink)

Cette contribution vise à étudier les effets que l’amour des richesses a sur le caractère moral et les relations sociales, depuis les descriptions qu’en donne Platon au livre VIII de la République à travers le portrait de l’homme oligarchique, jusqu’à la déclinaison des quatre formes de l’avarice dans le traité des Caractères de Théophraste, dans lequel l’argent et les échanges marchands constituent par ailleurs un thème récurrent et structurant. On remonte avec Platon aux sources psychologiques de l’amour des richesses (...) avant d’en développer les conséquences morales, et, avec Théophraste plus particulièrement, les conséquences sur les relations de l’individu aux autres. Classification JEL : B11. (shrink)

This article examines Machiavelli’s image of humanity. It argues against the prevailing views that characterize it either as pessimistic or optimistic and defends the thesis that the Florentine has a realist image of humanity. Machiavelli is a psychological egoist who conceives of man as a being whose actions are motivated by his drives, appetites, and passions, which lead him often to immoral behavior. Man’s main drives are “ambition” (ambizione) and “avarice” (avarizia). This article also investigates Machiavelli’s concept of nature (...) and shows that, for him, the constancy of human nature is the central premise that makes the scientific analysis of politics possible. Despite the fact that human drives and capabilities are the same at all times, good laws, military training, and religion allow man to be changed and educated toward “virtue” (virtù). To make such changes in man, however, presupposes a good legal and political order. Machiavelli justifies the state because of its capacity to reshape human nature and to improve man. The state is not only a coercive power but a moral institution. This leads to the conclusion that Machiavelli does not separate politics from morality as most scholars claim. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Historical Background Superbia (Pride) Invidia (Envy) Ira (Wrath) Acedia (Sloth) Avaritia (Avarice) Gula (Gluttony) Luxuria (Lust) The Antidote: Righteous Love The Bridge to Salvation.

In her influential book, The Practice of Moral Judgment, Barbara Herman argues that Kantian ethics requires a “middle theory” applying formal rational constraints on willing to the particular circumstances and nature of human existence. I claim that a promising beginning to such a theory can be found in Kant’s discussion of duties of virtue in The Metaphysics of Morals. I argue that Kant’s distinction between perfect and imperfect duties of virtue should be understood as a distinction between duties concerned with (...) respect for necessary conditions of moral health and moral prosperity in sensibly affected human agents who realize their moral nature only through the development and continuing exercise of inner freedom. Thus understood, perfect duties prohibiting self-deception, miserly avarice, and humility are oriented around concerns with the conditions of rational self-constraint in human agents and are contrasted with imperfect duties requiring the development of our talents and the perfection of our moral disposition concerned with the effective exercise of this kind of inner freedom in choice and action. Generalizing this account, I claim that it allows us to accommodate the range of duties that Kant discusses here including perfect duties owed to others prohibiting arrogance, defamation, and ridicule and imperfect duties enjoining gratitude and beneficence and suggests a much more subtle and promising account of moral duty than those typically associated with Kant’s view. (shrink)

Grasping. Avarice. Covetousness. Miserliness. Insatiable cupidity. Overreaching ambition. Desire spun out of control. The deadly sin of Greed goes by many names, appears in many guises, and wreaks havoc on individuals and nations alike. In this lively and generous book, Phyllis A. Tickle argues that Greed is "the Matriarch of the Deadly Clan," the ultimate source of Pride, Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, Lust, and Anger. She shows that the major faiths, from Hinduism and Taoism to Buddhism and Christianity regard Greed (...) as the greatest calamity humans can indulge in, engendering further sins and eviscerating all virtues. As the Sikh holy book Adi Granth asks: "Where there is greed, what love can there be?" Tickle takes a long view of Greed, from St. Paul to the present, focusing particularly on changing imaginative representations of Greed in Western literature and art. Looking at such works as the Psychomachia, or "Soul Battle" of the fifth-century poet Aurelius Clemens Prudentius, the paintings of Peter Bruegel and Hieronymous Bosch, the 1987 film Wall Street, and the contemporary Italian artist Mario Donizetti, Tickle shows how our perceptions have evolved from the medieval understanding of Greed as a spiritual enemy to a nineteenth-century sociological construct to an early twentieth-century psychological deficiency, and finally to a new view, powerfully articulated in Donizetti's mystical paintings, of Greed as both tragic and beautiful. Engaging, witty, brilliantly insightful, Greed explores the full range of this deadly sin's subtle, chameleon-like qualities, and the enormous destructive power it wields, evidenced all too clearly in the world today. (shrink)

In this original and rewarding combination of intellectual and political history, Ryan Balot offers a thorough historical and sociological interpretation of classical Athens centered on the notion of greed. Integrating ancient philosophy, poetry, and history, and drawing on modern political thought, the author demonstrates that the Athenian discourse on greed was an essential component of Greek social development and political history. Over time, the Athenians developed sophisticated psychological and political accounts of acquisitiveness and a correspondingly rich vocabulary to describe and (...) condemn it. Greed figures repeatedly as an object of criticism in authors as diverse as Solon, Thucydides, and Plato--all of whom addressed the social disruptions caused by it, as well as the inadequacy of lives focused on it. Because of its ethical significance, greed surfaced frequently in theoretical debates about democracy and oligarchy. Ultimately, critiques of greed--particularly the charge that it is unjust--were built into the robust accounts of justice formulated by many philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle. Such critiques of greed both reflected and were inextricably knitted into economic history and political events, including the coups of 411 and 404 B.C. Balot contrasts ancient Greek thought on distributive justice with later Western traditions, with implications for political and economic history well beyond the classical period. Because the belief that greed is good holds a dominant position in modern justifications of capitalism, this study provides a deep historical context within which such justifications can be reexamined and, perhaps, found wanting. (shrink)

The paper begins by exploring whether a “tendency to avarice” exists in most capitalist business organisations. It concludes that it does and that this is problematic. The problem centres on the potential threat to the integrity of human character and the disablement of community.What, then, can be done about it? Building on previous work (Moore, 2002) in which MacIntyre’s notions of practice and institution were explored (MacIntyre, 1985), the paper offers a philosophically based argument in favour of the rediscovery (...) of craftsmanship by those who work in business organisations, and the exercise of craftsmanship in community.The practical implications for individuals of this way of conceptualising business, and the virtues which must then come to the fore, are discussed. (shrink)

Drawing on centuries of wisdom from the Christian ethical tradition, this book takes readers on a journey of self-examination, exploring why our hearts are captivated by glittery but false substitutes for true human goodness and happiness. The first edition sold 35,000 copies and was a C. S. Lewis Book Prize award winner. Now updated and revised throughout, the second edition includes a new chapter on grace and growth through the spiritual disciplines. Questions for discussion and study are included at the (...) end of each chapter. Contents 1. Why Study the Vices? 2. Gifts from the Desert: The Origins and History of the Vices Tradition 3. Vainglory: Image Is Everything 4. Envy: Feeling Bitter When Others Have It Better 5. Sloth (Acedia): Resistance to the Demands of Love 6. Avarice: Possession and Mastery 7. Wrath: Holy Emotion or Hellish Passion? 8. Gluttony: Feeding Your Face and Starving Your Heart 9. Lust: Sexuality Stripped Down 10. The Rest of the Journey: Self-Examination, the Seven Capital Vices, and Spiritual Formation Epilogue Index. (shrink)

This book explores the under-researched sources of the consumerist culture and the environmental damage it has brought about. The book is an outcome of the symposium on “The Ethics of Consumption” organised and hosted by the Las Casas Institute at the Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford as part of its Economics as a Moral Science Programme. It takes on two contemporary problems: the human weakness and capacity for wrong-doing, and the failure of modern economic theory to account for the moral (...) character of human behaviour and its implicit encouragement of gluttonous life-styles. In a time when grand political schemes are proposed to revive sustainability of global economy, the authors of the papers collected in this book highlight the need for moral renewal without which the most revolutionary structural reforms are bound to fail at producing the desired outcome. Topics of the book include the meaning and sources of avarice, the attempt to define what is enough, exploration of philosophical and theological perspectives which can serve as building blocks for the ethics of consumption. This makes the book of great interest to a broad readership of economists, social scientists and philosophers. (shrink)

Gold and iron are good To buy iron and gold; All earth’s fleece and food For their like are sold. Boded Merlin wise, Proved Napoleon great, Nor kind nor coinage buys Aught above its rate. Fear, Craft, and Avarice Cannot rear a State. Out of dust to build What is more than dust, Walls Amphion piled Phoebus stablish must. When the Muses nine With the Virtues meet, Find to their design An Atlantic seat, By green orchard boughs Fended from (...) the heat, Where the statesman ploughs Furrow for the wheat; When the Church is social worth, When the state house is the hearth, Then the perfect State is come, The republican at home. (shrink)

Gabriele Taylor presents a philosophical investigation of the "ordinary" vices traditionally seen as "death to the soul": sloth, envy, avarice, pride, anger, lust, and gluttony. In the course of a richly detailed discussion of individual and interrelated vices, which complements recent work by moral philosophers on virtue, she shows why these "deadly sins" are correctly so named and grouped together.

A horseshoe is regarded as a lucky, perhaps even romantic, symbol of our industrial heritage. Why is it, then, that much of English literature, from Mandeville's ‘Grumbling Hive’ on, portrays business in a murky light? The paper begins with an analysis of this phenomenon and concludes that it is the institutionalisation and legitimisation of avarice and its consequential effects that gives rise to such a portrayal. A horseshoe has also been used as a convenient means of conceptualising an answer (...) to the questions this conclusion raises: ‘Who should control the corporation and for what ends?’ (Mintzberg 1985) and discussing recent developments in corporate social responsibility. Drawing on research evidence the paper demonstrates how corporations are simultaneously under pressure from society and responding to its concerns. The paper concludes that these current developments can at best ameliorate the situation, and that what is necessary is to rediscover the notion of corporate virtue, instead of putting virtue at the service of vice. (shrink)

Invisible Hand accounts of the operations of the competitive market are often thought to have two implications for morality as it confronts economic life. First, explanantions of agents economic activities eschew constitutive appeal to moral notions; and second, such moralism is pernicious insofar as it tends to undermine the operations of a socially valuable social process. This is the Mandevillean Conceit. The Conceit rests on an avarice-only reading of the profit-motive that is mistaken. The avarice-only reading is not (...) the only way of characterising the profit-motive, and there are some positive grounds for thinking the benefits of profit pursuit are better attributed to the “lucrephile”, and not the avarice-only “lucrepath”. (shrink)

Il s¿agit de poursuivre le travail de relecture du Kiláó al-Buhalá' consmencé dans larticle paru dans le Bulleíin dÉludes Orientales de Damas (LI 1999:"Avarice ou sophistique? Une lecture du Livre des ovares d'al-Gdisig"), travail qui pose que le propos du célébre polygraphe nesí pas tant la critique de lavarice, nu de la gueuserie (lmdya) dans le cas de Halib b. Yazid, que celle du détnumement des discours de leura fnnctions supposées nobles. Dans le récit "autobiographique" el le testament spirituel (...) de Ijálawayh al~MukaddI, ce qui se trouve mimé, parodié pnur étre dénigré, cesí, semble-t-il, la pratique des sermonnaires populaire> (Qu~sás), el, plus généralemení, celle des 'ulamá' qui prétendent éduquer les fonles. Larticle s'attache á analyser les procédés stylistiques et rhétoriques utilisés par al-Óálii~ pour vilipender ces usages dévoyés du discours. (shrink)

The nature of the soul is attribute-less and boundless. To experience its true potential, the dimensionless soul manifests itself in the physical dimension as a body. Materialism originates with the creation of the body as it grows around the soul and in the process of forming, enchants the soul with its materialistic conducts. The soul has the ability to materialize and dematerialize into bodily forms as per will, but such an entropic amendment may change the true essence of bodily life. (...) The avarice for materialistic needs mutilates the body physically and mentally, and unshackles the soul; for as we grow in our materialistic conducts, the body and its senses endure this burden, gradually progressing towards a lesser body and more soul. (shrink)

Antti Kauppinen Les philosophes se sont efforcés de montrer que nous devons être vertueux pour être heureux. Mais tant que nous nous en tenons à la compréhension moderne du bonheur comme quelque chose de vécu par un sujet – et je soutiens contre les eudaimonistes contemporains que nous devrions effectivement le faire – il peut au mieux exister un lien de causalité contingent entre la vertu et le bonheur. Néanmoins, nous avons de bonnes raisons de penser qu’être vertueux est non (...) accidentellement propice au bonheur. Pourquoi? Premièrement, le bonheur est, sommairement, la condition expérientielle de jouir d’états phénoménaux affectifs principalement positifs concernant des choses qui sont subjectivement importantes pour nous. Je soutiens que ce sentimentalisme à propos du bonheur a plusieurs avantages par rapport à la conception de Daniel Haybron comme état émotionnel. Deuxièmement, dans la mesure où nous sommes vertueux, nous pouvons identifier correctement ce qui vaut la peine d’être fait dans notre situation particulière et nous la poursuivrons habilement. En même temps, nous ne sommes pas dérangés par des choses qui ne valent pas la peine d’être prises en charge ou de s’inquiéter. Par conséquent, les personnes vertueuses sont susceptibles de profiter d’émotions positives centrales liées au succès et à l’approbation des autres, et d’éviter les émotions négatives communes liées à la comparaison sociale ou à l’avarice. Bien que leur bonheur soit encore en partie une question de chance, il l’est dans une moindre mesure que pour le reste d’entre nous. (shrink)

Traditionally studied as a window onto Arab-Muslim social reality, the medieval Arabic underworld slang found in Kitāb al­-Bukhalāʾ by al-Jāḥiẓ and indeed al­-Bukhalāʾ as a whole serve a number of functions and meanings at once, not just historical documentation. Such multiplicity has implications for translation, which should strive to convey the work’s sociolinguistic and textual heterogeneity. With this ideal in mind, this article compares two English versions of the Arabic slang: R. B. Serjeant’s The Book of Misers and Jim Colville’s (...) Avarice and the Avaricious. Serjeant uses transliteration, explicitation, and footnotes to create a “thick translation” that exposes the rich sociolinguistic and textual range. In somewhat of a contrast, Colville employs English colloquialisms and Scots canting slang to produce what might arguably be called “dynamic equivalence,” which stages a natural English reading experience. The comparison raises further questions about the relationship between a translation’s effects and the translator’s intent, as well as between translation and a second process to which it is sometimes compared, namely, reading. (shrink)

Traveler, come with us! Do not be afraid. You will see sublime and melancholy, gay and beautiful scenes. Poet! Down there you will find poetic themes worthy of your most inspired verses. Artist! For you there are pictures of admirable freshness, painted by the hand of God. Writer! There you will encounter legends not yet written, legends of love and hate, of gratitude and vengeance, of hypocrisy and abnegation, of noble virtues and repugnant crimes; legends of fragrant romanticism and rich (...) in truth. Let us go there, plowing the dark and agitated waves of the restless Atlantic, through the islands of the Antilles, to the shores of Anáhuac.In the strictest sense, the Occident, (that prestigious union of nations, ideologies of progress, and export and import companies) discovered Mexico in the 19th century. Only at the end of Spanish domination—that never understood that “there are various kinds of excellence”—did other countries and Mexico itself begin to learn of the scope of the Conquest and regions affected by it, partially replacing Spanish mythology with another, more varied but equally remote. The greatness of the ancient Indians and their happy age was praised, while the living natives were reviled; the idealization of the pre-Columbian, which had been suspended by priests and encomenderos, was continued (Hernández wrote in 1577, “In this new world signs of avarice had never penetrated, nor had ambition been born until our compatriots arrived, carried by ships and the wind”); the possibilities of the new country were greedily examined; scornful notes were taken on the successive and simultaneous failures in the attempt to create a republic; the vices and virtues of those who were suddenly free were enumerated; a climate favorable to invasions and the amputation of territories was created; customs were observed with joy or alarm. (shrink)

I bring you greetings from the United States, where its citizens have been closely following the events of the past three weeks. There has been a great change in the feelings of common American people towards the Russian people. Many have expressed their sense of identity and solidarity with the people of Moscow and St. Petersburg as they witnessed the resistance for the attempted coup. Americans have enormous respect for constitutional government as well as for democracy, and they saw the (...) coup as unconstitutional from the start. A major factor was the television news service. The major American broadcast networks  NBCD, CBS, ABC  and the cable networks, especially CNN  provided often live coverage throughout the days and nights of events in the streets and squares of Moscow, and later in the halls of the Soviet and Russian Parliaments. We witnessed press conferences, from one with the committee of 8 to one 3 nights ago in which Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev spoke with the American people. We made our individual judgments about events, often listening to debates between experts and scholars on Soviet affairs  some Russian, some Ukrainian, some from the Baltic states  and we spoke frequently and freely with one another  even some of discussions with our friends were televised. We experienced fear and dread as it seemed great military forces were being brought to bear on your White House. We wept with grief and rage as the deaths of Russians confronting tanks were reported. We cheered to see Russian women scolding soldiers in the streets. In the aftermath, there has been much discussion of Russia’s needs and how Americans might help. In that curious mixture of avarice and beneficence that is the way of American business, discussions were held on starting a restaurant, and import service, on how to use rubles to pay for local expenses and hard currency for profit-taking. (shrink)

René Ménil was a renowned Martinican essayist, critic, and philosopher who, along with Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, and Edouard Glissant, left an indelible mark on the Franco-Caribbean world of letters and intellectual thought. Ménil saw in surrealism a critical framework, a means to the specific end of exploring and expressing the specificities of the Martinican condition. Ménil assessed Martinique’s pre-war psychological condition through the telling metaphor of relative exoticism, pointing clearly to the typically unacknowledged fact that the exotic is a (...) slippery signifier, dependent on perspective, distance and location. If the core of these conditions were to be recognized and contested, it would have to be addressed at its root, and here, there was no question for him but that colonialism was ultimately enabled by capitalism and its corollaries of avarice and accumulation. His editorship of the journal Tropiquesconstituted cultural combat. Ménil’s thought and writing were arguably aimed at achieving universality out of particularity, and so he eventually broke with Césaire—and more specifically with Senghor—over several key tenets in the Negritude platform, arguing for the actual existence of a Martinican culture. Marxism for Ménil offers a corrective to the perceived shortcomings of Negritude’s political aesthetics, namely its historical blind spots and its foregrounding of mythologized black unity at the expense of class struggle. (shrink)

This article describes methods and ideas that emerged from a continuing enquiry into ‘metadesign’ that led us to think about the role of ‘consciousness’ in teams, communities and the biosphere. In the West the notion of ‘consciousness’ has been shaped by humanism, industrialization and some strident forms of individualism. These have encouraged us to see it in strongly anthropocentric and solipsistic terms. The global economic system also reflects this individualistic ideology, given that ‘growth’, is driven by personal avarice on (...) a collective scale. On the other hand, capitalism encourages enterprises to scale-up when they become successful. Both tendencies reduce the consciousness of organizations and communities. The article illustrates this idea by describing a ‘quadratic’ model of team consciousness that was developed to enhance practical developments that support personal, interpersonal, transpersonal and environmentally situated modes of awareness. (shrink)

In the world according to Hume, people are complicated creatures, with convoluted, often contradictory characters. Consider, for example, Hume's controversial assessment of Charles I: "The character of this prince, as that of most men, if not of all men, was mixed .... To consider him in the most favourable light, it may be affirmed, that his dignity was free from pride, his humanity from weakness, his bravery from rashness, his temperance from austerity, his frugality from avarice .... To speak (...) the most harshly of him, we may affirm, that many of his good qualities were attended with some latent frailty, which, though seemingly inconsiderable, was able, when seconded by the extreme malevolence of his fortune, to disappoint them of all their influence: His beneficent disposition was clouded by a manner not very gracious; his virtue was tinctured with superstition; his good sense was disfigured by a deference to persons of a capacity inferior to his own; and his moderate temper exempted him not from hasty and precipitate resolutions." This sketch shows Charles in all his complexities, with his virtues, near virtues, and contradicting virtues. I have quoted it at length because it is hard to summarize without losing the subtleties that lie within it. Hume's moral theory is based fundamentally on judgments of character, 2 so those subtleties are important to his view. The character sketches that pervade the.. (shrink)

The virtue of moral psychology is that it emphasizes what is most human in business, as opposed to the more bloodless conceptsof “obligation,” “duty,” “responsibility” and rights.” The heart of moral psychology is to be found in such concrete phenomena as fear, love, affection, antipathy, loyalty, jealousy, anger, resentment, avarice, ambition, pride, and cowardice. In this essay, I want to explore two of the core virtues of the corporation, conceived of as a community, the “sentiments” of care and compassion. (...) These were taken to be the very core of ethics by Adam Smith. I want to distinguish care and compassion from each other and both from the more principled and rule-bound conceptions of ethics that still dominate philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bernard Mandeville and the Therapy of “The Clever Politician”Harold J. CookAs the institutional authority of the learned physicians of Augustan London waned, new threats to the classical foundations of medical practice appeared. 1 Patients had more freedom to chose from a variety of practitioners and practices, giving both consumer demand and the advertising skills of suppliers an even more powerful hand in medical affairs. While the burgeoning medical marketplace (...) developed mostly because of the profound socio-economic and political changes of the late Stuart period, intellectual transformations were at play, too. The new science appeared to encourage empiricism and the development of new remedies based on experimentation, devaluing university education in medical classics, but conversely the new science could strengthen physicians’ claims to superiority over mere patients and practitioners. Medical materialists, for instance, could turn the classical advisor/client relationship into that of an expert contolling a passive recipient (patient) for his or her own good.One contemporary debate that shows the implications of materialism for medical relationships is the theory of the passions. The passions linked mind and body. According to most classical accounts, one could (or should) control the passions by applying reason, resulting in both a virtuous and a healthy life. But according to a strong version of materialism, the mind could not hope to control the passions. A doctor therefore could no longer appeal to patients’ reason; rather, he had to manipulate the patient’s passions for his or her own good. Hence for a materialist, the doctor was not an adviser to the patient but an expert therapist, not a teacher of health and virtue but a “clever politician” who ordered bodily passions. Some versions of the new science, then, favored [End Page 101] the expertise of physicians while undermining older views about learned authority. Such an outlook is clear in the work of Dr. Bernard Mandeville, whose famous Fable of the Bees shows how the “clever politician” played on passions to make the body politic run smoothly. Mandeville held coherent views on politics, economics, moral philosophy, and medicine. Like many doctors of his time, he fought to establish his expertise in the new science. His views are expressed most clearly in the theory of the passions. By examining his discussion of the passions in both his social commentary and his medical dialogues, we can note similarities among his various writings and glimpse one of his fundamental positions on medicine and humanity.The Fable and its CriticsTo many English minds of the early eighteenth century, no one exemplified materialism’s threat better than Dr. Bernard Mandeville. Mandeville’s famous slogan, the subtitle of his Fable of the Bees—“private vices, public benefits”—seemed to epitomize materialism’s inherent immorality. The book seemed to argue that what most people recognized as human vices were the main engines of the collective good. Mandeville’s famous book pictured human nature as animalistic, in which the passions held sway over reason. In Mandeville’s world, it appeared, reason became little more than the ability to rationalize, the instrument of hypocrisy, merely letting people cover their true motives (grounded as they were in the passions) with empty words pretending to more exalted ends.His Fable had begun as a little, anonymous, satirical poem in 1705, titled “The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves Turn’d Honest.” It began by speaking of “A Spacious Hive well stockt with Bees, / That liv’d in Luxury and Ease.” Many of the bees were knaves, with no calling free of deceit, but while “every Part was full of Vice, / Yet [was] the whole Mass a Paradise; /... Such were the Blessings of that State; / Their Crimes conspir’d to make them Great.” Avarice, prodigality, luxury, pride, envy, vanity, folly, fickleness, and inconstancy employed millions, encouraging ingenuity and industry and creating pleasures and comforts “To such a Height, the very Poor / Liv’d better than the Rich before.” But many of the thriving bees complained, shouting for honesty and virtue. When Jove “rid / The bawling Hive of Fraud,” economic collapse followed, with the consequent end of arts and sciences as well; population declined; the hive’s territory decreased; and the remaining bees toiled long and... (shrink)

In response to Lawrence Solum's advocacy of a ‘virtue–centred theory of judging’, I argue that there is indeed important work to be done in identifying and characterising those qualities of character that constitute judicial virtues – those qualities that a person needs if she is to judge well (though I criticise Solum's account of one of the five pairs of judicial vices and virtues that he identifies – avarice and temperance). However, Solum's more ambitious claims – that a judge's (...) vice necessarily corrupts her decisions, and that in at least some contexts we must define a legally correct decision as one that would be reached by a virtuous judge – should be rejected: we can undermine the former by attending to the requirements of due process, and the latter by attending to the ways in which a judge would try to justify her decision. (shrink)

Aristote estime qu’une vie consacrée à gagner de l’argent ne mérite pas d’être vécue, dans la mesure où elle est sujette à des contraintes et fondée sur une conception pervertie de la richesse. Cependant, il assigne à l’argent une valeur instrumentale en tant qu’il est indispensable au bonheur, et il reconnaît qu’il y a des tendances naturelles à la richesse en tout agent. Cet article se propose de clarifier les thèses d’Aristote concernant la fonction de la richesse dans son rapport (...) à une vie bonne, concernant ce qui garantit l’usage correct des biens et comment il est possible de promouvoir la pratique de la chrématistique naturelle face à l’extension des formes perverties de recherche du profit. L’article entend ensuite montrer quelles vertus sont liées à la richesse – générosité, magnificence et justice ou équité – et comment elles se rattachent aux vices opposés – c’est-à-dire : prodigalité et avarice, tendance dépensière et pingrerie, et injustice ou inéquité. L’intention de cette étude est d’expliquer pourquoi l’enquête aristotélicienne sur les bonnes et mauvaises habitudes liées à l’usage de la richesse est complémentaire de l’enquête sur la genèse des phénomènes économiques, et pourquoi elle vise à garantir dans la pratique une chrématistique parfaitement intégrée à l’éthique et à la politique. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:RECLAIMING LIBERALISM * DOUGLAS B. RASMUSSEN St. John's University Jamaica, New York Through the shift of emphasis from natural duties or obligations to natural rights, the individual, the ego, had become the center and origin of the moral world, since man-as distinguished from man's end-had become that center or origin. -Leo Strauss T:HE CONCEPTION of individuality that lies at the oundation of natural rights classical liberalism has been a (...) arget of criticism for some time. This is not news. What is news and what is becoming more apparent to those who examine the issue is that the alternatives Strauss presents in the above quotation are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, as I and my colleague, Douglas J. Den Uyl, have recently observed: Making the individual the moral center of the universe does not require that one accept nominalism, mechanism, or hedonism, nor does accepting essentialism, teleology, and eudaimonism... require rejecting individualism. It is possible for the fulfillment of the individual to be interpreted in terms of the requirements for human wellbeing. There can be a view of the ego or self that is neither otherwordly nor Hobbesian, but Aristotelian. Further, the achievement of man's natural end need not be interpreted along Platonic lines. There is no such thing as the flourishing of "man." There is only the flourishing of individual men. The human good neither exists apart from the chokes and actions of individual human beings nor independent of the particular " mix " of goods that the individual human being must determine as appropriate for his circumstances. *This essay is based on a paper presented at a meeting of the American Association for the Philosophic Study of Society, American Philosophical Association (Eastern Division) convention, December 29, 1991 in New York City. This meeting was devoted to David L. Norton's book Democracy and Moral Development (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 109 110 DOUGLAS B. RASMUSSEN Strauss's dichotomy betrays a disturbing tendency, often found among proponents of natural right and natural law, to reify the concept " natural end " and make it some good that competes with the good of individual human beings.1 David L. Norton in his recent work, Democracy and Moral Development, has also noted the nonexclusivity of Strauss's alternatives. Conditioned as we are by modernity's conception of the individual, the question of replacing avarice as the thematic motivation in lives of persons is likely to leave us at a loss. What else could possibly serve? The purpose of this book is to propose the eudaimonistic answer, and that answer is love in the meaning of Eros. Thus understood, love is not exclusively or primarily interpersonal; it is first of all the right relationship of each person with himself or herself. The self to which love is in the first instance directed is the ideal self that is aspired to and by which random change is transformed into the directed development we term growth. When the ideal of the individual is rightly chosen, it realizes objective values that subsisted within the individual as innate potentialities, thereby achieving in the individual the self-identity that is termed "integrity" and that constitutes the foundation of other virtues.2 Norton desires to reconceptualize the individualism historically associated with classical liberalism so as both to retain the gains of classical liberalism and to overcome its moral minimalism. According to Norton, the crucial problem with the conception of individuality historically associated with classical liberalism is that it is "non-developmental," or rather, there is only development within a single stage, namely, for self-preservation. There is nothing more. There is no standard of self-perfection by which to distinguish satisfaction of desire from satisfaction of right desire -no way to distinguish Socrates's satisfaction from that of a fool's. Norton thus seeks to replace classical liberalism's non-developmental conception of individuality with a eudaimonistic conception of the individual. 1 Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uy!, Liberty and Nature: An Aristotelian Defense of Liberal Order (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1991), pp. 2 Democracy and Moral Development, p. 40. 92-93. RECLAIMING LIBERALISM 111 By replacing classical liberalism's conception of individuality with a... (shrink)

There is widespread agreement among large segments of western society that we are living in a period of hard times. At first glance such a belief might seem exceedingly odd. After all, persons in western society find themselves living in a time of unprecedented material abundance. Hunger and disease, evils all too familiar to the members of earlier generations, although far from eradicated from modern life, are plainly on the wane. Persons alive today can look forward to healthier, longer, and (...) more comfortable lives than those of their grand parents. Nevertheless, the feeling that life today is especially difficult is rampant in government, in the media, in popular books, and in academic circles. Western society is perceived in many quarters as wracked by crises of all sorts-of faith, of power, of authority, of social turmoil, of declining quality in workmanship and products, and of a general intellectual malaise afflicting both those on the Left and the Right. A tone of crisis permeates the language of public life. Editorials in major newspapers are full of dire warnings about the dangers of unbridled egoism, avarice and greed, and the risks and horrors of pollution, overpopulation, the arms race, crime, and indulgent lifestyles. (shrink)

A delightfully straightforward and lyrical retelling of the ancient Indian epic of loyalty, betrayal, redemption, and insight into the true nature of life -- one of history's most sacred ethical works, rendered with completeness and sterling accuracy for the modern reader. Here is one of the world's most hallowed works of sacred literature, the grand, sweeping epic of the divine bowman and warrior Rama and his struggles with evil, power, duplicity, and avarice. The Ramayana is one of the foundations (...) of world literature and one of humanity's most ancient and treasured ethical and spiritual works. 'This new version is so simply and beautifully written -- it will stir the soul!' --David Lynch. (shrink)

In his Epistle to the Pisos, Horace advises aspiring playwrights to use their work to teach and delight,1 a dictum that has resonated down through the ages and has been referred to as the "Horatian platitude."2 In the preface to his comedy Clizia, Niccolò Machiavelli echoes Horace: "Comedies were discovered in order to benefit and to delight the spectators. Truly it is a great benefit to any man, and especially to a youth, to know the avarice of an old (...) man, the passion of a lover, the tricks of a servant, the gluttony of a parasite, the misery of a pauper, the ambition of one who's rich, the flatteries of a whore, the untrustworthiness of all men."3And what of Machiavelli's Mandragola?... (shrink)

For Plato, one mark of the difference between sophistry and philosophy is that the sophist takes fees for service. His Socrates does not. However, this paper points out that Socrates' attitude to money reflects his unique indifference to things bodily, and a more satisfactory understanding of Plato on money needs to turn to his discussion of the love of money or avarice, especially in the Republic. Plato locates money-loving in appetitive soul along with physical cravings like hunger and lust; (...) why he should do so is explained if avarice is seen as a primary instance of a more pervasive possessiveness that is ultimately somatic in nature. I argue that though his remedies are too severe, Plato is right to warn against avarice and its possible effects upon the practice of philosophy. And following Plato I conclude that philosophy is best understood as enquiry unconstrained by the interests of the market and carried out in the context of academic freedom. (shrink)

Humans are caught – in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too – in a net of good and evil. Natural evils are simply natural catastrophes that destroy human life, property, crops, and means of livelihood such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, avalanches, floods, and droughts. Some people may never recover from such evils and be incapable of leading a normal human life. The evil (...) of evil‐doers can therefore be explained away by showing that they themselves are victims. The existence of human evil is explained by reference to the wickedness of those who choose of their own will to do evil. The idea that evil is privative, that is, it consists in the absence of good, stripped of its theological trappings, is unconvincing. (shrink)

It is meet and right that pride and humility should be the two human characteristics on which University sermons have to be preached. Left to myself, although I might have picked on my modesty as something I should share with you, I should have given the preeminence to other among my sins than pride. My greed, my sloth, my avarice or, in this salacious age my lust, are subjects on which I could tell you much that might interest you. (...) Pride lacks immediate appeal. We are not sure what it is, or whether it is a bad thing, when we think of it in purely individual terms. But when we consider it collectively, we can see that it is, together with humility, something Oxford is peculiarly well qualified to preach on. We all of us are proud of our university. We were proud, and our schoolmasters were proud, when we first got our places here. We are, dons and undergraduates alike, proud of our colleges, each grateful that good fortune has brought him to the best college in Oxford, and anxious that everyone else should secretly acknowledge it to be the best. Our parents were proud when we took our degrees, and although we profess to be unconcerned with classes, we are deeply content to record our firsts when occasion requires us to do so, or have our contemporaries allude to them as opportunity offers. We are studious, as dons, not to pull rank, safe in the knowledge that others will do it for us, and that we shall receive the deference due to a fellow of an Oxford college. In an age that is egalitarian in theory but elitist at heart, Oxford men have benefited greatly, as other forms of social eminence have been eroded, leaving a clear field for our own claims to public esteem, which are, if not entirely unchallenged, still generally allowed. Oxford is, as we like to be told by outsiders, a centre of excellence, and a lot of the resplendence rubs off on us, not altogether undeservedly. It is, as we corporately admit on Commemoration Sunday, largely due to our having entered into other men's labours.. (shrink)