This chapter contains sections titled: Eudaimonia, Ergon, and Espresso The Golden Mean The Bean.

In this article I attempt to untangle the purported connection between moral virtue and flourishing in the context of examining what looks like an unexpected effect of oppression: If moral virtue is necessary for flourishing—as Aristotle assumes that it is when he describes eudaimonia as an “activity of the soul in accordance with virtue” — then members of structurally privileged groups can only flourish if they are morally good. However, it is hard to conceive of the (...) privileged as morally good, since their privileges result from unjust social positionings. Thus it appears that they are prevented from leading good lives. This is an odd claim to add to a theory of oppression, which one would expect to explain how the victims of oppression — rather than its beneficiaries — are denied a shot at the good life.While the privileged may enjoy especially ample opportunities to develop certain virtues, I will be thinking here about vices associated with practices of domination, including active or passive acceptance of the benefits that come from occupying positionings that depend upon systems of male dominance, white supremacy, class divisions under capitalism, norms of heterosexuality, and so on. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Ancient Quarrel Revisited:Literary Theory and the Return to EthicsJoseph G. KronickThe modern quarrel between theory and practice, like the ancient one between philosophy and poetry, is at once a practical one—at its heart is the question how we should live—and a pedagogical one—who or what is the proper teacher of virtue? Today, the quarrel is between theory and literature rather than between philosophy and poetry, a change that (...) has not been beneficial. The modern complaint against the abstractions of theory reflects a diminution in the quality of the argument. For the ancient Greeks, to ask about the virtuous life was to inquire into what it is to be human, for aretê, which is typically translated as "virtue," but is understood to mean "excellence" or "goodness," meant acting in accordance with what it is to be fully human. 1 The notion that "real issues," as one prominent theorist argues, belong to the realm of action and epistemological and ontological questions to the abstract realm of theory is a simplification of the more serious question of the relation of particulars to universals. It reverses the Platonic and Aristotelian hierarchy that makes thinking the highest form of activity. But something else is going on in this call to action: in denigrating thinking as abstract, it elevates doxa, opinion, in its place. Under the regime of doxa, two things occur: philosophy and poetry are looked upon as useless because utility becomes the criteria for measuring value, and singularity is looked upon with disdain, if it is, indeed, acknowledged at all, because to the extent the world as it appears is common to us all, doxa is not distinct or individual but uniform or the same. Philosophy and poetry share not only the stigma of being deemed useless, but they are dismissed as odd, singular, not common.This essay is concerned with the status of the singular in philosophy [End Page 436] and poetry. The ancient quarrel has not been settled, which may indeed be a good thing because the quarrel keeps alive the question, who is to speak for that which cannot be spoken of, the singular? Silence may be the appropriate response, yet to preserve the experience of that which resists language is the task of philosophy and poetry, hence the quarrel. A long tradition has it that the philosopher seeks universals, while the poet offers particular images of virtue, but at the heart of this argument over ethics is the question of how to account for the singular or unique. To do so, I turn to Socrates, whose singularity remains unaccounted for to this day.Socrates may be said to embody the very problem of the relation between philosophy and literature, for he left us no writings and exists for us primarily through the writings of Plato. Yet there is widespread acceptance of Plato's portrait of him, particularly as to Socrates' method, the elenchus, and his principle of the priority of definitions. However, Socrates' insistence upon the priority of definition is not an example of the philosopher elevating theory over experience but a practical issue involving the care of the self. Furthermore, in ancient Greece, moral and philosophical questions concerning the soul were as much the provenance of poetry as they were of philosophy. The search for truth is a practical matter concerning the conduct of life, but the Platonic philosopher wishes to give a rational account, or logos, that would link conduct to knowledge, whereas the poet's examples are bound to their representations. Nevertheless, to presume that Socrates was seeking a definition of virtue on the grounds that possession of the definition would translate into a good life is an absurdity, for he could never have sought after the knowledge of virtue if his mode of life depended upon the definition rather than on his character. 2The error is to accuse Socrates of placing abstract knowledge before virtuous conduct. When Socrates asks for a definition of the beautiful, for instance, he does not reject the answer, "the beautiful is a beautiful woman," because it confuses a particular with a universal (when compared to the beauty of the gods, the woman is... (shrink)

Aristotle begins the Nicomachean Ethics by asking what the final good for human beings is. He identifies this final good with happiness, and in the rest of Book I, asks what happiness is. In I 7, Aristotle reaches an “outline” of an answer, claiming that the human good is activity of the soul in accordance with the best and most perfect virtue in a perfect life. But he does not say what the (...) best and most perfect virtue is. Towards the end of the last book of the Ethics, Aristotle seems to answer this question by arguing that the best and most perfect virtue is theoretical wisdom, exercised in theoretical study or contemplation of universal and necessary truths about the universe. He believes that self-sufficiency follows from finality. This article considers Aristotle's conception of happiness, its relation to other goods, happiness as fulfillment of the human function, a monist conception of happiness, complete life, the counting condition, rational life, and moral virtue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE VIRTUES OF MAN THE ANIMAL SOCIALE: AFFABILITAS AND VERITAS IN AQUINAS 1 KEVIN WHITE Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. XSTOTLE'S definition of man as the 'qlov '1ToAmKov 2the city-dwelling animal-undergoes an interesting transformation in the scholastic Latin of St. Thomas Aquinas : while the epithet of the definition occasionally appears in Aquinas's writings as transliterated, in animal politicum, or as thoroughly domesticated, in William of Moerbeke's translation (...) animal civile, his preferred version of the Aristotelian formula is animal sociale, though he sometimes says politicum et sociale, politicum vel sociale and sociale et politicum.8 For these uses of the term sociale, Aquinas is indebted not only to earlier writers of Latin but also to the genius of the language itself, whose words sociale and societas seem to have no equivalent in Aristotle's Greek. Less formal and explicit than the polis or civitas, what is meant by societas is rather the pervasive and mostly unacknowledged element within which cities are founded and continue, and which consists in the specifically human way of being together or, as Heidegger says, Mitsein. It is easy to discern in Aquinas's opposition between politicum and sociale the ancestor of our own commonplace and sharp contrast between " politics " and " so1 This paper was read in Buenos Aires on September 14, 1991, as a contribution to the sixteenth annual Semana Tomista of the Sociedad Tomista Argentina. 2 Politics I, 1, 1153a2-3. a For a survey of texts, see Edgar Scully, "The Place of the State in Society According to St. Thomas Aquinas," The Thomist 45 (1981): 407-429. The present discussion may be regarded as a gloss on the theme of this article that the social is prior to the political. 641 642 KEVIN WHITE ciety," though we should be careful not to identify our way of speaking with his: whereas we view " society " as a historical product, and so distinguish among different societies, societas for him, as for the ancient Romans, primarily connotes the universally human activity of coming together in association or alliance : it names that essential feature of human combination which is prior to institutions and to recognitions of special friendship, but which, just because it is a good of our nature, prevents human togetherness from being reduced to a bare co-presence. An illustration of the way in which Aristotle's reflections on human nature are both complicated and enriched, in Aquinas's appropriation of them, by the Roman notion of societas may be seen by comparing the differing treatments which the latter gives of the " social " virtues of truthfulness and friendliness in his commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics and in the Summa Theologiae. In both texts, to be sure, these virtues pale in significance beside such impressive qualities as courage and moderation; nevertheless, a notable increase in their importance seems to occur between the commentary, where, in keeping with the order of Aristotle's text, they appear as members of a series of virtues related to merely secondary matters, and the Summa, where they are elevated to a status among the " potential parts " of the virtue of justice and are distinguished by their relevance to the needs of man the animal sociale. Let us consider this difference in presentation, bearing in mind that the two texts were composed approximately simultaneously and fairly late in Aquinas's career, that is, during his second Parisian sojourn in 1269-72." I The commentary on the Ethics introduces the fourth book of the work as a sequel to the third : after discussing courage and moderation, which concern those things by which the very life of man is preserved, Aquinas says, here, in Book IV, the Philos4 For the chronology, see James A. Weisheipl, O.P., Friar Thomas d'Aquino: His Life, Thought and -YVorks, with Corrigenda and Addenda (Washington, 198~)' pp. 361, 380. AFFABILITAS AND VERITAS IN AQUINAS 643 opher treats of other "intermedaries," namely seven virtues and the feeling of shame, which are related to " certain secondary goods or evils." 5 Among the seven virtues, the first four have to do with external things, whether the external goods of wealth and honor or the external evils... (shrink)

This paper takes a nuanced stance against an intellectualist position that is strong in the literature on the Philebus by arguing that pleasure’s goodness is inherent but not independent. Pleasure is worth pursuing together with intellectual activity in the mixed life because pleasure is the sensual manifestation, direct or indirect, of growth in goodness. Pleasure as the expression of this growth is the sensual component of the mixture that Socrates in this dialogue defends as the good (...) for human beings. But if pleasure’s contribution to the overall goodness of a human life is not to be outweighed by some corresponding badness, it must reflect an accurate assessment of the goodness of our experiences and either proceed directly from the right kind of intellectual or psychic activity or else be subordinated to the rational ordering activity of intellect according to the standards of virtue, moderation, and health. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Goodness is Goal‐like Criteria of an Ultimate Good A Particular Activity in Accordance with Virtue The Systematic Examination of the Virtues The Activity of Speculative Wisdom Conclusion Bibliography.

Being attentive to the needs of others, feeling responsible for each other, and taking care are necessary elements for the good life. Care, however, is a fragile activity: it is hard to predict its results. In this article, Homer's story of the Phaeacians bringing Odysseus back to Ithaca is interpreted to investigate what care could be when we admit the fragility of care. We consider two theoretical perspectives on care to interpret the story, namely Martha Nussbaum’s Aristotelian (...) ethics, and the Ethics of Care approach of authors like Ruddick, Sevenhuijsen, Tronto, Verkerk and others. In the first approach, the emphasis is on the attitude of care; in the second, on care as a social practice. Following Nussbaum, the caring response of the Phaeacians can be understood as an example of what Aristotle called ‘practical rationality’. The unexpected result of their care – they come into conflict with Poseidon – shows the fragility of human life and the tragic condition of humanity. According to Nussbaum, one should take responsibility for the fact that choosing for the one implies neglecting the other . From the perspective of Ethics of Care, the caring response is not so much the result of individual virtues; it is rather an element of a care practice that motivates people to act in conformity with basic values like solidarity and responsibility. The fragility of care is regarded as an ordinary quality of praxis and humanity rather than something essentially tragic. In the process of caring, misfortunes can never be totally prevented. Whenever they happen, they should be used as a way to learn and develop more adequate ways of handling the situation. The comparison of the two perspectives, both inspired by Aristotle's philosophy, gives rise to a richer view of the fragility of care. (shrink)

The subject of this paper is the meaning and significance of habit formation, or habituation, in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. According to Aristotle, ethics is an intellectual activity that helps an individual become a good person. Moreover, habituation is essential for becoming a good person. Aristotle believes that habituation, which helps us become good people, is possible by making “actions in accordance with virtues” our habits. Habituation is a keystone concept in Aristotle’s ethics. However, contrary (...) to the importance given to the concept of habituation, Aristotle’s remarks on habituation are curiously poor and fragmentary. Several researchers have been baffled by this contradiction and have produced different perplexing interpretations. This paper attempts to shed light on Aristotle’s views on the path to virtue from a new perspective by clarifying three points: 1. According to Aristotle, habituation is something that adults with life experience should attempt to overcome their vices. 2. The “action” that constitutes the substance of habituation is the trial and error through which the learner achieves his or her own “middle point” (i.e., virtue), without following ready-made examples. 3. The reason Aristotle did not offer an in-depth explanation of this issue is that the hard work of habituation is already a “virtuous” and “noble” action in and of itself. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a remarkable resurgence of interest in classical conceptions of what it means for human beings to lead a good life. Although the primary focus of the return to classical thought has been Aristotle's account of virtue, the ethics of Aquinas has also received much attention. Our understanding of the integrity of Aquinas's thought has clearly benefited from the recovery of the ethics of virtue.Understood from either a natural or a supernatural perspective, the (...) good life according to Aquinas involves the exercise not just of the moral virtues, but also of the intellectual virtues. Following Aristotle, Aquinas divides the intellectual virtues into the practical, which have either doing (prudence) or making (art) as an end, and the theoretical or speculative, which are ordered to knowing for its own sake (understanding, knowledge, and wisdom). One of the intellectual virtues, namely, prudence has received much recent attention. With few exceptions, however, contemporary discussions of Aquinas ignore the complex and nuanced relationships among, and comparisons between, the different sorts of intellectual virtue. Even more striking is the general neglect of the speculative, intellectual virtues and the role of contemplation in the good life.In Virtue's Splendor Professor Hibbs seeks to overcome this neglect, approaching the ethical thought of Thomas Aquinas in terms of the great debate of antiquity and the Middle Ages concerning the rivalry between the active and the contemplative lives, between prudence and wisdom as virtues perfective of human nature. In doing so, he puts before the reader the breadth of Aquinas's vision of the good life. (shrink)

In this chapter, I attempt to provide a richer account of reflective agency than standard theorists do, by focusing on the deep connection between the role of empathic receptivity and that of reflection. In From Enlightenment to Receptivity, Michael Slote innovatively introduces the idea of receptivity as a virtue into the domains of epistemology and ethics, and argues that the virtue of receptivity plays a crucial role in the realization of a good life (2013). In contrast, I incorporate (...) receptivity as a virtue into the domain of philosophy of action, particularly the philosophical analysis of reflective agency, an aspect on which Slote does not place much emphasis. To date, standard theories of reflective agency have concentrated on analyzing its self-governing aspect (e.g., Bratman 2007; Frankfurt 1999; Korsgaard 1996). Such an analysis is undoubtedly important because autonomous agency is a central value in the modern world. However, standard theorists’ strong commitment to individualistic, self-determining agency appears to have hindered them from appreciating the fundamental significance of empathic receptivity toward others’ perspectives in our rational, reflective lives. To remedy this tendency, I demonstrate how empathic receptivity significantly contributes to the development of our reflective activity. In our temporally extended lives, empathic receptivity is not only associated with an event at a single moment but also with a dynamic process unfolding over time. In my view, such diachronic receptivity helps us to deepen our understanding of others’ perspectives, and in so doing, to reflectively examine our own ways of thinking and acting from different angles that we have not previously recognized. Given that our agency unfolds temporally, practical rationality appears to be partly a matter of how we can develop our reflective capacity conducive to continuous learning from others. My receptivity-based account aims to capture such interpersonal and learning aspects of reflection and thus overcome the individualistic, introspective model of reflection that has long dominated the mainstream philosophy of action. The discussion proceeds as follows. In Section 1, I begin by arguing for receptivity’s centrality in empathy and then briefly sketch how the virtue of empathic receptivity functions in our temporally unfolding lives. In Section 2, I attempt to offer a realistic, dynamic account of the relationship between empathic receptivity and reflection. Particularly, I discuss how a receptively virtuous person can appropriately confront anxiety caused by encountering another’s serious challenge. In the last section, I clarify the strength of my receptivity-based model of reflection by comparing it with Michael Bratman’s policy-based model of reflection. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 445-446 [Access article in PDF] G. Felicitas Munzel. Kant's Conception of Moral Character: The "Critical" Link of Morality, Anthropology, and Reflective Judgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Pp. xxii + 378. Cloth, $53.00. Paper, $24.00. Given the recent trend in Kant scholarship to seek a kinder, more caring philosopher behind the familiar rules and imperatives, a study focusing on the (...) place of "character" in Kant's thought is a timely contribution to a growing body of work. Indeed, G. Felicitas Munzel intends to go where no Kantian has gone before and show not only that Kant has a conception of character, but that it is "rich" (1) and "unique in the history of philosophy" (5). Considering his "corpus as a whole" (6), she sets out to demonstrate the "systematic importance" of the concept for Kant's thought (1) and reveal "a richer sense of familiar notions of his moral philosophy than is generally appreciated" (11).From the outset, however, high hopes prove hard to sustain. In Chapter 1, Munzel's exegetical efforts to link "character" with Denkungsart ("conduct of thought") and Gesinnung ("comportment of mind"), either delineate only familiar elements of Kant's thought or attribute to him views which philosopher and non-philosopher alike could hardly deny: in Kant's "rich" conception, character involves clear thinking and perfection, and is an "accomplished state" (67) presupposing sound reasoning and the capacity to think. In what becomes the dominant theme of the study, Munzel concludes that, for Kant, character is an activity in which the objective moral law is realized in subjects acting on maxims and from firm principles.In Chapter 2 the reader is subsequently led across a familiar terrain of causality, desire, and feeling, to learn that Kant is disinclined to inclination, but very much inclined to reason (71-2); and that character has a foot in both the empirical and intelligible orders of causality (74). The same goes for desire (95ff.) and aesthetic capacity (126ff.), where the "moral form" of character represents the union of reason and nature. A [End Page 445] similar story continues in Chapter 3 where Munzel considers Kant's view of religion and hopes to cast "new light" (142) upon and foster "fresh appreciation" (182) for "radical evil." Again, the reader spots comforting landmarks along the way and emerges into a world unchanged: for Kant, Munzel concludes, human conflict is a manifestation of evil with its roots in human nature; virtue involves progress or advance; and a well-established character brings inner and outer peace to human life (134-6).In the remainder of the book Munzel turns to the "structure and cultivation of character." Chapter 4 focuses on orientation, reflective principles, conscience, and discourse where, rambling through the Kantian landscape, one learns that common sense is a source of principles (198ff); maxims should be steadfastly adopted (208-9); and that morally upright persons should know their duty (210), tell the truth (246), and develop their capacities to the full (249). By this stage, that "character must be made subjectively rational" (252) has become a mantra, but lest the point remain unclear, Munzel expounds a metaphor (from Mendelssohn's Morgenstunden) of a traveler on life's journey, in order to emphasize that moral character involves being rational, competent, and accountable for one's actions (191ff.).In the final chapter, pedagogy becomes the main focus. It is a practice, Munzel contends, which determines the conditions under which character is formed (260). Mixed in the appropriate fashion, its elements combine to make "cultivation of moral judgment" the "essence of moral character" (259). Again, Munzel connects character to well-known Kantian doctrines, linking pedagogy to self-mastery (292) and a community of civic-minded citizens (258) in which the good of one promotes the well-being of all (288). In the world according to Kant, reason "grafts" virtue onto the stuff of nature to create an organic unity as—in Munzel's favorite metaphor (see 335-45... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 533 Mind in Action: Essays in the Philosophy of Mind. By AMELIE OKSEN· BERG RORTY. Boston: Beacon Press, 1988. Pp. x & 378. This volume assembles essays written over a period of fifteen years (1973-1988), dealing with topics grouped into the following four areas: (1) persons and identity, (2) the nature of psychological activities, (3) problems in philosophy of mind such as fear, self-deception and akrasia, (...) and (4) issues of virtue and character in social context. Rorty's approach to these topics is governed by a " commitment to the primacy of the particular" (ix). Her style, consequently, is rich in detail, in the exhibition of differences between related issues (e.g., between personal identity and identity of human being), and in the dis· play of the importance of context for setting the philosophical problems concerning mind. Indeed, she writes: " If there were a great ontological table of contents, neither mind nor individ"Ual minds would be likely to appear on the list of independent substances " (5). Thus the collec· tion does not set out a substantial theory of mind; rather, it exhibits a set of commitments and preoccupations-in the author's words, " a point of view." The value of the collection lies in its wealth of discriminating exposition of intricately related issues, and in the display of a philosophical intellect whose consistency survives the strategic pre· disposition to analyze by distinguishing contexts. The first grouping of essays is "Persons and Personae." The title essay "Persons and Personae" (1987) argues that there is no over· arching synthesis that will reconcile the several concepts of a person. Rorty argues from the premise that any concept of person is rooted in and reflects the characteristic central activities of a society: "primary, privileged activities, the activities that are thought to express human excellence and tasks " (25). This unpacks into three parts: (1) that there is no such thing as the concept of a person; (2) that concepts of persons are always reflective of some particular society; and (3) that the element of a society that defines its concept of self will be its list of central human activities, be they religious, political, economic, or moral in nature. Rorty analyzes seven such concepts, and concludes by eschewing what she calls a "vulgar Wittgensteinian" approach; namely, simply advising philosophers to be cured of the yearning for one metaphysical concept of person. Instead, briefly, she acknowledges that yearning and recommends inquiry into its roots and recommends scrutiny of the various overlapping but uncoordinatable concepts of person in the various areas of life that give rise to them. In "The Transformation of Persons" (1973) she argues that the question " Is this the same person? " may have multiple admissible 534 BOOK REVIEWS answers. The question of personal identity through change has, she argues, typically given rise to either psychological, memory-based criteria, or to criteria based on reidentification of the same physical agent. Her claim is that either of these, pressed hard enough, presupposes the other. She dismisses the potentially dismal construal of this conclusion, holding that a recognition of the interdependence of psychological and physical criteria of identity is in fact beneficial, as both kinds of criteria tend to emphasize our notion of persons as (at least) the "irreducible units of responsible agency " (57). The argumentation supporting this contention of criterial interdependence is, however, thin. In "Persons, Policies, and Bodies" (1973) Rorty moves her concerns further toward the issues of responsibility. She examines the theory that a person is a locus of rational agency, that is, one who operates according to deliberately adopted policies that guide particular choices. She notes that if this theory holds, the concept of a person is conceptually distinct from the concept of an individual human being and from an individuated self as a subject of experience. But it does not hold, according to her, at least in any robust sense. She discloses difficulties in fleshing out the notions of choice and rational agency required by the theory, arguing that attempts to salvage it by resorting to rationality as a matter of degree or as a potential tend to vitiate the theory instead of saving it. Rather, her view is that... (shrink)

Virtue ethics is now well established as a substantive, independent normative theory. It was not always so. The revival of virtue ethics was initially spurred by influential criticisms of other normative theories, especially those made by Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, John McDowell, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Bernard Williams. 1 Because of this heritage, virtue ethics is often associated with anti-theory movements in ethics and more recently, moral particularism. There are, however, quite a few different approaches to ethics that can reasonably (...) claim to be versions of virtue ethics. The predominant strand of virtue ethics is broadly Aristotelian, although some accounts bear little resemblance to Aristotle's. In its most general form, virtue ethics is compatible with a wide range of meta-ethical and normative commitments. This diversity makes it difficult to compare virtue ethics as such with other normative theories. It can also be a challenge to see just what the various versions of virtue ethics have in common with each other. Three major types of virtue ethics are represented in the books by Rosalind Hursthouse, Michael Slote, and Christine Swanton, recommended in the following section. Each of these book sets forward a considerably self-standing form of virtue ethics. The authors differ on central issues such as the relationship between virtue and flourishing and the link between virtuous agents and right or virtuous actions. Unlike Swanton and Slote, Hursthouse defends a version of ethical naturalism that has affinities with theories recently defended by Philippa Foot and Alasdair MacIntyre. 2 Slote's theory is agent-based, meaning that his account derives judgments about the moral status of actions from moral features of agents. Hursthouse and Swanton defend theories according to which the moral status of an action depends on its broader relationship to human flourishing (Hursthouse) or whether it hits the target of a virtue (Swanton). Although these three books presently form the core of contemporary virtue ethics, there are other approaches that might reasonably be described as versions of virtue ethics, such as those presented by Julia Driver, Linda Zagzebski, and Robert Adams. 3 There are also, of course, a large number of articles in which authors defend or criticize tenets that are central to most versions of virtue ethics. Some recent articles on especially important topics are listed in the following section. Current 'hot topics' in virtue ethics include whether its account of right action is adequate and whether virtue ethics is at odds with empirical psychology. Articles on these debates and others are listed in the following section. Author Recommends: Books These three books are foundational works in contemporary virtue ethics, and represent quite different approaches to virtue ethics. For each book, I have also listed an article by the same author in which he or she articulates some similar themes. Those pressed for time or space on a syllabus might start by examining those articles. 1. Hursthouse, Rosalind. On Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Hursthouse defends a eudaimonistic version of virtue ethics with Aristotelian affinities. *See also Hursthouse, Rosalind. 'Normative Virtue Ethics.' How Should One Live? Ed. Roger Crisp. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. 19–36. 2. Slote, Michael. Morals from Motives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Slote defends a version of virtue ethics based on evaluations of motives, drawing on historical figures like Martineau, Hutcheson, and Hume. Note that this book represents a fairly significant departure from his first book in virtue ethics, From Morality to Virtue (New York: Oxford, 1992). *See also Slote, Michael. 'Agent-Based Virtue Ethics.' Virtue Ethics . Ed. Roger Crisp and Michael Slote. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 3. Swanton, Christine. Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Swanton defends a pluralistic, non-eudaimonistic version of virtue ethics that draws on influences ranging from Aristotle to Nietzsche to contemporary psychoanalytic theory. *See also Swanton, Christine. 'A Virtue Ethical Account of Right Action.' Ethics 112 (2001): 32–52. Articles The following is a selection of articles that address some of the central and controversial topics within virtue ethics. 1. Annas, Julia. 'Being Virtuous and Doing the Right Thing.' Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 78.2 (2004): 61–75. This article addresses the problem of action guidance and the role that an account of right action should play in virtue ethics. 2. Conly, Sarah. 'Flourishing and the Failure of the Ethics of Virtue.' Midwest Studies in Philosophy Vol. XIII, Ethical Theory: Character and Virtue . Eds. P. French et al. South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988. 83–96. This article articulates the central problems faced by versions of virtue ethics that rely on a conception of human flourishing. 3. Das, Ramon. 'Virtue Ethics and Right Action.' Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (2003): 324–39. This article raises objections about insularity and circularity to accounts of right action presented by Hursthouse, Slote, and Swanton. 4. Doris, John M. 'Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics.' Nous 32 (1998): 504–30. This article argues that situationist psychology undermines the concept of a character trait on which virtue ethicists rely. An expanded version of this criticism can be found in Doris, Lack of Character, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 5. Hursthouse, Rosalind. 'Virtue Theory and Abortion.' Philosophy and Public Affairs 20.3 (1991): 223–46. This article argues that virtue ethics is capable of providing action guidance in the difficult problem of abortion. 6. Johnson, Robert N. 'Virtue and Right.' Ethics 113 (2003): 810–34. This article raises several objections against the accounts of right action in virtue ethics, one of which is that they cannot make sense of the rightness of self-improving actions. The criticism is directly primarily at Hursthouse's theory, but Swanton and Slote are discussed as well. 7. Kamtekar, Rachana. 'Situationism and Virtue Ethics on the Content of Our Character.' Ethics 114 (2004): 458–91. This article argues that situationist critiques of virtue ethics rely on a mistaken understanding of virtuous character. 8. Kawall, Jason. 'Virtue Theory and Ideal Observers.' Philosophical Studies 109 (2002): 197– 222. This article argues for an ideal observer-style account of right action in virtue ethics. 9. Nussbaum, Martha. 'Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach.' Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. XIII, Ethical Theory: Character and Virtue . Ed. P. French et al. South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988. 32–53. This article presents a view of the virtues on which the virtues are excellences in spheres of activity. Although the spheres are common to all humans, the manifestation of excellence in a given sphere is subject to cultural variation. 10. Sreenivasan, Gopal. 'Errors about Errors: Virtue Theory and Trait Attribution.' Mind 111 (2002): 47–68. This article addresses the situationist critique of character traits by arguing that virtue ethics does not depend on the concept of a character trait as Doris and others understand it. 11. Stangl, Rebecca. 'A Dilemma for Particularist Virtue Ethics.' Philosophical Quarterly 58 (2008): 665–78. This article addresses the relationship between virtue ethics and radical moral particularism, arguing that the latter may have undesirable consequences for virtue ethicists unless they accept the unity of the virtues. 12. Stohr, Karen. 'Contemporary Virtue Ethics.' Philosophy Compass 1.1 (January 2006): 22–7. This article provides an overview and analysis of contemporary virtue ethics. It includes discussion of main problems and challenges for the future. 13. Stohr, Karen. 'Moral Cacophony: When Continence is a Virtue.' Journal of Ethics 7 (2003): 339–63. This article raises problems for the commonly accepted distinction between virtue and continence, arguing that the mixed emotions normally associated with continence are sometimes characteristic of virtue instead. 14. van Zyl, Liezl. 'Agent-Based Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Action Guidance.' Journal of Moral Philosophy 6 (2009): 50–69. This article defends agent-based virtue ethics against objections that it cannot distinguish agent-appraisal from act-appraisal and that it cannot provide adequate action guidance. Anthologies 1. Crisp, Roger, ed. How Should One Live? Essays on the Virtues. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. This is one of the first virtue ethics anthologies published, and so reflects a correspondingly earlier picture of the field. The essays, however, are important and interesting in their own right, and cover a broad array of topics. 2. Crisp, Roger and Michael Slote, eds. Virtue Ethics . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. This anthology was published over a decade ago and does not capture recent developments in the field. It is, however, an admirably thorough collection of the most influential essays from the early days of virtue ethics, both promoting and criticizing it. 3. Darwall, Stephen, ed. Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. This anthology is distinctive in that it includes material from Aristotle, Hutcheson, and Hume, along with some central contemporary sources. 4. Walker, Rebecca L. and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds. Working Virtue. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. This recent anthology focuses on applied virtue ethics and has an excellent selection of essays by influential thinkers on topics including the environment, business, medicine, war, and poverty. Online Sources 'Virtue Ethics', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/ Entry written by Rosalind Hursthouse and updated in 2007. 'Bibliography on Virtue Ethics', maintained by Jörg Schroth. http://www.ethikseite.de/bib/cvirtue.pdf Extensive list of work published in virtue ethics. Updated regularly, listed in both alphabetical and chronological order, and contains abstracts of papers. 'Janusblog', maintained by Guy Axtell. http://janusblog.squarespace.com/ Blog devoted to current work in virtue ethics and virtue epistemology, although with an emphasis on the latter. It contains spirited discussion among the many contributors, as well as a library of papers. Sample Syllabus This syllabus is for a graduate seminar or intense upper-level undergraduate course. Books for purchase for this course might include the Crisp and Slote anthology, the Walker and Ivanhoe anthology, and Hursthouse's On Virtue Ethics. Week 1: The Roots of Contemporary Virtue Ethics Anscombe, Elizabeth. 'Modern Moral Philosophy' (Crisp and Slote) Foot, Philippa. 'Virtues and Vices' (Crisp and Slote) MacIntyre, Alasdair. 'The Nature of the Virtues' (Crisp and Slote) Week 2: The Roots of Contemporary Virtue Ethics Stocker, Michael. 'The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories' (Crisp and Slote) Williams, Bernard. 'Morality, the Peculiar Institution' (Crisp and Slote) McDowell, John. 'Virtue and Reason' (Crisp and Slote) Week 3: Aristotelian Virtue Ethics Hursthouse, Rosalind. On Virtue Ethics, Part I Hursthouse, Rosalind. 'Practical Wisdom: A Mundane Account.' Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 106.3 (2006): 283–307. Stangl, Rebecca. 'A Dilemma for Particularist Virtue Ethics' Week 4: Aristotelian Virtue Ethics Hursthouse, Rosalind. On Virtue Ethics, Part II Stark, Susan. 'Virtue and Emotion.' Nous 33.5 (2001): 440–55. Stohr, Karen. 'Moral Cacophony: When Continence is a Virtue' Week 5: Aristotelian Virtue Ethics Hursthouse, Rosalind. On Virtue Ethics, Part III Conly, Sarah. 'Flourishing and the Failure of an Ethics of Virtue' Nussbaum, Martha. 'Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach' MacIntyre, Alasdair. Dependent Rational Animals, chapter 10 Week 6: Agent-Based Virtue Ethics Slote, Michael 'Agent-Based Virtue Ethics' (Crisp and Slote) Slote, Michael, Morals from Motives, chapters 1 and 3 Week 7: Pluralistic Virtue Ethics Swanton, Christine. Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View , chapters 3, 4, and 11. Week 8: The Situationist Critique of Virtue Ethics Doris, John. 'Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics' Kamtekar, Rachana. 'Situationism and Virtue Ethics on the Content of Our Character' Sreenivasan, Gopal. 'Errors about Errors: Virtue Theory and Trait Attribution' Merritt, Maria. 'Aristotelian Virtue and the Interpersonal Aspect of Ethical Character.' Journal of Moral Philosophy 6 (2009): 23–49. Week 11: Right Action – Problems Johnson, Robert. 'Virtue and Right' Das, Ramon. 'Virtue Ethics and Right Action' Week 12: Right Action – Virtue Ethics Solutions Annas, Julia. 'Being Virtuous and Doing the Right Thing' van Zyl, Liezl. 'Agent-Based Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Action Guidance' Kawall, Jason. 'Virtue Theory and Ideal Observers' Week 13: Virtue Ethics and Professional Roles Pelligrino, Edmund. 'Professing Medicine, Virtue Based Ethics, and the Retrieval of Professionalism' (Walker and Ivanhoe) Swanton, Christine. 'Virtue Ethics, Role Ethics, and Business Ethics' (Walker and Ivanhoe) Sherman, Nancy. 'Virtue and a Warrier's Anger' (Walker and Ivanhoe) Week 14: Virtue Ethics and the Non-Human World Hursthouse, Rosalind. 'Environmental Virtue Ethics' (Walker and Ivanhoe) Walker, Rebecca. 'The Good Life for Non-Human Animals: What Virtue Requires of Humans' (Walker and Ivanhoe) Focus Questions 1. What is the relationship between virtue and flourishing? Are the virtues necessary for flourishing? Sufficient? 2. Can virtue ethics provide an adequate account of right action? 3. On what concept of a character trait does virtue ethics rely, and does situationist psychology undermine it? 4. Is the project of ethical naturalism a plausible one? To what extent does the success of Aristotelian virtue ethics depend on it? 5. How does virtue ethics affect the way that applied ethics is done? (shrink)

The author of this paper starts by sketching a general framework for Peirce's ethical theory: first, he discusses very briefly Peirce's phenomenological categories; then, he outlines some implications of these categories for Peirce's concept of personal identity. In the rest of the paper he discusses successively within this framework Peirce's views on the status of ethics, ideals, concrete reasonableness, evolutionary love, and the relation between the individual and the cosmos. He then argues that these notions, taken together, culminate in a (...) non-subjective ethical theory that indicates what is a good life. The central argument that he develops is that we, according to Peirce, can only become authentic persons through a process of giving a general form to our interactions with our social and natural environment, i.e., a form that is constituted by virtue of the belief in and embodiment of common ideals, which are no less real than concrete, physical events. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Somaesthetics, Education, and the Art of DancePeter J. Arnold (bio)This essay has two related purposes. The first is to explicate what dance as an art form should minimally comprise if it is to be taught as a distinctive aspect of education in the school curriculum. The second and main purpose is to argue that dance, if taught in accordance with what is outlined, is not only an (...) efficacious means in the development, understanding and promotion of somaesthetics, a new term in aesthetic theory, but an example of itsvery embodiment. Put differently it will be upheld that the practice of danceis not only an excellent vehicle in the promotion of somaesthetics but a paradigm case of what it is.But what is somaesthetics? Briefly put, in common with the thinking of some noted philosophers in the past, it can be said that somaesthetics is as much concerned with the idea of being a person and living well as with the development of rational thought and the development of the intellect. It emphasizes, in particular, that the soma in the form of its physical skills, senses and pleasures plays no less a part in the living of a full life than conceptual understanding and the imaginative use of language.1 Richard Shusterman, upholding these sentiments, refers to somaesthetics asthe critical and meliorating study of the experience and use of one's body as a locus of sensory aesthetic appreciation and creative self-fashioning. It is....devoted to the knowledge, discourses, practices, and bodily disciplines that structure such somatic care or can improve it.2Although such values and concerns are known to many educationists, they are rarely acted upon or taught in a deliberate or systematic way. Even within the realms of dance and sport more could be done than is done somaesthetically to educate in the interests of what it is to be a whole person. [End Page 48]Before embarking on the task of exemplifying dance as a form of somaesthetics, it will be helpful first to say a little about education and the idea of dance as a valued human practice; and second, to say something about the aesthetic in relation to art.Education and the Art of Dance as a Valued Human PracticeWhat is clear about the idea of dance as an art form is that it is more than the human body making rhythmical and patterned movements in space. It can be more accurately described as a coherent and complex range of actions in which intentions are physically expressed in terms of a meaningful performance that is artistic in nature and not merely aesthetic in appeal.It is my view that these elements of what constitutes dance best come together and are most readily grasped when it is seen as a valued form of human practice. Following Alistair MacIntyre, I take the term "practice" to meanany coherent and complex form of socially established co-operative human activity through which goods internal to that activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved are systematically extended.3The idea of the arts as forms of practice is helpful in at least two important ways. First, it draws attention to the fact that an art, like medicine, the law, or sport, is a distinctive form of life with its own standards, values, and procedures. Second, it recognizes, in keeping with the idea of education, thatthe internal goods of an activity, like the art of dance, will enlighten and enlarge the powers of the participant. MacIntyre undoubtedly recognizes the connection between the idea of a practice and the concept of education when he observes the proper end of education isto help to discover activities whose ends are not outside themselves — The critical ability which ought to be the fruit of education serves nothing directly except itself, no one except those who exercise it — above all the task of education is to teach the value of activity for its own... (shrink)

Within modern liberal political philosophy, discussions on justice have been centered upon an individualism-based distributive justice and the ‘fair share’ due to each person. According to the liberal theory of justice, the individual is an entity of rational reason and moral autonomy and considers the interests of others and of the community from a viewpoint that is focused on one’s own interests. As practical principles of justice, the principle of desert has attempted to separate the individual’s natural and inherent abilities (...) (merit) from the individual’s intentional efforts (desert); while the principle of needs has transmuted into a set of minimum exclusivity rights to protect the individual’s autonomy from serious harm and injury. Procedural justice theorists such as Rawls have attempted to invalidate the merit of the individual in an attempt to establish the identity of individuals whom are independent of the community, in the effort to promote their ideas on how to mitigate the social inequality that results from natural arbitrariness. The requirement to finalize this logical process is astrong moral reason equipped individual with the capacity of rational action. However, paradoxically, the logic of excessive reason has created an individual who isexclusive-rights-empowered but becomes ‘isolated and selfish’. The issues resulting from this situation are, first, the rational individual who is equipped with moral autonomynow becomes hidden behind a system-guaranteed set of exclusive rights; and second, the individual who should have been a rational actor and actively participating in cooperation and reciprocal relationships, does not find it easy to overcome the temptations of becoming a strategically located but passive and selfish actor within the mass market order. The result is that individuals easily relinquish their moral autonomy and exhibit a tendency to focus on personal gain. This has resulted in an increase in the polarization of society, and an increase of conflict between classes; and has engendered a crisis in the common good of the family and the political community. The true ‘good life’ and the ‘well-ordered community’ cannot be obtained by individuals who are only interested in their ‘share’, but requires ‘good citizens’ who are concerned about the happiness of others and of the society. When we are able to understand that the rational and selfish individual is necessarily non-self-sufficient; and acknowledge that there is a need for mutual philia with others, we will then be able to overcome rational reason and embrace civic friendship. The good citizen of a healthy community that is based on civic friendship, is an individual who has assimilated the virtue of justice, and will be able to aid inovercoming the limitations of modern liberalism, assist in the resolution of the pressing societal and individualistic crises and contribute to theestablishment of a ‘well-ordered community’. (shrink)

The closing chapters of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics x are regularly described as “puzzling,” “extremely abrupt,” “awkward,” or “surprising” to readers. Whereas the previous nine books described—sometimes in lavish detail—the multifold ethical virtues of an embodied person situated within communities of family, friends, and fellow-citizens, NE x 6-8 extol the rarified, god-like and solitary existence of a sophos or sage (1179a32). The ethical virtues that take up approximately the first half of the Ethics describe moral exempla who experience fear fighting for (...) their communities, are sensitive to the esteem and recognition of others, and feel love for a desire to live together with a wide variety of kinds of friends. Such good people take pleasure in prudently expending sums to improve their communities—communities in which they exchange goods and participate in ruling and being ruled in a cooperative fashion. The exemplum of x 7-8, by contrast, is a person whose activity consists almost entirely in exercising his or her mind (nous)—a part of one’s soul that Aristotle explicitly notes is disconnected from human emotions and that can be exercised, insofar as one as wise, in a wholly solitary fashion (1178a15-16, a19-20; 1177a33-34). Although Aristotle’s claim that a “life in accord with the mind” is best and most pleasant (1178a6-7) may jar the intuitions of many people—he himself endorses Anaxagoras’ claim that the happy person will appear as “someone who is absurd” (atopos, 1179a15) to most people—it is false to claim that his conclusions in NE x 6-8 are unexpected or unanticipated, or that the text is in any way discontinuous with what precedes it. The Nicomachean Ethics exhibits aspects of ring-composition both within the work as a whole and within book 10. In NE i 5 Aristotle introduces his rendition of a trope that he inherits (most immediately) from Plato, viz. that the problem of the good can be considered like a contest between three different kinds of life—the life of enjoyment (apolaustikos), the life of politics (politikos), and the life of contemplation (theôrêtikos). NE x 6-8 returns to that contest, rendering a verdict about which life takes first, second, and third place. As the opening lines of NE x 6 note, that verdict presupposes central claims articulated between the first and last books of the Ethics, specifically about the nature of the virtues, the nature of friendship, and the nature of pleasure. NE i 5 and x 6-8 thus serve as “bookends” which encase arguments and proposition located between them. Book 10 exhibits a similar ring-composition. NE x opens with methodological reflection on the gap between the theoretical positions that thinkers articulate and the way they live their lives (especially in the case of scolds who simultaneously criticize pleasure on a scientific level but seek it on a practical level [1172a33-b8]). Chapter 8 concludes with an explicit reiteration of the methodological point, a reiteration that underscores how Aristotle’s treatment of the contest of lives incorporates central aspects of the discussion of pleasure in NE x 1-5. Aristotle’s reiteration of the problem of a gap between theory and practice also draws attention to the centrality of his treatment of pleasure in his adjudication of the three lives. Although the life of pleasure takes a distant third in the contest of lives, the contemplative life wins the contest in part because it itself is the most pleasant form of life. The central philosophical problem looming behind Aristotle’s treatment of the contest of lives concerns the relationship between the notion of activity (energeia) and the notion of a way of life (bios). In the last four decades, much of the scholarship on NE x 6-8 has sought to address the question of what activities a certain way of life includes or excludes. “Monistic” or “dominant” end interpretations of the best life have viewed it as including only contemplative activities whereas “inclusivist” end interpretations of the best life have viewed it as including non-contemplative activities. Although this chapter largely side-steps this debate—partially because there are ample recent first-rate introductory treatments of the debate, partially because I have addressed the question elsewhere in my own writing —I argue that focusing solely on the contest between the two best ways of life overshadows the way that Aristotle incorporates insights from the third way of life into the best way of life. Although the notion of a contest among different kinds of lives presupposes that the lives are mutually exclusive, Aristotle has no problem saying that the contemplative life trumps the life of pleasure because the contemplative life is more pleasant. I proceed in two parts. In the first part I examine what I will call the “outer” ring of the Ethics, namely the relationship between the contest of lives proposed in NE i 5 and its overall resolution in x 6-8. I show how i 5 and x 6 establish the framework for the contest, how x 7 adjudicates that contest in large part by relying upon premises articulated in the interim between books 1 and 10, and how x 6 and x 8 determine the second and third place positions in the contest. In the second part I focus on what I will call the “inner” ring of NE x. More than half of NE x struggles with the nature of pleasure, its role in a happy life, and the methodological problems of examining pleasure within a practical science. I show how x 1 and x 8 are “bookends” that underscore the methodological problem of examining pleasure and how the contest of lives draws upon the proximate conclusions concerning the nature of pleasure in NE x 1-5. (shrink)

When he claims that it is hard to be happy when “exceedingly ugly, basely born, or alone and childless,” Aristotle introduces a notorious puzzle about his theory of happiness: if happiness is an activity of soul in accordance with virtue, why should appearance, family, and social life affect it? In this paper, I propose an answer to this puzzle. Against Martha Nussbaum, T.H. Irwin, and John Cooper, who maintain that “external goods” like beauty, health, and wealth, (...) are constitutive parts of Aristotelian happiness, I argue that the deprivation of such goods diminishes happiness only insofar as it prevent a person from being virtuous, and I suggest that deprivation often prevents a person from being virtuous not by making virtuous action impossible, but by corrupting a person’s attitudes and character. (shrink)

Farming computer games enable the ‘desk chair countryside’—millions of people actively engaged in performing farming and rural activities on-line—to co-produce their desired representations of rural life, in line with the parameters set by game creators. In this paper, I critique the narratives and images of farming life expressed in the popular computer game ‘Stardew Valley’. Stardew is based on a scenario whereby players leave a [meaningless] urban desk job to revitalize the family farm. Player are given a (...) choice to invest in the Community Center or to support ‘JojaMart’, a ‘big-box’ development. The farming narrative demonstrates the hallmarks of classical American agrarianism: farming as the basic profession on which other occupations depend, the virtue of hard work, the ‘natural’ and moral nature of agricultural life, and the economic independence of the farmer. More recent discourses of critical agrarianism are noticeably absent, particularly in relation to environmental protection. Conflict is centred on urban-based big business, whereas the farm is represented as a ‘bolt-hole’ or sanctuary from urban life. I argue that embedding issues of big-box development in gameplay enrols players in active reflection and debate on desirable responses, whereas the emphasis on reproducing classical agrarian tropes risks desensitizing game players to contemporary agrarian social and environmental justice issues. However, Stardew Valley gameplay implicitly reinforces the ideal that low input farming is the way that agriculture should be practiced. The success of the game in eliciting on-line debates, and the requirement for active performance and decision-making, demonstrates the specific potential of computer games as mediums for influencing and intervening in ongoing reworking of farming imaginaries, and enabling more critically engagement of the ‘desk chair countryside’ in important global debates. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant's Theory of Virtue: The Value of AutocracyRobert B. LoudenAnne Margaret Baxley. Kant's Theory of Virtue: The Value of Autocracy. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xvi + 189. Cloth, $85.00.Back in the early 1980s, Anglophone philosophers began to seriously explore the nature and role of virtue in Kant's ethics. This development itself was the result of a confluence of three other phenomena: (1) the growing influence (...) of virtue ethics within contemporary ethical theory; (2) the simultaneous publication of the first two complete English translations of Kant's important late work, The Doctrine of Virtue (Tugendlehre); and (3) repeated claims made by virtue ethicists that Kant had denied the importance of virtue for ethical theory.Anne Margaret Baxley's book, Kant's Theory of Virtue, is the most informative and comprehensive discussion of the nature and role of virtue in Kant's ethics currently available. Making careful use of the relevant Kantian texts (including not only Kant's published works but also lecture transcriptions from his ethics courses and some of his unpublished notes and reflections on ethics and religion), an important text by Friedrich Schiller (Über Anmut und Würde), one of Kant's early Romantic critics, as well as a wide swath of contemporary [End Page 142] secondary literature written by virtue ethicists as well as Kant scholars, Baxley demonstrates incisively that virtue, far from being neglected by Kant, is vitally significant to his ethical theory.Baxley's distinctive approach to Kant's conception of virtue is signaled in her subtitle: The Value of Autocracy. Autocracy—understood here as rational self-rule over sensibility—is, Baxley holds, "the overriding metaphor throughout Kant's treatment of virtue as a character trait, and it provides the key for understanding his particular conception of virtue" (52). This accent on autocracy results in a somewhat sterner Kantian virtue ethics than others have argued for. As Baxley herself notes, "[A]t first glance, autocracy looks as if it amounts to a rigid, repressive form of self-rule, one requiring the suppression or wholesale extirpation of sensible feelings and inclinations" (49). In an effort to show that first appearances are in this case deceiving, Baxley stretches the metaphor of autocracy (or, as she puts it, "reconstructs" Kant's claims about virtue) into the following three-pronged theory:[A]utocracy involves containing feelings and desires at odds with duty (the containment model), but it also involves maintaining feelings and inclinations to accord with moral concerns (the maintenance model), as well as cultivating feelings and inclinations that promote morally good ends (the cultivation model).(173; see also 126–36)Strictly speaking, however, when Kant himself uses the term ‘autocracy' (‘Autokratie') in discussing virtue (and he actually only does so once in his published writings—other terms such as ‘moral strength' [‘moralische Stärke'] and ‘courage' [‘Tapferkeit'] are used much more often), it refers exclusively to what Baxley calls the containment model, not the maintenance model or the cultivation model. Autocracy, Kant states in the Tugendlehre, "comprises a consciousness of the capacity to become master of one's inclinations that oppose the law" (6.383). Nevertheless, even if Baxley is asking the metaphor of autocracy to carry a bit more weight than Kant intended, her own reconstruction of Kant's theory of virtue is very well articulated and defended. And she is certainly correct in holding that Kantian virtue, correctly considered, entails not merely containing those feelings and desires that are opposed to duty, but also maintaining and cultivating those that are conducive to the moral life.Three important, interrelated aspects of her account that deserve highlighting are the following:Virtue and radical evil. Kant's account of radical evil, as presented in part 1 of Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, forms an integral but underexplored component of his theory of virtue, and his belief in the existence of a universal human propensity to evil is the clearest example of how his understanding of virtue differs from the more familiar Aristotle-inspired accounts favored by contemporary virtue ethicists. As Baxley correctly emphasizes, on Kant's view virtue is "a corrective... to our propensity to evil... (shrink)

The underlying skepticism of ancient Greek culture made it unreceptive of philosophy. It was the Catholic Church that embraced philosophy. Still, Étienne Gilson reminds us in Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages that some early Christians rejected philosophy. Their rejection was based on fideism: the view that faith alone provides knowledge. Philosophy is unnecessary and dangerous, fideists argue, because (1) anything known by reason can be better known by faith, and (2) reason, on account of the sin of pride, (...) seeks to replace faith. To support this twofold claim, fideists, like Tertullian and Tatian, quote St. Paul. However, a judicious interpretation of St. Paul’s remarks show that he does not object to philosophy per se but to erroneous philosophy. This interpretation is reinforced by St. Paul’s own background in philosophy and by his willingness to engage intellectuals critical of Christianity in the public square. The challenge of fideism brings up the interesting question: what would Jesus himself say about the discipline of philosophy? Could it be that Jesus himself was a philosopher (as George Bush once declared)? As the fullness of wisdom and intelligence, Jesus certainly understood philosophy, although not in the conventional sense. But surely, interpreting his life through the lens of fideism is unconvincing. Instead, an appreciation of his innate philosophical skills serves better to understand important elements of his mission. His perfect grasp of how grace perfects nature includes a philosophy of the human person. This philosophy grounded in common-sense analysis of human experience enables Jesus to be a profound moral philosopher. Specifically, he is able to explain the principles of personal actualization. Relying on ordinary experience, where good philosophy must start, he narrates moral lessons—parables—that illumine difficulties regarding moral responsibility and virtue. These parables are accessible but profound, showing how moral understanding must transcend Pharisaical legalism. Additionally, Jesus’ native philosophical power shows in his ability to explain away doctrinal confusions and to expose sophistical traps set by his enemies. If fideism is unconvincing, and if the great examples of the Patristics, the Apostles, and Jesus himself show an affinity for philosophy, then it is necessary to conclude that Christianity is a rational religion. Accordingly, the history of Christian culture is arguably an adventure in faith and reason. Since God is truth and the author of all truths, there is nothing in reality that is incompatible with Christian teaching. As John Paul II explains effectively in the encyclical, Fides et Ratio, Christianity is a religion that is rational and can defend itself. This ability to marshal a defense makes Christianity a religion for all seasons. (shrink)

The paper introduces a virtue-theoretic critique of recent “prosocial” revisions of shareholder primacy. The paper aims at widening the scope of virtue-based business ethics beyond its nearly exclusive focus on the character and virtue of managers, employees, and organizations. In contrast to MacIntyre-inspired research, the paper takes a “good intentions” approach that looks squarely at shareholders, regarding them as real people (not algorithms or institutions) occupying distinctive roles as principals of firms who are, ideally, virtuous moral agents. It is (...) argued that virtue ethics can play a part in questioning normative features of shareholder primacy and the objective function of the firm. Probing deeper than prudential and instrumental concerns, the paper poses normative questions about interpreting shareholder motivations: what _ought_ shareholders to prefer/want/desire?; _ought_ shareholders to desire profit maximization versus profit satisficing?; _ought_ shareholders to prefer other, prosocial goals, alongside of wealth?; should self-interested motivation in profit-seeking be considered virtuous? To lend focus, the paper taps Hart and Zingales’ recently revised “pro-social” version of shareholder primacy, as well as Munger and Russell’s analysis of “virtuous profit-seekers,” as normative frames of reference. Doing so enables a critical engagement with their respective accounts from the standpoint of virtue theory. Taking a “virtuous shareholders” perspective provides an aretaic standpoint, one that is appropriate, given that shareholders care about matters of justice and the common good. Shareholders are not simply concerned about making money. Hence it is the moral intentions and motivations of ideally virtuous shareholders which ought to modulate the profit-seeking activities of shareholders in accordance with maximizing their welfare. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Happy Lives and the Highest Good: An Essay on Aristotle’s Nicomachean EthicsCharles M. YoungGabriel Richardson Lear. Happy Lives and the Highest Good: An Essay on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. Pp. ix + 238. Cloth, $35.00.Suppose that you and I are friends. I need a ride to the airport; you offer to take me. You might do this for any of a number (...) of reasons: because you want to place me in your debt, because you want to impress bystanders, etc. But you might also do it for none of these reasons. You might do it, instead, because, understanding what resources are and what resources are for, you see taking me to the airport as an appropriate use of your resources (your time and your car), given our relationship and the circumstances in which we find ourselves.That's the Readers' Digest version of one story one might tell, on Aristotle's behalf, by way of connecting up friendship, virtuous action, practical and theoretical wisdom, action for its own sake, and action for the sake of the fine in the Nicomachean Ethics. I myself think it is a good story. It is also a story, I think, that Gabriel Richardson Lear tells, at least some of the time, in Happy Lives and the Highest Good, though she tells it with respect to courage, temperance, and magnanimity, not liberality and friendship.Most of the time, however, Lear tells another story. According to it, your taking me to the airport makes clear your commitment to make use of your resources to promote my good. Since we are friends, however, my good is bound up with yours, so in promoting my good you also promote your own good. But according to Aristotle the good for each of us is a life in which rationality is realized in thought and action. Hence your taking me to the airport counts as fine because it shows your commitment to that sort of life. But, again according to Aristotle, the centerpiece, and source of value, of that sort of life is contemplative activity, so you act for the sake of contemplation, whether you know this or not. And, in view of its expression of practical reason and truthfulness, your liberal activity is structurally similar to and so approximates to contemplative activity, and this allows us to say that you did what you did for the sake of contemplation.This is, so far as I know, an entirely new approach to the problems raised by Aristotle's identification of happiness with contemplation in NE X. Lear's story, and the arguments in its support, deserve and will repay serious attention. I limit myself here to four concerns about some of the details.First, our first story locates what is fine about virtuous action in the fit exhibited among the agent, her action, and her situation. Lear's story locates what is fine about virtuous action in its promotion of a certain kind of life. The first story thus sees what is fine about [End Page 118] virtuous action as something intrinsic to it, while Lear's story sees it as something external to it that it promotes. The first story seems to me to be looking in the right place.Second, the first story has it that virtuous activity is an expression of understanding, Lear's story that it is an expression of a commitment to understanding. Again, the first story seems to me to be looking in the right place.Third, Lear thinks that the liberal person can be said to act for the sake of contemplation when contemplation is the source of value for what she does, even when it is not the conscious aspiration of her action. That may be true, but I do not see that it is enough. What needs explanation is rather that she can be said to choose liberal activity for the sake of contemplation, and it is unclear how this could be unconscious.Finally, Lear's appeal to approximation may prove too much. The crafts, according to Aristotle, involve practical reason and truthfulness. But Aristotle doesn't believe that craft... (shrink)

Maclntyre's ?disquieting suggestion? concerning the apparently irretrievably anarchic state of contemporary moral discourse begs the crucial questions in any argument over the notion of ?incoherence? in moral thought and practice. Thus his attempt to establish the canonical authority of Aristotelianism fails. Nonetheless, the attempt to reconstruct a plausible Aristotelianism is of independent interest. Maclntyre introduces the quasi?technical notion of a ?practice? to locate a non?reductive teleology of the virtues. Though certain teleological expressions come naturally in a deepened understanding of the (...) place of the virtues in a human life, they will not, at crucial points, bear the philosophically motivated teleological emphasis that Maclntyre places on them. This emphasis is a mistaken reaction to the inadequacies of expressions like ?intrinsic? and ?for its own sake?, as often used by philosophers who argue against teleological construals of morality. It is also prompted by the mistaken belief that it is required to reveal the connection between morality and a person's good. For a non?reductive construal of that connection we must focus on the meaning of action and of a life. This is in accord with some things Aristotle said. It is not in easy accord with the claim that moral judgments are factual or truth?valued, nor with the claim that such a concern with meaning can be discursively underwritten by showing it to be a requirement of any sound philosophy of action and of personal identity. This does not lead to what Maclntyre calls ?emotivism?, nor to ?non?cognitivism? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.1 (2001) 141-160 [Access article in PDF] The Politics of Character in John Milton's Divorce Tracts David Hawkes nunquam privatum esse sapientum --Cicero I. There has recently been a great deal of debate over the relative influence on Milton's politics of two discordant revolutionary ideologies: classical republicanism and radical Protestant theology. 1 In the mid-seventeenth century the search for intellectual precedents and rationalizations (...) of the English revolution brought these two traditions into an uneasy alliance, and Milton, like many other revolutionary apologists, drew on both of them. Of course the two schools of thought are not necessarily incompatible. J. G. A. Pocock notes one point of connection between them: The context in which men attain their final end--or recover their prima forma, though this concept might not have been antinomian enough for the radical saints of the New Model--is that of apocalypse; the "end" of Aristotelian teleology is still united with the eschatological "end" of prophetic time. 2The Aristotelian "end" of man is the good, defined as "an activity of soul in accordance with virtue," and the belief that one can or has fulfilled that end is [End Page 141] certainly amenable to Protestant antinomianism. 3 Furthermore, as Sharon Achinstein points out, Milton's "conception of virtue... melds the religious notion of conscience with a classical sense of civic duty." 4 On the other hand there are significant differences between the classical and the Christian notions of "virtue" and the "good," which dictate that, as Nigel Smith puts it, "[c]lassical republicanism, properly conceived, would in many ways be in conflict with the millenarian, chiliastic and perfectionist Protestantism of the sects." 5 The problem faced by Milton as a Protestant Republican is that the definition of the "good" offered by millennial sanctification and that attainable through Aristotelian virtue are in many ways mutually exclusive and contradictory. They have been characterized as such ever since Augustine's City of God asserted that pagan ethics are incompatible with true, Christian virtue. 6 Millennialism relies on faith; civic humanist virtue relies on works. Antinomianism abolishes the law; republicanism institutes the rule of law. The saints are sanctified by grace; the virtuous are distinguished by their own strength of character. Radical Protestant freedom is negative and private--it is the ability to speak and worship according to the dictates of conscience; civic humanist liberty is positive and public, the ability to participate fully in the government of the res publica. While daunting, however, these contradictions are not quite insuperable. I believe that Milton finds a common denominator in the accounts given by these two traditions of psychological objectification and that the agreement of Roman and Christian morality on this point leads him to make the tendency to objectification (or rather the ability to resist that tendency) the central issue of his mature political theory.The political ideas of the classical republicans and their descendants, the Renaissance civic humanists, were based upon Aristotle's Politics and Nico-machean Ethics, while the intellectual sources of radical Protestantism can be traced to Luther's commentaries on Paul's epistles. During the English revolution the Pauline exegesis of the relationship between the old and the new covenants provided intellectual ammunition against custom and tradition, as well as inspiring the antinomianism of the radical fringe to which Milton was falsely accused of adhering during the divorce controversy. In the divorce tracts Milton points out that Aristotle and Paul share one fundamental tenet: they argue that interior and exterior slavery are of the same nature and therefore concomitant [End Page 142] and inseparable. Furthermore, Milton notes, Aristotle and Paul both claim that exterior and interior slavery consist in "carnality," the subjection of the spirit to the flesh. This identification of carnality with servility becomes a constant strain which runs throughout Milton's career and provides the consistent element in his apparently vacillating theories of politics and religion.II. Although this argument recurs throughout Milton's career, it is first hammered into shape during the divorce controversy... (shrink)

Nothing is more common in moral debates than to invoke the names of great thinkers from the past. Business ethics is no exception. Yet insofar as business ethicists have tended to simply mine abstract formulas from the past, they have missed out on the potential intellectual gains in meticulously exploring the philosophic tradition. This paper seeks to rectify this shortcoming by advocating a close reading of the so-called “great books,” beginning the process by focusing on Aristotle. The Nichomachean Ethics and (...) The Politics points to Aristotle’s emphasis on tying business morality to a universal conception of the good life. This conception defines personal happiness to chiefly consist in practicing the virtues, a life in which both desire and the pursuit of wealth is kept under check. According to Aristotle, virtue reaches its height with the exercise of the intellectual virtues of prudence and wisdom – the first manifest in the leadership of organizations, and the second in the philosophic search for truth. From an Aristotelian point of view, therefore, the greatest ethical imperative for business is to give individuals opportunities to thoughtfully participate in the management of company affairs and to contemplate the ultimate meaning of things. (shrink)

Insofar as living well is, for Aristotle, the ultimate end of human life, and insofar as our life comprises different activities (energeiai), the key prerequisite for living well is to rank and choose different activities according to their value. The objective of this article is to identify and discuss different considerations that determine the value of an activity in Aristotle's ethics. Focusing on selected passages from Nicomachean Ethics X, I argue that the structure of an activity's (...) value displays considerable heterogeneity. An activity can be good on account of its excellence, excellence-independent worthwhileness, as well as its continuity; these kinds of value do not necessarily entail each other, and they can even occur at each other's expense. This interpretation shifts the focus from the notion of virtue to the notion of activity, and thus opens up a fresh angle on Aristotle's: virtue or excellence is just one source of activity's value, alongside its worthwhileness and continuity. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I offer an interpretation and defense of the following argument for the claim that we--together with all rational deliberators--are free: rational deliberators necessarily possess a sense of freedom in virtue of their nature as rational deliberators, and if rational deliberators, in virtue of their nature as rational deliberators, necessarily possess a sense of freedom, then they are free. Therefore, rational deliberators are free. ;I offer two related arguments for , each of which is inspired by the (...) Kantian view that reason cannot be the source of an illusory idea. Each argument appeals to a different aspect of reason. The first turns on the idea that reason is a guide to truth, and so could not be such as to lead inevitably to a false sense of ourselves. The second turns on the idea that reason could not lead to an epistemic state which is unresponsive to reasons, and that if there were rational deliberators who were unfree, the sense of freedom would be unresponsive to reasons. ;I then canvass a variety of interpretations of , and argue that several of them rest on a mistaken conception of rational deliberation. I ultimately adopt and defend a reading of according to which all rational deliberators are epistemically committed to the proposition that their actions are up to them in such a way that they are accountable for them. This reading of rests on an understanding of rational deliberation as an activity, the point of which is to act for good reasons. Identifying the correct understanding of rational deliberation allows us to see that the very activity of rational deliberation is rationalized by a sense of freedom, and hence that is true. ;I consider a number of objections to the argument, including the claim that entails that a skeptic who believes that she is not free has contradictory beliefs, and, hence, is irrational. In reply, I argue that the attribution of a certain sort of irrationality in this case is intelligible and provides the best account of the skeptic's situation. (shrink)

This book comprises essays centered on Aristotle’s objectivist conception of eudaimonia, especially the roles played in it by activities of theoretical and practical intellect and the quality of our relationships with one another. Common objections to grounding this conception in the “proper function” of a human being are answered by appeal to the role played by Aristotle’s teleologically driven essentialism. His struggle to reconcile living in accordance with distinctively human virtues with the ideal of living a (...) “divine” contemplative life is explored, along with puzzles about how to reconcile his conception of eudaimonia as the ultimate end of human action with the parallel requirements that virtuous agents choose to engage in virtuous action “for itself” and that friends love their friends “for themselves.” Readings of Aristotle’s “eudaimonism” as a form of rational egoism are challenged by appeal to an original account of the ideal friend as an “other self,” one that stresses appreciation of the friend’s character “for itself” (apart from any relationships in which it happens to stand to the agent’s own needs and/or tastes) but acknowledges the role played by pleasure in “character friendship.” The friend’s good is not, as on “colonizing ego” readings, part of the agent’s own. Rather, the ideal friend recognizes the value her friend’s activity has for him and she take pleasure in his activity as such. This explains why even the maximally self-sufficient (and so most godlike) agent, who needs nothing from a friend, will nevertheless want to have at least one. (shrink)

I argue against a reading of Kant's moral theory according to which Kant proposes no substantial conception of the good. Against those who place Kant in the liberal tradition on the basis of his formal, 'neutral framework,' principles, I suggest that Kant's practical and political theory rests on a valuation of the practical and cognitive virtues of self-mastery , self-sufficiency, and regularity. The appeal of Kant's principles, and hence their chances of ever being put into action, accordingly lies not (...) in their fairness or reasonableness, but in their promise to make real repose, unity, and harmony. I support these claims by examining the role of interest in Kant's understanding of agency; by showing that the categorical imperative serves as a practical guide only on the understanding that it expresses and protects free rational activity, in which it assumes an interest; and by pulling together the scattered passages in which Kant describes the features and promises of free rational activity that have for us tremendous appeal. My investigation makes clear that such appeal, and the recognition of a conception of the good it expresses, is necessary if Kant's moral principles are to have the power to move he thinks they must. (shrink)

Positive Psychology Interventions as an Opportunity in Arab Countries to Promoting Well-being AbstractIn this perspective paper, we emphasize the importance of further research on culturally-sensitive positive psychology interventions in the Arab region. We argue that these interventions are needed in the region because they not only reduce mental health problems but also promote well-being and flourishing. To achieve this, we shed light on the cultural elements of the Arab region and how the concept of well-being differs from that of Western (...) culture. We review the research conducted in Arabia, briefly evaluate the quality of this research and list some adapted measurements. We furthermore propose guidelines and recommendations for future evidence-based positive psychology interventions research to align with the national culture in various sectors and community samples that contribute to the development of well-being in the Arab world.Introduction Extensive research on Positive Psychology Interventions (PPIs) - defined as activities focus on promoting positive feelings, thoughts, or behaviour (Sin & Lyubomirsky, 2009) - has shown their effectiveness in well-being and mental illness (e.g., Chakhssi et al., 2018; Hendriks et al., 2020). A recent review of 347 studies showed that PPIs have a significant effect on promoting quality of life and well-being and reducing anxiety and depression (Carr et al., 2020). However, the issue is that most of these studies (82%) remain narrow in focus only on Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic (WEIRD) countries (Hendriks et al., 2019). Therefore, they may not be effective for other countries such as the Arab countries where there are various cultural differences. This highlights the key role that culture can play in enhancing PPIs engagement, acceptability, and eventually, effectiveness (Hendriks & Graafsma, 2019). Recently, the field of PP in the Arab region has begun to grow (Basurrah et al., 2021; Rao et al., 2015). However, studies conducted in these countries are scant and of poor methodological quality. We have found humble quantity and quality of empirical studies. Yet, Arab countries, home to 5% of the world’s population, have a burden of mental health problems above global levels (GBD 2015 Eastern Mediterranean Region Mental Health Collaborators, 2018). Prevalent stigma, war and conflict were some of the contributors (Maalouf et al., 2019). Thus, to properly address this cultural stigma against mental health problems, PPIs could provide an additional role alongside traditional psychology approaches (e.g., Cognitive Behavioural therapy - CBT). Further, in light of the political conditions that some Arab countries are going through and the negative effects that they cause, it has become necessary to use the method of prevention that is the focus of PP and not only of treatment as a strategy for applications and practice. It has been noted that the mental health care system in the Arab region focuses highly on illnesses treatment and neglects the significant role that PP plays in enhancing human potential and well-being. We - here in Arabia –are becoming more influenced by many global issues particularly the COVID-19 pandemic and their impact on mental health and well-being (e. g. prevalence of stress, anxiety, depression among the general population during the pandemic (Salari et al., 2020). In response, Waters et al. (2021) have recently presented how positive psychological factors can play a significant role in buffering mental illness, enhancing mental health throughout the pandemic, and building positive processes and capacities that can help to promote future mental health.Here in this perspective paper, we highlight the cultural aspects of Arab countries. Specifically, we present previous PPIs research conducted in Arabia and briefly evaluate the quality of this research. Importantly, we discuss the need of developing an indigenous and culturally sensitive PP among the Arab region (Lambert et al., 2015).Arab Culture “Arab World,” which comprises 5% of the world’s population, refers to the Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Despite the increasing pace and progress of different businesses in many Arab countries, individual communities are still limited in certain prominent economic places. Arab people rather gather in collective communities. They generally share the same Arabic Islamic culture, speak the same language, and descend from the same Arab families when going back in history no matter what nationality they have nowadays. Yet, very many changes came to communities before borders were drawn between countries and after. For instance, geography, topography, demography, and socio-economic status affect peoples’ nature of jobs and lifestyles. For example, Arabs in the east, west, or the middle have similar tongues; however, almost every Arab country has its accent. Therefore, people need to go back to the formal Arabic language ‘Fus-ha’ or learn more about different Arabic dialects when communicating cross-countries. According to Hofstede’s model (2011) based on the individualism-collectivism dimension, the Arab countries (Eastern society) have been classified as a collectivist culture, where their identity and decisions are influenced by social systems. In contrast, the United States (Western society) has been classified as an individualist culture focusing on individual decisions. Although there are degrees of individualism among Arabs in certain countries, they still share collective common characteristics. Here, we explore the meaning of collectivistic conceptions of the self, emotions, values, and religion in Arab countries and how they differ from those in individual Western cultures. The Self Since the field of PP focuses on the development of self, it is vital to recognize that self-concept varies across cultures. Individualism generally emphasises the self-directed and autonomous individual (Realo et al., 2002). People in individualist countries focus primarily on their personal characteristics (e.g., motives, abilities) to build their self-concept. On the other hand, collectivism refers to several social structures that highly value the groups to which people belong, such as family and tribe (Realo, 2003). People in collectivist countries such as the Arab countries focus primarily on their relationships with others to build their self-concept (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Hence, research from Arab countries should focus on the core elements of collectivism when implementing PPIs to make a significant, meaningful impact. For example, people from a collective culture may experience a greater enhancement in well-being when practising interventions that are more prosocial and group-oriented such as compassion, performing acts of kindness, writing a gratitude letter, and using character strengths in everyday context including social context, compared with self-oriented interventions such as identifying character strengths. Emotions, value, and Religion Research shows that Western culture emphasises the goal of maximizing positive emotions, while Eastern culture emphasises embracing and balancing positive and negative emotions (Leu et al., 2011). To illustrate, culture plays an important role in influencing perceptions of happiness. People in individualist countries value happiness highly. In contrast, people from the collective countries value low arousal positive emotions (Leu et al., 2011) and exhibit a fear of happiness (Joshanloo & Weijers, 2014; Joshanloo, 2013). Hence, the influence of positive emotions plays a limited role in the mental health of Eastern society. Speaking of Value, for an Arab, the family is the centre of honour and the most important social unit. This loyalty has an impact on every part of an Arab’s life. Arabs honour their families and highly value their friendships. Therefore, future research could shed more light on group-oriented interventions (e.g., kindness) that focus more on the relationship with family, friends, and community. When it comes to religion, Arab society has a rich culture in values and believes that place a high emphasis on spirituality. Religion is the most important and distinctive aspect of Arab culture. Arab countries vary in terms of religion, with Islam being the predominant religion in most of them. Well-being (Hedonic and Eudaimonic) It is necessary here to clarify what is meant by hedonic and eudaimonic definitions of well-being. While the term ‘Hedonic’ is based on the pursuit of maximum levels of pleasure (feeling good), the term ‘Eudaimonic’, on the other hand, is based on meaning and the development of virtues (functioning well; Keyes & Annas, 2009). Research indicates that cultures are not equally supportive of hedonic and eudaimonic aspects (Joshanloo & Jarden, 2016). In comparison to collectivism, hedonism appears to be more congruent with individualism (Joshanloo, 2014). Pleasure and positive emotions are considered a way to pursue happiness in Western culture, while this method is not highly favoured in Eastern cultures (Lee et al., 2013); Because they consider suffering and negative emotions as contributing factors to spiritual development. Therefore, the eastern perspective is more in line with a eudaimonistic view which emphasises virtues, meaning, and feeling of belongingness. However, although we believe that both approaches can be found to a certain level in both cultures, the differences suggest that there are different routes to happiness. Positive Psychology in the Arab region Positive psychology - "the scientific study of what makes life most worth living" (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000) - is one of the newest branches of psychology. It focuses on three main pillars: (1) positive subjective experiences (such as happiness and love); (2) positive individual characters (such as gratitude and compassion); and (3) positive institutions (for the application of positive principles within institutions and organizations; Seligman & Csikszentmiha lyi, 2000). Some of the main topics of interest in positive psychology include character strengths, gratitude, hope, happiness, mindfulness, optimism, positive thinking, and resilience. Within the applications of this science, various domains of well-being (such as happiness, engagement, positive emotions, and meaning) can be enhanced by practising positive psychology interventions (Sin & Lyubomirsky, 2009). Interestingly, these interventions have also produced benefits beyond well-being, such as reduced mental health issues (Chakhssi et al., 2018; Hendriks et al., 2020).Nowadays, PP is increasingly noticed in the Arab world (Lambert & Pasha-Zaidi, 2019; Rao et al., 2015). In recent years, there has been a great effort to explore the PP field across Arab countries. Several initiatives have emerged aimed at promoting well-being and flourishing. For example, the Middle East Journal of Positive Psychology published its first volume in 2015. On the International Day of Happiness in 2017, United Arab Emirates University launched its Emirates Center for Happiness Research. Meanwhile, Effat University in Saudi Arabia started the first Positive Psychology and Well-being Research Lab, the first symposium, and the first PP course. In 2019, Louise Lambert and Nausheen Pasha-Zaidi published the first regional text entitled “Positive Psychology in the Middle East/North Africa.” There are other efforts spent in the region as well; such as the work conducted in Egypt. Ibrahim Younus established the Arab Association for Positive Psychology https://www.psycholearn.com/en/associative.php which provides several courses on PP and also published a book entitled “The Power of Positive Psychology” (Younus, 2017). Despite this development, nothing can compare to the quantity and even quality of research in other countries. In light of our observations, the few PP studies may be attributed to the lack of awareness of the constructive approach and prevention compared to problem-solving. An Arab dentist once said: “people do not come to me until they are badly in pain.” In any case, many studies have taken place in Arab countries in the last decade, more of which are descriptive and less of which experimental. For example, Abdel-Khalek (2010) found positive correlations between quality of life, subjective well-being, and religiosity among students in Kuwait. Abdel-Khalek (2016) developed “the Arabic Scale of Religiosity,” which significantly correlated with PP variables among students in Algeria, Kuwait, and Egypt. Recently, empirical studies on PPIs have arisen in Arab-Islamic countries. More attention has been focused on promoting well-being and alleviating the high burden of mental health problems in the region (GBD 2015 Eastern Mediterranean Region Mental Health Collaborators, 2018). For instance, several studies examined the effectiveness of mindfulness among university students (e.g., Al-Ghalib & Slim, 2018; Awad, 2019; Thomas et al., 2016), parents of children with autism (Rayan & Ahmed, 2016) and addicted adults (Al-Rashidi, 2018). Such an intervention has positive effects. Participants who practised mindfulness reported reduction in stress and depression as well as improvement in well-being and resilience. Moreover, the results of a recent pilot study found positive impacts on enhancing emotional regulations and reducing stress among Arab teachers (Berkovich-Ohana et al., 2020). Some studies have also begun to examine various interventions targeting character strengths (Basurrah et al., 2020; Chérif et al., 2020), self-compassion (Elaiwah, 2017), positive thinking (Mohammed et al., 2014; Hadad, 2014), and hope (Zaki, 2016). Interestingly, a new finding considering the fear of happiness among people from collective countries has been examined. Lambert et al. (2019) provided evidence that a 14-week PPIs programme has an impact on reducing the fear and fragility of happiness beliefs among university students in the United Arab Emirates.Since Arab countries place great emphasis on spirituality, several authors have considered the aspect of religion when implementing PPIs. For instance, an empirical study by Al-Seheel and Noor (2016) found that expressing gratitude towards God “Allah” increases the happiness of the Muslim more than the usual gratitude intervention. Additionally, Al-Ghalib and Salim (2018) examined a religiously sensitive mindfulness-training programme with university students and found a positive effect on life satisfaction and a slight reduction in stress, depression, and anxiety. Hence, the role of religion is vital to make the interventions more relevant to Arab culture where people can connect Islamic philosophy with PP theories and practices. These studies reviewed here provide further support for the need for culturally sensitive interventions among the Arab population. More recently, the first systematic review of PPIs in Arab countries was conducted by Basurrah et al. (2021; the protocol has been published in BMJ Open and the final manuscript has been submitted for publication). Reviewing a total of 39 studies, the most commonly studied interventions were mindfulness, positive thinking, and resilience. Only a handful of studies examined gratitude, character strengths, forgiveness, self-compassion, savouring, or finding flow. Further analysis revealed that most studies from Arab countries have several methodological limitations. This included a lack of protocol guidelines, few well-designed randomized controlled trials (RCTs), blinding issues, small sample sizes, lack of active control groups, and lack of research into certain populations (e.g., teachers, employees, and people in distress in refugee camps). Discussion PP was founded on an individualistic framework (Christopher & Hickinbottom, 2008). To ensure that PPIs are culturally meaningful, this paper includes some cultural elements of the Arab region that should be considered to serve the needs of the Arab population. In the Arab world, some people may believe that PP is solely about happiness and being positive. If so, it is important to educate the public about the findings of rigorous studies evaluating PPIs such as gratitude, hope or flow on health, well-being and performance. To explain the value and effectiveness of these evidence-based approaches, examples might include studies linking gratitude with benefits for people with heart disease (Cousin et al., 2021), or how PPIs can promote quality of life in cancer patients (Casellas-Grau et al., 2014). There is some evidence about PPIs being effective in improving well-being in the Arab region, but research in this region is still in its infancy and little information is available regarding PPIs and the experience of Arabs participating in such interventions. Hence, there is still much more to investigate in this regard. Future research should empirically examine the effectiveness of various unstudied interventions such as savouring, gratitude, self-compassion, character strengths or finding flow. A combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches is required to provide an in-depth understanding of Arabs’ experience and impressions of PPIs and how and why they work. This may provide useful information to inform the appropriate design of PPIs to suit Arab culture and needs. Furthermore, while some research on PPIs has been carried out in the region, most of these studies have been of poor quality that suffered from small sample sizes, confounding factors, and a high degree of bias. To overcome these issues, future research should improve research quality, including protocol guidelines and well-designed RCTs. In particular, research should include randomization, allocation, blinding, power analysis to determine adequate sample size, active control groups to reduce bias, and follow-up periods of at least 12 months.Among the most popular resources that future PP practitioners may refer to are the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) and the International Positive Education Network (IPEN). Also, we recommend the Middle East Journal of Positive Psychology and the first regional book (Lambert & Pasha-Zaidi, 2019). To develop and/or adapt a multi-component PPIs, we would recommend referring to Character Strengths (Peterson & Seligman, 2004), the theory of well-being (PERMA Model: Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment; Seligman, 2011), and the Five Ways to Well-being: Connect, Be Active, Take Notice, Keep Learning, and Give (Aked et al., 2008). Finally, single-component PPIs are based on theories like Broaden-And-Build (Fredrickson, 2004), Hope (Snyder et al., 2002), and Self-Determination (Deci & Ryan, 2012) can be also considered. Two other concepts that would be usefully applied are ‘Savouring’ (Bryant & Veroff, 2007) and Phillip Zimbardo’s Time Perspective (Stolarski et al., 2015). For instance, savouring has a positive temporal orientation to reminiscing the good memories from the past, enjoying the hedonic present moments, and willing proactively to make a better future. Now, what is even maybe more interesting for Muslims is “Transcendent Future” where all intentions, words and actions are devoted to that life after death. In addition, there is a model already prepared for the clinical purpose called Positive Psychotherapy (PPT). Tayyab Rashid and Martin Seligman published a PPT manual for clinicians in 2018. And for cross-cultural applications, including Muslim Arab culture, Rashid and Al-Haj Baddar (2019) have written a paper presenting PPT and its efficacy. PPT overview in detail shows sessions, themes, skills, practice, and cultural considerations where a mixture of PPIs based on PERMA, Strengths, and other PP concepts can be found. Regarding PP measurements, it is highly recommended to generate indigenous tools based on cultural backgrounds reviewed here in the article. An example of this is a tool for measuring Muslim well-being by including domains beyond what is found in Western literature. So far, in the Arab region, several attempts have been made to adapt PP tools. For example, Marei Salama-Younes (2018) validated the Arabic versions of different measures of well-being (e.g., satisfaction with life scale, the subjective vitality scale). Other validated scales as well include the self-compassion scale (Alabdulaziz et al., 2020), and the passion scale (Salama-Younes & Hashim, 2018). Conclusion This paper has discussed the cultural aspects of Arab countries and the need of developing culturally sensitive PPIs. The past decade has seen an increase in mental health problems in the Arab region. Stigma and lack of awareness have been always there. Among the issues are also wars, conflicts, and displacement in many Arab countries such as Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine (Hassan et al., 2016). These indicate an urgent need to prevent mental illness and promote well-being. Indeed, we highlighted the importance of integrating culture with PPIs, following the guidelines for the cultural adaptation of PPIs (Hendriks & Graafsma, 2019) and the ethical guidelines for PP practice (Jarden et al., 2020). Another significant contribution of this paper is to highlight the importance of improving the quality of research conducted in Arab countries. In brief, this paper has several practical implications. It is an open invitation for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners alike to be more exposed to PP; as well as to better conceptualising and adapting interventions and measurement tools to the local culture in different sectors to maximize their effectiveness. And as we consider it as an invitation for us too, here we are starting a PPIs practice guide in Arabic language and for Arab practitioners. The insights gained from this paper may be useful for placing well-being on top of priorities for achieving individual, organizational, and optimal national functioning in different sectors. There is also a need to change the stigma or negative beliefs about seeking health for psychological support, which is an issue for countries in the Middle East (Baess, 2018). (shrink)

[David Charles] Aristotle, it appears, sometimes identifies well-being with one activity, sometimes with several, including ethical virtue. I argue that this appearance is misleading. In the Nicomachean Ethics, intellectual contemplation is the central case of human well-being, but is not identical with it. Ethically virtuous activity is included in human well-being because it is an analogue of intellectual contemplation. This structure allows Aristotle to hold that while ethically virtuous activity is valuable in its own (...) right, the best life available for humans is centred around, but not wholly constituted by, intellectual contemplation. /// [Dominic Scott] In Nicomachean Ethics X 7-8, Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of eudaimonia, primary and secondary. The first corresponds to contemplation, the second to activity in accordance with moral virtue and practical reason. My task in this paper is to elucidate this distinction. Like Charles, I interpret it as one between paradigm and derivative cases; unlike him, I explain it in terms of similarity, not analogy. Furthermore, once the underlying nature of the distinction is understood, we can reconcile the claim that paradigm eudaimonia consists just in contemplation with a passage in the first book requiring eudaimonia to involve all intrinsic goods. (shrink)

This work upholds the leading role of virtue in the happy life against competition from goods of fortune, such as health, beauty, wealth, and honor. "Sovereign" in the title--a translation of kurios--may mean two things: complete and dominant. White holds that complete virtue, and more especially the activity in accordance with it, is dominant in Aristotle's version of the happy life.

In this paper I argue that a certain understanding of “animality” – or that a certain problematization of the traditional human-animal hierarchy and divide – is central to Nietzsche’s account of the good life. Nietzsche’s philosophical project is primarily directed against those “metaphysical oppositions of values” that traditionally structure how we think, feel and live, and in this paper I submit that, for Nietzsche, the classical opposition between the human and the animal is the most basic and the (...) most pernicious, for it undergirds the oppositional hierarchy between rationality and irrationality that has turned human life against itself. I draw primarily from Nietzsche’s second “Untimely Meditation” and from a passage from Daybreak in order to make the case that, for Nietzsche, we must reject any facile ontological opposition between human beings and non-human animals and that we must recognize and live in consonance with the “animal” conditions of our existence: human beings must recuperate and reintegrate rather than suppress their “animality” in order to thrive. For Nietzsche, we can say that virtue is a certain cultivated balance between our “humanity” and our “animality.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetorical Circulation in Late CapitalismNeoliberalism and the Overdetermination of Affective EnergyCatherine ChaputIn the world we have known since the nineteenth century, a series of governmental rationalities overlap, lean on each other, challenge each other, and struggle with each other: art of government according to truth, art of government according to the rationality of the sovereign state, and art of government according to the rationality of economic agents, and (...) more generally, according to the rationality of the governed themselves. And it is all these different arts of government, all these different types of ways of calculating, rationalizing, and regulating the art of government which, overlapping with each other, broadly speaking constitute the object of political debate.Michel Foucault, The Birth of BiopoliticsCritical rhetoricians interested in the power dynamics between rhetoric and capitalism have established for themselves the ambitious task of explaining how multiple, intertwined rationalities govern individual and collective [End Page 1] behavior in relationship to the ever-shifting logics of capitalism. Approaches to this complicated directive frequently envision rhetoric as a mediating force among agentive subjects who act within well-defined political economic landscapes. Wedded to a political-communicative model wherein appropriate rhetorical choices persuade those with authority to distribute disputed political and economic rights, rhetorical theory becomes a sophisticated handbook for discovering topoi and executing decorous statements. This focus, according to Ronald Walter Greene, results in a "permanent anxiety over the meaning and potential of rhetorical agency" that positions rhetoricians as "moral entrepreneurs scolding, correcting, and encouraging the body politic" (2004, 188, 189). Committing themselves to endless debates about correct responses in situated spaces, rhetorical theories that underscore agency lose site of the world in flux and of our participation in that world's unpredictable unfoldings. Alternatively, Greene suggests rethinking rhetorical theory through a materialist-communicative model wherein the immaterial labor of communication produces value. Conceptualizing discursive practices as a form of labor rather than a form of political signification sidesteps anxiety about well-chosen language and emphasizes the life-affirming activity involved in deciphering issues, inventing paths through those issues, and communicating new ideas to others. In short, Greene's materialist model challenges critical rhetoricians to end their perennial search for a discursive key to the storehouse of political economic goods (a practice propelled by liberal democratic hopes) so that they can begin to invent analyses and modes of production better suited to the contours of contemporary neoliberalism.Unlike liberalism's clearly assigned spaces for public life and private life or work time and leisure time, neoliberal spaces bear few obvious markers. The neoliberal landscape consists of blurred boundaries that fold into one another: information flows almost instantaneously, commodities and people transgress national boundaries, time accelerates, space collapses, and distinctions between such classic demarcations as agent and subject or politics and economics erode. Facilitated by dramatic changes in our sociopolitical boundaries, economic neoliberalism, what James Arnt Aune calls "economic correctness" (2001), reigns throughout vast uneven terrains opened up from the imploded borders of our liberal world. While economics does indeed rule the neoliberal landscape, it does not do so according to uncompromising rationalism. Political and cultural practices flowing into the previously segregated spaces of economics enable market rule through logics that operate entirely outside the rational-irrational divide. Economic neoliberalism moves from situation to situation, disregarding spatial boundaries between the political, economic, [End Page 2] and cultural realms as well as their attendant modes of persuasion, wearing away at the rhetorical linkages between appropriate discursive choices and agentive power.Regardless of the particularities of neoliberalism's spaces, structures, and governing practices, many rhetoricians continue to mediate among different worldviews based on outmoded liberal gauges. Some rhetorical theorists, for instance, maintain that the problematics of neoliberalism result from an imbalance between reason and passion. Even though the most ardent supporters of neoliberal practices hold firmly to a belief in its scientific rationality, rhetorical theorists often argue that passion overpowers reason in neoliberal discourse. The rhetorical form that sustains this disequilibrium is, according to Bradford Vivian, neoliberal epideictic. Based on an impassioned identification, epideictic texts "unite an otherwise fractured citizenry in a dynamic affective experience" (Vivian 2006, 15). Epideictic rhetoric functions didactically to unite the public... (shrink)

Normative reasons for action are facts or considerations that contribute to the justification of an action. Sometimes, normative reasons for action conflict: one reason may favor doing something, while another may favor not doing it. These conflicts can be so radical that it seems difficult, if not impossible, to judge which reason should ultimately guide one’s actions. According to a theory of practical rationality known as reasons pluralism, there are some radical cases of conflict among normative reasons for action in (...) which there can be no fact of the matter about what one ought to do. This is because normative reasons fall into a plurality of types, and normative reasons of different types are incommensurable with one another. However, reasons pluralism is compatible with a principle that would enable us to judge when a normative reason of one type overrides a normative reason of another type. I will argue that this “Override Principle” is a facet of practical wisdom—an intellectual virtue. Practical wisdom, as Aristotle construed it, involves the ability to order one’s ends into a coherent system that allows for the attainment of a good life. The Override Principle is sure to be one criterion by which those endowed with practical wisdom would order their ends. (shrink)

The underlying skepticism of ancient Greek culture made it unreceptive of philosophy. It was the Catholic Church that embraced philosophy. Still, Étienne Gilson reminds us in Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages that some early Christians rejected philosophy. Their rejection was based on fideism: the view that faith alone provides knowledge. Philosophy is unnecessary and dangerous, fideists argue, because (1) anything known by reason can be better known by faith, and (2) reason, on account of the sin of pride, (...) seeks to replace faith. To support this twofold claim, fideists, like Tertullian and Tatian, quote St. Paul. However, a judicious interpretation of St. Paul’s remarks shows that he does not object to philosophy per se but to erroneous philosophy. This interpretation is reinforced by St. Paul’s own background in philosophy and by his willingness to engage intellectuals critical of Christianity in the public square. The challenge of fideism brings up the interesting question: what would Jesus himself say about the discipline of philosophy? Could it be that Jesus himself was a philosopher (as George Bush once declared)? As the fullness of wisdom and intelligence, Jesus certainly understood philosophy, although not in the conventional sense. But surely, interpreting his life through the lens of fideism is unconvincing. Instead, an appreciation of his innate philosophical skills serves better to understand important elements of his mission. His perfect grasp of how grace perfects nature includes a philosophy of the human person. This philosophy grounded in common-sense analysis of human experience enables Jesus to be a profound moral philosopher. Specifically, he is able to explain the principles of personal actualization. Relying on ordinary experience, where good philosophy must start, he narrates moral lessons—parables—that illumine difficulties regarding moral responsibility and virtue. These parables are accessible but profound, showing how moral understanding must transcend Pharisaical legalism. Additionally, Jesus’ native philosophical power shows in his ability to explain away doctrinal confusions and to expose sophistical traps set by his enemies. If fideism is unconvincing, and if the great examples of the Patristics, the Apostles, and Jesus himself show an affinity for philosophy, then it is necessary to conclude that Christianity is a rational religion. Accordingly, the history of Christian culture is arguably an adventure in faith and reason. Since God is truth and the author of all truths, there is nothing in reality that is incompatible with Christian teaching. As John Paul II explains effectively in the encyclical, Fides et Ratio, Christianity is a religion that is rational and can defend itself. This ability to marshal a defense makes Christianity a religion for all seasons. (shrink)

Drawing on broad definitions of technology and engineering as well as precedents in the philosophical literature, this paper makes the novel argument that the purposeful design of one’s unique good life using existing philosophical concepts is an engineering activity. Whether as a metaphor or as an engineering activity in its own right, a sampling of important benefits and perspectives provided for well-being by the presented “life engineering” framework are highlighted. A key strength of the framework (...) is the conceptual simplicity, with minimal sacrifices in completeness or consistency. This necessitates a tradeoff of limited precision for any one practical implementation. Consistent conceptual definitions for wisdom, virtue and the good life are presented within an informative ethics. Only a descriptive evaluation to aid in conceptual understanding is discussed, no prescriptive normative evaluations are made. The good life is defined to be one in which the minimum requirements are met and then performance is good, but no attempt is made to define what is good. A fundamental limitation of the framework stems from the inherent focus of technology on human utility. Although no novel fundamental conclusions are drawn in this paper, the presented framework is demonstrated to correspond with numerous ethical precepts of many existing philosophical traditions. (shrink)

This study investigates what professional caregivers working in nursing homes consider to be a good life for residents suffering from dementia. Ten caregivers were interviewed; special attention was paid to the way in which they deal with conflicting values. Transcripts of the interviews were analysed qualitatively according to the method of grounded theory. The results were compared with those from a similar, earlier study on ideals found in mission statements of nursing homes. The concepts that were (...) mentioned by most interviewed participants as important for a good life were ‘peace and quiet’, ‘going along with subjective experience’ and ‘no enforcement: the way the resident wants it’. A considerable overlap was found between the interviews and the mission statements; however, when compared with the mission statements, the interviews put less emphasis on individuality and on giving meaning, and more on offering residents pleasant activities. When faced with conflicting values, caregivers tend to make pragmatic and more or less intuitive decisions. Although this has its merits, it may be desirable to stimulate conscious reflection regarding conflict between different values. (shrink)

In the so-called agreement model of psychic conformity, the passions do not retain their former character, only under tighter rein, but take on a new character altogether. In the competing control model, the passions may conform to reason, but they never change their character so as to cooperate with reason, just as a trained lion conforms to the commands of a tamer whose direction it is never capable of internalizing and cooperating. This chapter argues that these two models appear (...) together in Plato for the simple reason that each captures, in its own way, aspects of our psychology Plato finds too important to ignore. It is further argued that without a psychological model of the agent as a whole, Plato lacks the psychological underpinnings for an account of virtue as the transformation of the agent as a whole, and thus for an account of happiness that is holistic rather than dimensional, consisting not in one's flourishing in some dimension of one's life but in one's flourishing as a harmoniously integrated whole. Consequently, Plato offers a compelling ethical and value-theoretical account of pleasure as a conditional good that is rationally incorporated by practical intelligence, but lacks an adequate unified psychology of the affective and rational activities of the soul to underwrite that ethical and value-theoretical account. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.1 (2003) 231-240 [Access article in PDF] Rescuing the Rescuers in Philip Hallie's Ethical Sublime Patrick Henry "Only stories or visions of transcending personal isolation and indifference can move me... hope, joy lie only in the transcendence of self-absorption—in expansion." —Philip Hallie I THROUGHOUT HIS LIFE, Philip Hallie expressed strong distrust for abstract philosophy. He wanted his own philosophy constituted of flesh and blood, and (...) he believed in the centrality of narration in ethical writing. The personality of stories, the irrefutable nature of the individual's account had to form the essential basis in the teaching of ethics. It is no surprise, then, that in his posthumous Tales of Good and Evil, Help and Harm 1 Hallie leaves us with a series of powerful stories, biographical and autobiographical, as the final expression of his lifelong agonizing struggle to come to terms with his own ethical beliefs. There are no general proofs here. No abstract principles. No definitions of goodness and evil. Only stories that depict the being referred to by e. e. cummings as "manunkind" mysteriously achieving the "realizable ideal" of rescuer of strangers.Given Hallie's major work on the rescuers of Jews in the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed. The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There, 2 it seems appropriate that he begin this particular account of "tales of good and evil" in that same [End Page 231] village. Thus, the first biography he presents is that of Magda Trocmé, the wife of the pastor of the Protestant Church in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, André Trocmé, who, with his fellow pastor Edouard Theis, is said to have inspired the rescue mission in the village. Hallie underscores the communal nonviolent effort by clergy and villagers alike in this "city of refuge." While he admires both André and Magda as practitioners of the "great virtues," he more readily identifies with Magda's secularism than with her husband's piety. He celebrates her generosity, her refusal to turn anyone away from her door, her "quiet habit of efficacious compassion," and her terse explanation as to why the rescuers in the village did what they had done: "What do you mean? It had to be done, that's all."As much as Hallie related to Magda's secularism, he was unable to identify fully with her because he felt tainted by the killing he had done as an artillery man in the United States Army during World War II. "I was a helpful killer who violated the negative demand against killing ["Thou shalt not kill"] in order to obey the positive one to spread life. But Magda and her villagers! Their ethical purity was beyond me. They obeyed the negative demands of ethics by hating and hurting no one even while they obeyed the positive demands of ethics by saving [thousands of refugees]." Compared to Magda and the villagers, Hallie clearly saw himself as someone operating in the grey zone.With the introduction of Joshua James and the community of Hull, Massachusetts, we ascend from Hallie's personal quagmire of moral ambiguity to the realm of the "ethical sublime." Here the author relates the story of James, whose mother and sister died at sea in 1837 when he was 11 years old, and who would go on to a career of life-saving activity on the Massachusetts coast. James founded the Life-Saving Rescue Service, an organization that evolved into the Coast Guard (or more specifically The Search and Rescue Service of the Coast Guard). He spent his entire life in Hull (1826-1902) and over the course of nearly sixty years saved hundreds of sailor's lives and tens of thousands of dollars worth of property.Many coastal villages around the world, Hallie explains, profited greatly from shipwrecks. Their cargoes and the stuff the ships were made of were highly valuable to the generally poor people who inhabited such villages. Yet the village of Hull, the smallest village in the state, having roughly... (shrink)

Excerpt from Discourses of Epictetus Thus we owe to an accident the existence of these "Discourses," which form one of the world's vital books. The "Manual" is a collection of aphorisms taken substantially from the larger work. Epictetus was not the founder of a new philosophy. Zeno, the originator of the Stoic system, was his master, and Zeno himself derived his fundamental principles from Antisthenes, the author of the cynic school and the friend of Socrates. The Greeks are the creators (...) of philosophy, and their earliest attempt at systematic thought was an effort to understand Nature. But they soon learned that it was necessary to begin from within, since to know anything man must first know himself. Thus the problem of the conduct of life forced itself upon them. This is the constant preoccupation of Socrates, who was born five hundred years before Epictetus. He taught that the good is to be sought not in outward things, nor in the indulgence of appetite, but in virtue, which for him, however, is an intellectual rather than a moral habit. His calm and rational temper led him to the belief that man always acts in accordance with his knowledge, does what insight shows him to be useful to himself. He who does evil, does it from a mistake of judgment. Sin is error. Virtue, then, being chiefly knowledge, may be taught, and to teach it is the philosophers life work. But Socrates moved in a circle from which there was no escape. To know the useful is virtue. But what is the useful? That which makes for virtue. Antisthenes does not attempt to determine the meaning of the good. He simply declares that virtue is the only good, and, in his view, virtue is the intelligent conduct of life. Right life is the essential good; virtue is its own reward, and one need not look to its results. It is, in the midst of whatever vicissitudes, a sure possession. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:714 BOOK REVIEWS The End of Life. By JAMES RACHELS. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Pp. 204. The rise of advanced medical technologies, especially life-sustaining ones, has brought to center stage the hioethical issues which arise in acute and long-term care contexts. Especially pressing have been problems about the nature and permissibility of euthanasia. Roughly speaking, there are two major views about euthanasia. The traditional view holds (...) that it is wrong intentionally to kill an innocent human being, hut that, given certain circumstances, it is permissible to withhold or withdraw treatment and allow a patient to die. A more radical view, embraced by groups like the Hemlock Society and the Society for the Right to Die, denies that there is a morally significant distinction between passive and active euthanasia. Further, mercy killing, assisted suicide, and the like are permissible. James Rachels's hook is the most articulate expression of the radical view. The work contains 'ten chapters which can he broken down into l:wo main sections. In chapters one through four, Rachels draws a distinction between what he calls biographical and biological life, and he maintains that, whereas ithe traditional view places emphasis on the latter, the former is what should he considered in euthanasia cases. In chapters five through ten, the distinction between active and passive euthanasia is analyzed. Rachels argues that ithere is no distinction between the two and that euthanasia is permissible in certain circumstances. Chapter one traces the rise of the traditional view in the west from 1the Greeks and Romans to the development of Christanity. According to Rachels, the Greeks and Romans allowed aotive euthanasia-infanticide, suicide-in some cases, because they believed that life held little value apart from the chance of a meaningful or happy existence. But the coming of Christianity caused the traditional doctrine to arise. Until Augustine, the Church taught ·that all killing was wrong. But Christendom during Augustine's time made a politically expedient decision to change its views in 1the face of pressure from the state. The Church adopted the position that all taking of innocent human life was wrong. Two observations should be made here. First, Rachels would have a difficult time proving that the Church changed its views for reasons of political expediency. He makes no attempt to analyze the theological aspects of the situation during Augustine's time, e.g. the shift from a premillenial to an amillenial eschatology with a concomitant change in how the two kingdoms should he related, Second, and more importantly, Rachels discussion of 1the Greeks and Romans contains a serious BOOK REVIEWS 715 omission which is quite revealing in light of later chapters. He does not distinguish happiness and the good life in its formal and material aspects. For many Greek and Roman thinkers, e.g. Aristotle, happiness was more than a mere formal principle. It contained substantive content, viz. the progressive embodiment of intellectual and moral virtues. For Rachels, the good life is whatever an individual finds to be in his own best interests. Chapter.two focuses on the sanctity of life. After surveying eastern views (all life is equally sacred, including that of insects), Rachels criticizes the sanctity-of-life view. As it is expressed in Christianity, this view, as understood by Rachels, holds that all human life is sacred merely because it is biological human life. Being homo sapiens is what gives value to human life. According to Rachels, this is a mistaken understanding of why life is valuable. The sanctity of life should he construed as protecting biographical life, not mere biological life. One's life has value from tlie individual's point of view because he has a biographical life; that is, he can pursue interests and goals that are important to him. The importance of being alive is derivative from the importance of having a life. The traditional view, says Rachels, has lost sight of the point of the rule against killing. H we fail to ask for the purpose of a moral rule, we may sometimes fulfill its letter by going against its spirit. For example, we are taught to drive on,the right side of the road. But if we... (shrink)

In this thesis I argue that what we tend to see in contemporary accounts of human service practice in the relevant literature is a ‘common-sense’ informed by a complex mix of neoliberal political and policy imperatives and various kinds of technical-rational styles of administration and management. These accounts of practice can inadvertently contribute to the problems they are meant to address and can do more harm than good. Common-sense accounts of practice also align with how human services are (...) typically regulated and they align with prevailing ways the education of human services takes place, including in universities. Consequently, the same types of problems that take place with human service practice also take place with the institutionalisation and reproduction of human services. If we are serious about achieving good practice in human services, then we need to think more clearly about what practice in human services is. <br /><br />There is a good case for articulating a theory of human service practice to inspire new and better ways of achieving good practice. The theory of good practice outlined here draws on the philosophy of Aristotle and neo-Aristotelian accounts of practice. It draws especially on Dunne who argues that a theory of practice should offer a defensible account of how we should conceptualise the stuff that human services deal with, and the sorts of knowing, action and ends that best accord with such conceptualisations. <br /><br />I argue that the beings at the centre of human services should be understood as complex, emergent, unpredictable, and ‘wicked’ in the sense that Rittel and Webber talk about. This highlights the possibility that the people, problems and practices of human services can be revealed in multiple and contrary ways. Accordingly, human services hold both promises and dangers for people and good practice is far from self-evident and is highly contestable in each individual case. <br /><br />I argue that phronesis (practical wisdom) is the way of knowing that best corresponds to and is most suited to deal with the uncertain, messy, contingent and context-dependent beings of human services, which require and deserve ongoing deliberations and good determinations on each occasion that are at the same time always tentative and remain open to other suggestions and modification especially because our knowledge may be erroneous and incomplete. I argue that good practice also requires reflexivity and value rationality to help identify and alleviate the problems associated with neoliberal approaches to practice and as an alternative to technical rationality and value neutrality. <br /><br />I make the case for praxis (good action) along with a range of other human activities including value-rational deliberation as the forms of action that best align with and are most appropriate for dealing with the ever-changing, often inexplicable and always difficult beings of human services. Praxis is in accordance with phronesis and can be understood in part as durable practice and in part as responding to each case in new ways. In particular, it involves figuring out and enacting the most desirable course of action in each instance of practice while at the same time remaining receptive to other possibilities and to doing things differently particularly because we might not always be immediately aware of what we are doing, and our actions could be doing more harm than good. <br /><br />I show that clarity about our telos will help to re-orient human services to pursuing preferred ends and securing goods that are better suited to the entities of human services compared to instrumentally designed relations between widely applicable and transferable techniques and pre-determined outcomes. I argue for the telos of youth work to be enabling young people to live the good life. Following my accounts of phronesis and praxis this orientation of human services towards more desirable and ethical purposes takes the form of a commitment that is always carefully reconsidered at the same time as determinedly pursued. However, unlike outputs that can be wholly predetermined, efficiently sought after and completely achieved, this is an end that is never fully attained. This is especially the case because there is always more that can be known and done and because there are always disagreements on the goods to be secured. <br /><br />This theory of practice should correspond to and supports the education of people for professional practice. In particular, the education of human services needs to reproduce how the beings of human services are to be conceptualised and the ways of knowing, forms of action and ends that cohere. At the same time, university-based human service education should support the development, exercise and experience of good practice-as-praxis guided by phronesis. <br />. (shrink)

Freedom as an authentic and willed process, characteristic of man as a human rational being, enables the individual to act in accordance with the principles of morality, since the individual can choose between good and evil, and in this way to get out of the sphere of the given to which the rest of the living world is limited. We should recall the forgotten Marx and his famous text on the essential difference between the animal world and (...) humanity as a genus: "The animal is immediately united with its vital activity. It does not differ from it. It is vital activity. Man makes his own vital activity the subject of his will and consciousness. He has conscious vital activity. This is not a determination with which he merges immediately. Conscious vital activity distinguishes man directly from animal vital activity. It is exactly in this way alone that he is a generic being. Or a conscious being, i.e. his own life is a subject for him precisely because he is a generic being. It is only for this reason that his activity is free activity...". In other words, while animals live just the life of their species and cannot choose anything else, since the choice has been made by the fact of their belonging to a species, man can choose the world in which to live, overcoming in this way the natural givens. Here lies the core of the anthropological explanation of the principle of morality, inconceivable without man's ability to be an authentic free being. Sloboda kao autenticni voljni proces, svojstven coveku kao ljudskom umnom bicu, omogucuje individui da postupa u skladu sa nacelima moralnosti, buduci da individua moze da bira izmedju dobra i zla i da na taj nacin izadje iz sfere datosti na koju je ogranicen ostali zivi svet. Podsetimo se zaboravljenog Marxa i cuvenog teksta o sustinskoj razlici izmedju sveta zivotinjskih vrsta i coveka kao roda:?zivotinja je neposredno jedinstvena sa svojom zivotnom delatnoscu. Ona se od nje ne razlikuje. Ona je zivotna datost. Covek cini samu svoju zivotnu delatnost predmetom svoga htenja i svoje svesti. On ima svesnu zivotnu delatnost. To nije odredjenost s kojom se on neposredno stapa. Svesna zivotna delatnost razlikuje coveka neposredno od zivotinjske zivotne delatnosti. On je upravo samo na taj nacin genericko bice. Ilije samo svesno bice, tj. njegov vlastiti zivot mu je predmet upravo zato sto je genericko bice. Samo zato je njegova delatnost slobodna delatnost...". Drugim recima, dok zivotinjski svet zivi samo zivotom svoje vrste i ne moze da izabere nista drugo, on je srastao sa vrstom kojoj pripada, covek moze da bira svet u kojem ce ziveti prevazilazeci na taj nacin prirodnu datost. Ovde je sadrzana bit antropoloskog objasnjenja principa moralnosti, koji se bez sposobnosti coveka da bude autenticno slobodno bice ne bi mogao pojmiti.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good: Reason and Human Happiness in Aquinas's Moral ScienceColleen McCluskeyDenis J. M. Bradley. Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good: Reason and Human Happiness in Aquinas's Moral Science. Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997. Pp. vii-xiv + 610.In this book, Bradley examines whether one can construct an autonomous Thomistic philosophical ethics from Thomas Aquinas's theologically flavored moral writings. (...) In order to answer this question, Bradley provides a comprehensive analysis not only of Aquinas's moral psychology, but also of the Aristotelian doctrines which to a certain extent provide its foundation. Bradley begins with a look at Aristotle's concept of a science, his notion of practical reasoning, and his accounts of deliberation, choice, and the ultimate end for human beings. Bradley also discusses Aquinas's interpretations of those theories and the extent to which Aquinas's views follow and diverge from Aristotle's writings. The metaphysical principles grounding the notions of a science, of being, and of goodness and their connections to Aquinas's ethics are noted and explained. In his discussion of the moral theory itself, Bradley frames his presentation around Aquinas's theory of action (especially its volitional aspects and the workings of practical reason) and the role of natural law, although the virtues are not neglected. Bradley's treatment throughout the book is meticulous (although in my view somewhat repetitive).The most interesting aspect of this book is Bradley's discussion of the paradoxical nature of Aquinas's ethical theory. As he notes, Aquinas's theory has a teleological orientation; his system is structured around the idea that human beings have a particular ultimate end. Aquinas argues that due to their nature, all human beings desire to attain their ultimate end. As is also well-known, Aquinas specifies that this end is the beatific vision and that only the vision of the divine essence is able to satisfy completely [End Page 118] all human desires. However, this end is not only inaccessible to human beings in this life, but one that they are unable to obtain without the aid of God's grace. But it follows from this that human beings have a natural desire that cannot be satisfied naturally, a paradoxical position, especially for an Aristotelian. For according to Bradley, Aquinas argues that although one can establish through philosophical arguments that human beings have a natural desire which only God can satisfy, no philosophical argument can establish that God, in fact, ever satisfies this desire. That God chooses to do so is a matter of faith and revelation. Thus, as far as philosophy is concerned, human beings may have been structured with an unsatisfiable desire. This violates an important Aristotelian notion about teleology, the idea that there can be no futile natural desire. The inability to satisfy a natural desire for an ultimate end renders a teleologically based system incoherent. It follows that. given his characterization of the ultimate end, a characterization that Aquinas thinks he can establish on philosophical grounds alone, his purely theological commitments are integral and necessary components of his moral system. Thus, Bradley's answer to the question he raises in the book is no, one cannot construct an autonomous Thomistic philosophical ethics from Aquinas's moral writings.In the process of arriving at this conclusion, Bradley critiques the work of two philosophers, Jacques Maritain and Santiago M. Ramirez, both of whom argue that a purely philosophical ethics can be built out of Aquinas's writings, although both maintain that Aquinas himself did not do so. Maritain and Ramirez take Thomistic philosophical ethics to retain basic Christian beliefs but to be established on the basis of natural reasoning processes alone, independently of revelation. Bradley raises a number of objections against their characterizations of Thomistic ethics, among them the worry that, ultimately, such philosophical systems are not truly independent of a theological ethics (pace Maritain) and the charge that Aquinas's characterizations of the supernatural nature of the human ultimate end is not taken seriously (Ramirez).Space permits only a cursory examination of some general concerns over Bradley's position. Bradley argues that what is fundamental to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:126 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY be used in a thousand different ways; it has been a misty halo which could be summoned to surround all revolution and every reaction. To the extent that the limitation upon man's right to consent to either tyranny or chaos was ignored or rejected in particular circumstances, it became associated with the dream of all the discontented and unfortunate. It has been a symbol (...) which might be invoked by all who have sought power with the support of the people. Popular sovereignty almost, but never quite, became the principle that work-a-day political justice is merely what the people want. The transition from historic popular sovereignty to Western democracy was a product of an age of confusion which began in the sixteenth century. On the one hand, there were specific things which it was considered that the power of the people should do, and therewith emerged the whole problem of what practical techniques the people might use. On the other hand, the basic divisions in modern theory of the function of public opinion appeared as the problem's philosophical counterpart (p. 12). Prof. Wilson traces the growing recognition and respect for "opinion" in politics from Plato, who had a low opinion of it, through the Medieval controversies to Marsilius of Padua, who, on Aristotelian premises formulated the "modern" principle that "the whole body of the citizens, or the weightier multitude thereof, which must be taken for the same thing, can better discern what must be elected and what rejected than any part of it taken separately" (p. 28). From this doctrine to the theory of popular sovereignty the way is fairly evident. But the story from the faith in popular sovereignty to a genuine theory of the legitimate and useful functions of public opinion and to a conception of institutionalized public opinion, which is central to modern democratic theories, is an intricate development. This story the author tells with great skill and with many references to the important literature. HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER Claremont, CaliJornia Rational Man: A Modern Interpretation of Aristotelian Ethics. By Henry Babcock Veatch. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962. Pp. 226. ~5.00.) Professor Veatch's book is an engaging one in its plea that philosophers be allowed to write (and that some should write) in "normative ethics" and not just in "recta-ethics." It is only less engaging in its exposition and advocacy of a Socratic-Aristotelian doctrine that the good life for man is an "examined life" and is a striving for the natural end of man as a rational animal. It is least engaging (and least accurate) in its counterattack, probably uncalled for in the thesis, on Moore's attack on the "naturalistic fallacy," which Mr. Veatch holds responsible, whatever may have been Moore's intention, for all the noncognitivists--emotivistor existentialist or popular. Moore's criticism of the naturalistic fallacy, right or wrong, has had the tribute of an extraordinary number of interpretations and criticisms in turn. Mr. Veatch's will not, I think, add to our understanding of the matter. Aristotle's opening "The good is that at which all things aim" is notoriously equivocal. Does it tell us what things aim at or what the good is? Mr. Veatch takes it as defining good but as needing, and having, the specification that the good is what a thing aims at "by nature," properly. I do not think this is Aristotle's basic doctrine. His very equivocality and circularity is perhaps his final sagacity in a subject not meant for scientific precision and he might better be taken on his word in the Rhetoric: The good is what would be chosen by the ablest man, with relevant knowledge, if the man is good. Virtue has happiness as its aim and happiness is a life in accordance with virtue. BOOK REVIEWS 127 And yet, with all his caviling, Aristotle does back up Socrates's examined life and his acceptance of arete as arete of someone and for something with the application of "know thyself" to the definition of man as a rational animal and with the advice that we try (some few) to reason and (all) to be... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Life Worthy of the Gods: The Materialist Psychology of EpicurusKelly E. ArensonDavid Konstan. A Life Worthy of the Gods: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus. Las Vegas-Zurich-Athens: Parmenides Publishing, 2008. Pp. xx + 176. Paper, $34.00.In this modestly expanded edition of his 1973 book, Some Aspects of Epicurean Psychology (Brill), David Konstan attempts to flesh out the Epicurean explanation of the causes of unhappiness: “empty beliefs” (...) (kenodoxia)—most importantly, the groundless fear of death—and the irrational desires that fuel and are fueled by them. Konstan’s central argument, preserved from the earlier edition, is deceptively simple: empty beliefs, according to Epicureans, are in large part the product of a symbolic association—a “linguistic confusion”—of the afterlife with certain real-life human ills, such as poverty and obscurity.In the first chapter, which is new to this edition, Konstan calls on psychology to flesh out the Epicurean understanding of empty fears and irrational desires—ancient psychology, that is: a science of the soul. Konstan’s reading of the relation between sensation (aisthēseis), the passions (pathē) of pleasure and pain, and belief (doxa) in Epicurean doctrine is unorthodox but thorough. Rather than mapping pathē onto either the soul as a whole or the body, Konstan assigns pathē to the non-rational part of the soul, the seat of sensation. He locates the emotions, which “do not seem to have a special name in Epicurean theory,” in the rational part (11). Crucial to this schema is Konstan’s claim, based on Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura and Diogenes Laertius’s doxography of Epicurus, that Epicureans did not consider emotions such as fear and joy to be pathē at all, since emotions depend on memory and reasoning, whereas pathē do not. The upshot is that fear, as a rational emotion, involves belief and evaluation, and is therefore susceptible to error; whence the psychological roots of pernicious “empty beliefs.”In chapter two, Konstan addresses the Epicurean conundrum of why humans are plagued by fears and anxieties when their needs are so basic. Konstan takes as an explanation of this phenomenon Lucretius’s analysis of irrational desires and their parasitic relationship [End Page 95] with baseless fears. Out of their fear of death—the fear to beat all fears, according to Epicureans—people irrationally desire goods such as wealth, power, and glory that they mistakenly believe will delay their descent into the underworld. Konstan contends that there was a “symbolic association between poverty and death’s antechamber” that was not merely metaphorical (45); to escape poverty is not to cheat something like death, but to cheat death itself, just as to pursue wealth is literally to pursue life. In their vain quest to waylay death, people resort to greediness, crime, deceit—in short, any behavior that could result in material gain. Unfortunately, these unsavory activities serve only to augment rather than assuage fears, since wrongdoers fear being punished for their illicit deeds. The fear of punishment in turn spurs more irrational desires, forming a vicious cycle of mutually reinforcing behavior and states of mind that are incompatible with tranquility.In the final two chapters, Konstan combs Epicurean social theory for the roots of irrational fears and desires and shows how Epicurean epistemology enables the sage to avoid them. Konstan argues that harmful fears and desires emerged when words came to refer not only to visible sensory phenomena, but also to abstract notions whose referents might be phantoms—misleading accounts of the gods and the limits of desire that do not correspond with reality. In addition, laws served to foment fears of divine retribution and death as lawmakers attempted to regulate behavior by disseminating myths about the wrath of the gods and the afterlife. In the final chapter, Konstan is on well-trodden ground when he claims that the Epicurean sage is able to control fears and desires by understanding the nature of reality, pleasure, and human needs.This book will primarily be of interest to scholars of Epicureanism; the sheer number of footnotes and the technical language make it rather inaccessible to the non-specialist. And the specialist may find that Konstan’s treatment of the... (shrink)

What makes your life go well for you? In this paper, we give an account of welfare. Our core idea is simple. There are impersonally good and bad things out there: things that are good or bad period, not (or not only) good or bad for someone. The life that is good for you is the life in contact with the good. We’ll understand the relevant notion of ‘contact’ here in terms (...) of manifestation: you’re in contact with a value when it is manifest in parts of your life or parts of your life are manifest in it. So, the more the good is manifest in your life, or your life manifest in the good, the better for you. The more the bad is manifest in your life, or your life manifest in the bad, the worse for you. We’ll argue that this account is extensionally adequate: it explains the welfare value of achievements, friendships, knowledge, pleasures and virtues. Moreover, it has a number of explanatory virtues: it’s unified, elegant and explanatorily powerful. So, we’ll suggest, it’s an excellent account of welfare, and in many ways superior to its main competitors. (shrink)