Download or read book Descartes s Moral Perfectionism written by Frans Svensson and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-04-23 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a novel and comprehensive interpretation of Descartes’s moral philosophy. In contrast to other influential interpretations, the book argues that the central tenet of his ethical thought is that each person ought to live in the way that is most conducive to their degree of overall perfection. While Descartes’s ethical thought has attracted only a very modest amount of attention among scholars, this book demonstrates that it constitutes an important and integral component of his philosophical project as a whole. It argues that Descartes’s ethics constitutes a form of moral perfectionism. In the Cartesian picture, we satisfy this requirement of perfection by using our free will well in all our conduct, something which is also necessary for obtaining happiness for ourselves. To be guaranteed happiness, however, we need to acquire the virtue of generosity, which, besides a habit of using one’s free will well, entails a habit of being attentive in one’s thought to various truths about oneself and about the world we live in. Descartes offers an interesting attempt to make living well depend entirely on ourselves and not on fate or fortune. He also leaves room for the presence of passions within such a life and for acknowledging that even fully virtuous persons’ lives may differ in their degrees of overall perfection. Descartes’s Moral Perfectionism will appeal to scholars and graduate students working on Descartes, the history of early modern philosophy, and the history of ethics.
Download or read book Reforming the Art of Living written by Rico Vitz and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-10-20 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Descartes’s concern with the proper method of belief formation is evident in the titles of his works—e.g., The Search after Truth, The Rules for the Direction of the Mind and The Discourse on Method of rightly conducting one’s reason and seeking the truth in the sciences. It is most apparent, however, in his famous discussions, both in the Meditations and in the Principles, of one particularly noteworthy source of our doxastic errors—namely, the misuse of one’s will. What is not widely recognized, let alone appreciated and understood, is the relationship between his concern with belief formation and his concern with virtue. In fact, few seem to realize that Descartes regards doxastic errors as moral errors and as sins both because such errors are intrinsically vicious and because they entail notably deleterious social consequences. Reforming the Art of Living seeks to rectify this rather common oversight in two ways. First, it aims to elucidate the nature of Descartes’s account of virtuous belief formation. Second, it aims both (i) to illuminate the social significance of Descartes’s philosophical program as it relates to the understanding and practice not of science, but of religion and (ii) to develop a kind of Leibnizian critique of this aspect of his program. More specifically, it aims to show that Descartes’s project is “dangerous,” insofar as it is subversive not only of traditional Christianity but also of other traditional forms of religion, both in theory and in practice.
Download or read book Descartess Moral Perfectionism written by Frans Svensson and published by . This book was released on 2024-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Cartesian Reflections written by John Cottingham and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Cottingham explores central areas of his philosophy, including his views on the nature of thought, the relationship between mind and body, his scientific worldview and its influence on modern thinking, the place of God in his philosophical system, and his account of the emotions and the good life.
Download or read book Foucault and Derrida written by Roy Boyne and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The writings of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida pose a serious challenge to the old established, but now seriously compromised forms of thought. In this compelling book, Roy Boyne explains the very significant advances for which they have been responsible, their general importance for the human sciences, and the forms of hope that they offer for an age often characterized by scepticism, cynicism and reaction. The focus of the book is the dispute between Foucault and Derrida on the nature of reason, madness and 'otherness'. The range of issues covered includes the birth of the prison, problems of textual interpretation, the nature of the self and contemporary movements such as socialism, feminism and anti-racialism. Roy Boyne argues that whilst the two thinkers chose very different paths, they were in fact rather surprisingly to converge upon the common ground of power and ethics. Despite the evident honesty, importance and adventurousness of the work of Foucault and Derrida, many also find it difficult and opaque. Roy Boyne has performed a major service for students of their writings in this compelling and accessible book.
Download or read book Mind Method and Morality written by John Cottingham and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-01-07 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sir Anthony Kenny is one of the most distinguished and prolific philosophers of our time. In the wide range and historical breadth of his interests, he has influenced many parts of the philosophical landscape, especially in the philosophy of mind and the theory of human action and responsibility. In contrast to many of his contemporaries, who have played down philosophy's debt to its past, Kenny's work has always been rooted in the great tradition of Western philosophical inquiry. Mind, Method and Morality celebrates Kenny's work by focusing on the four great philosophers to whom Kenny has given special attention, namely Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, and Wittgenstein. It contains sixteen essays (four on each philosopher) written by leading specialists in the relevant area. Strongly linked together by their focus on philosophy of mind, action and responsibility, the papers make a significant contribution to those areas of philosophy that Kenny has made particularly his own, and constitute a timely celebration of his work. While keeping to the highest standards of scholarship and philosophical rigour, the volume aims to be engaging and comprehensible to a wide audience, thus mirroring the clarity and accessibility that are the hallmarks of Kenny's own philosophical writings. A preface by the Editors describes Anthony Kenny's philosophical career, and the volume also includes a complete bibliography of his writings.
Download or read book Ethical Humans written by Victor Jeleniewski Seidler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-29 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethical Humans questions how philosophy and social theory can help us to engage the everyday moral realities of living, working, loving, learning and dying in new capitalism. It introduces sociology as an art of living and as a formative tradition of embodied radical eco post-humanism. Seeking to embody traditions of philosophy and social theory in everyday ethics, this book validates emotions and feelings as sources of knowledge and shows how the denigration of women has gone hand in hand with the denigration of nature. It queries post-structuralist traditions of anti-humanism that, for all their insights into the fragmentation of identities, often sustain a distinction between nature and culture. The author argues that in a crisis of global warming, we have to learn to listen to our bodies as part of nature and draws on Wittgenstein to shape embodied forms of philosophy and social theory that questions theologies that tacitly continue to shape philosophical traditions. In acknowledging our own vulnerabilities, we question the vision of the autonomous and independent rational self that often remains within the terms of dominant white masculinities. This book offers different modes of self-work, drawing on psychoanalysis and embodied post-analytic psychotherapies as part of a decolonising practice questioning Eurocentric colonising modernity. In doing so it challenges, with Simone Weil, Roman notions of power and greatness that have shaped visions of white supremacy and European colonial power and empire. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental ethics, environmental philosophy, social theory and sociology, ethics and philosophy, cultural studies, future studies, gender studies, post-colonial studies, Marxism, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy and philosophy and sociology as arts of living.
Download or read book Descartes s Moral Theory written by John Marshall and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most Cartesian scholars focus on the metaphysical and epistemological aspects of the philosopher's texts. In this long awaited volume, John Marshall invites us to reconsider René Descartes as an ethicist. Through an unconventional study of his statements about morality found in such writings as the Discourse on the Method, the Passions of the Soul, and various correspondence, Marshall shows how Descartes confirmed and elaborated his earlier "provisional morality" in his later works.Marshall demonstrates that Descartes left a fully developed conception of moral virtue and happiness along with other accounts of values and norms, and he expands on these accounts to describe Cartesian moral theory as a whole. He discusses the morale par provision of the Discourse, treats Descartes's "final morality" by focusing on his account of virtue, and sets out a Cartesian theory of value and system of duties. Throughout the text he uses numerous quotations to illustrate Descartes's comments on ethics, and he considers views of other commentators such as Gueroult.
Download or read book Self Reason and Freedom written by Andrea Christofidou and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sheds new light on the role of freedom in Descartes' thought and defends the theory of an internal relation between freedom and reason in his metaphysics.
Download or read book Pessimism in Kant s Ethics and Rational Religion written by Dennis Vanden Auweele and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2018-11-05 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The historical period of the Enlightenment is usually thought of as the high point of philosophical optimism. By breaking the chains of traditional heteronomous morality, the tutelage of dogmatic religion and the oppression of authoritarian politics, the Enlightenment created the space for a new, self-critical and autonomous frame of reference for human effort. Immanuel Kant is undoubtedly the greatest philosopher in the German Enlightenment. And Kant was a pessimist? In this book, the author explores Kant’s moral and religious philosophy and shows that a pessimistic undercurrent pervades these. This provides a new vantage point not only to assess comprehensively Kantian philosophy but also to provide much needed context and reading assistance to the general premises of Kant’s philosophy of autonomy and rationality. For Kant, to be autonomous and rational is not something human nature naturally pursues; instead, reason but must reframe, rethink and reshape human nature. Human nature is a problem, autonomy and rationality are the solution. Kant’s subsequent attempts to establish a rational religion can be explained in extension of this problem. Since human beings are not naturally prone to act autonomously, they have to be educated through historical institutions that are reformed appropriately so as to provide the incentives for human beings to become autonomous. This is where Kant believed religion could play an important pedagogical function.
Download or read book Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion written by Chad Meister and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-17 with total page 850 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion, Second edition is an indispensable guide and reference source to the major themes, movements, debates and topics in philosophy of religion. Considerably expanded for the second edition, over seventy entries from a team of renowned international contributors are organized into nine clear parts: philosophical issues in world religions key figures in philosophy of religion religious diversity the theistic conception of God arguments for the existence of God arguments against the existence of God philosophical theology Christian theism recent topics in philosophy of religion. Covering key world religions including Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, and key figures such as Augustine, Aquinas and Kierkegaard, the Companion explores the central topics in theism such as the ontological, cosmological and teleological arguments for God’s existence. Three final parts consider Catholicism, Protestantism, Eastern orthodoxy and current debates including phenomenology, reformed epistemology, religious experience, and religion and science, making the Companion as a whole essential reading for students of philosophy or religion, and suitable for anyone coming to the subject for the first time. This second edition includes new chapters on Blaise Pascal, Baruch Spinoza, Interreligious Dialogue, Death and the Afterlife, Incorporeality, Religion and Global Ethics, New Religious Movements, Religion and the Environment, and Religion and Film.
Download or read book Stanley Cavell s Democratic Perfectionism written by Jonathan Havercroft and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-08-31 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Post-truth politics is both a result of a democratic culture in which each person is encouraged to voice their opinion, and a threat to the continuation of democracy as partisans seek to deny political standing to those with incommensurate world views. Are there resources within political theory for overcoming this tension? This book argues that Stanley Cavell's philosophy provides a conceptual framework for responding to post-truth politics. Jonathan Havercroft develops an original interpretation of Stanley Cavell as a theorist of democratic perfectionism. By placing Cavell's writings in conversation with political theorists on debates about the social contract, interpretive methods, democratic theory and political aesthetics, Stanley Cavell's Democratic Perfectionism cultivates modes of responsiveness that strengthen our democratic culture and help us resist the contemporary crisis of democratic backsliding. Each chapter diagnoses a sceptical crisis in contemporary politics and a mode of responsiveness in Cavell's thought that can respond to that crisis.
Download or read book Political Theory on Death and Dying written by Erin A. Dolgoy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political Theory on Death and Dying provides a comprehensive, encyclopedic review that compiles and curates the latest scholarship, research, and debates on the political and social implications of death and dying. Adopting an easy-to-follow chronological and multi-disciplinary approach on 45 canonical figures and thinkers, leading scholars from a diverse range of fields, including political science, philosophy, and English, discuss each thinker’s ethical and philosophical accounts on mortality and death. Each chapter focuses on a single established figure in political philosophy, as well as religious and literary thinkers, covering classical to contemporary thought on death. Through this approach, the chapters are designed to stand alone, allowing the reader to study every entry in isolation and with greater depth, as well as trace how thinkers are influenced by their predecessors. A key contribution to the field, Political Theory on Death and Dying provides an excellent overview for students and researchers who study philosophy of death, the history of political thought, and political philosophy.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Descartes and Cartesianism written by Steven Nadler and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-02 with total page 843 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Descartes and Cartesianism comprises fifty specially written chapters on René Descartes (1596-1650) and Cartesianism, the dominant paradigm for philosophy and science in the seventeenth century, written by an international group of leading scholars of early modern philosophy. The first part focuses on the various aspects of Descartes's biography (including his background, intellectual contexts, writings, and correspondence) and philosophy, with chapters on his epistemology, method, metaphysics, physics, mathematics, moral philosophy, political thought, medical thought, and aesthetics. The chapters of the second part are devoted to the defense, development and modification of Descartes's ideas by later generations of Cartesian philosophers in France, the Netherlands, Italy, and elsewhere. The third and final part considers the opposition to Cartesian philosophy by other philosophers, as well as by civil, ecclesiastic, and academic authorities. This handbook provides an extensive overview of Cartesianism - its doctrines, its legacies and its fortunes - in the period based on the latest research.
Download or read book Relational Autonomy written by Catriona Mackenzie and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2000-01-27 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of original essays explores the social and relational dimensions of individual autonomy. Rejecting the feminist charge that autonomy is inherently masculinist, the contributors draw on feminist critiques of autonomy to challenge and enrich contemporary philosophical debates about agency, identity, and moral responsibility. The essays analyze the complex ways in which oppression can impair an agent's capacity for autonomy, and investigate connections, neglected by standard accounts, between autonomy and other aspects of the agent, including self-conception, self-worth, memory, and the imagination.
Download or read book The Bloomsbury Handbook of Spinoza written by Wiep van Bunge and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-08-22 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 2nd edition Handbook of Spinoza retains a unique focus on the biographical details of Spinoza's life, as well as essential scholarship on his influences and early critics. A glossary of key Latin Spinozan terms with English translations remains a key feature alongside short synopses of Spinoza's writings. Adding to the updated contemporary scholarship on Spinoza from across Europe and the US is the recognition of Spinoza's influence more globally. Distinct from other reference works on Spinoza, this book offers the tools and methodology necessary for students and scholars who are completing their own research. Accompanying each main section is an updated and detailed bibliography that situates both the summative and original scholarship therein. This 2nd edition includes a revised biography from Jeroen van de Ven who has systematically revisited the archive; influences will now include reference to Machiavelli and Hobbes primarily, as well as remarks on the De La Court brothers, La Perèyre, and Delmedigo. A new entry on the critic, Willem van Blijenbergh, alongside a reconstruction of dozens of letters now lost from Spinoza consolidates new directions of study which are supported by additional glossary terms on Axioma (cf. Ordo geometricus), Definitio (ibid.), Excommunicare, Lumen, Methodus, Negatio, Pax, Ratio, (Cf. Cognitio), Scientia intuitiva, and Tempus amongst others. Maintaining an approach that is refreshingly independent of the historicist/analytic/continental divide, this work features scholars from across these traditions, and remains an essential point of reference for students and scholars alike.
Download or read book Descartes as a Moral Thinker written by Gary Steiner and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No Marketing Blurb
