Download or read book Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue written by James Delaney and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2006-09-15 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jean-Jacques Rousseau is an enigmatic figure in many ways. There is much debate about whether he was an advocate of the Enlightenment project or a critic of it. Sometimes Rousseau seems to be arguing against traditional values and hierarchies. But elsewhere he seems to be an enemy of progress altogether. This book explains Rousseau's true place in the Enlightenment by paying particular attention to his account of virtue. Virtue ethics is one of the main branches in moral philosophy, and its most famous advocate is Aristotle. Many recent philosophers have tried to revive virtue ethics, most notably Alasdair MacIntyre in his 1984 book, After Virtue. MacIntyre argues that the Enlightenment project was doomed to fail precisely because Enlightenment philosophers had discarded Aristotle. They do this by rejecting Aristotle's claim that all things are, by nature, directed towards some proper end. The enlightenment figures whom MacIntyre discusses at length in his critique are Hume, Kant, and Kierkegaard. And while Rousseau is mentioned as an Enlightenment thinker, very little attention is paid to him. This book puts Rousseau's ethics into historical perspective, showing that Rousseau shares important characteristics with his contemporaries as well as with the tradition of Aristotle. The dichotomy set up by MacIntyre and others between the ethics of the ancient tradition and that of the Enlightenment is oversimplified. By taking a serious look at Rousseau's ethics, we can see that he forms a bridge between these two rich traditions in the history of Western philosophy.
Download or read book Rousseau s Ethics of Truth written by Jason Neidleman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-07-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1758, Rousseau announced that he had adopted "vitam impendere vero" (dedicate life to truth) as a personal pledge. Despite the dramatic nature of this declaration, no scholar has yet approached Rousseau’s work through the lens of truth or truthseeking. What did it mean for Rousseau to lead a life dedicated to truth? This book presents Rousseau’s normative account of truthseeking, his account of what human beings must do if they hope to discover the truths essential to human happiness. Rousseau’s writings constitute a practical guide to these truths; they describe how he arrived at them and how others might as well. In reading Rousseau through the lens of truth, Neidleman traverses the entirety of Rousseau's corpus, and, in the process, reveals a series of symmetries among the disparate themes treated in those texts. The first section of the book lays out Rousseau’s general philosophy of truth and truthseeking. The second section follows Rousseau down four distinct pathways to truth: reverie, republicanism, religion, and reason. With a strong grounding in both the Anglophone and Francophone scholarship on Rousseau, this book will appeal to scholars across a broad range of disciplines.
Download or read book Jean Jacques Rousseau written by Joseph R. Reisert and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Drawing on his deep familiarity with Rousseau's work, Reisert maintains that Rousseau's primary concern was to discover the psychological foundations of virtue, which he understood as the strength of will needed to respect the rights of others. Reisert reconstructs the model of the human soul that underpins Rousseau's account of virtue, a model he considers superior to the alternatives conceived by Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Kant, and Rawls. Rousseau, the author explains, believed that life in modern societies undermines virtue, but that for individuals to thrive, and for free societies to endure, all would require moral education. Rousseau, who styled himself "a friend of virtue," sought to impart virtue to his readers through the examples of his literary characters Emile and Julie.".
Download or read book Jean Jacques Rousseau written by Joseph Reisert and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-05 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars have long debated the contribution Rousseau has made to political thought. Is he a theorist of radical individualism, a reactionary advocate for authoritarianism, or just a brilliantly paradoxical but ultimately incoherent controversialist? In the first book devoted to discussion of Rousseau's conception of virtue, Joseph R. Reisert argues that Rousseau's work offers a coherent political theory that both complements and challenges key elements of contemporary liberalism.Drawing on his deep familiarity with Rousseau's work, Reisert maintains that Rousseau's primary concern was to discover the psychological foundations of virtue, which he understood as the strength of will needed to respect the rights of others. Reisert reconstructs the model of the human soul that underpins Rousseau's account of virtue, a model he considers superior to the alternatives conceived by Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Kant, and Rawls. Rousseau, the author explains, believed that life in modern societies undermines virtue, but that for individuals to thrive, and for free societies to endure, all would require moral education. Rousseau, who styled himself "a friend of virtue," sought to impart virtue to his readers through the examples of his literary characters Emile and Julie.Reisert finds that Rousseau's thought poses a dilemma for modern politics: democratic governments can do little to cultivate virtue directly, yet liberal society continues to need it. The requisite moral teaching, Reisert concludes, should be provided instead by families, religious organizations, and other civil associations.
Download or read book On Philosophy Morality and Religion written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2007 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential general reader and course adoption anthology
Download or read book Social Contract Discourse on the Virtue Most Necessary for a Hero Political Fragments And Geneva Manuscript written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and published by Dartmouth College Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rousseau's major works, available in a uniform English edition, continue the dialog of Rousseau's linguistic and musical theory within his larger philosophical system.
Download or read book Hypocrisy and Integrity written by Ruth W. Grant and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Questioning the usual judgements of political ethics, Ruth W. Grant argues that hypocrisy can actually be constructive while strictly principled behavior can be destructive. Hypocrisy and Integrity offers a new conceptual framework that clarifies the differences between idealism and fanaticism while it uncovers the moral limits of compromise. "Exciting and provocative. . . . Grant's work is to be highly recommended, offering a fresh reading of Rousseau and Machiavelli as well as presenting a penetrating analysis of hypocrisy and integrity."—Ronald J. Terchek, American Political Science Review "A great refreshment. . . . With liberalism's best interests at heart, Grant seeks to make available a better understanding of the limits of reason in politics."—Peter Berkowitz, New Republic
Download or read book Language Subjectivity and Freedom in Rousseau s Moral Philosophy written by Richard Noble and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-04-25 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, first published in 1991, has two related goals. The first is to explicate Rousseau’s conception of subjectivity; the second is to trace the influence of that conception on his theory of freedom. It argues that Rousseau’s conception of subjectivity provides us with a basis for understanding both his analysis of the ‘social problem’ of advanced civil societies, and the solutions he proposes to this problem.
Download or read book Modernity and Authenticity written by Alessandro Ferrara and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study on the contemporary relevance of Rousseaus ethical and social thought, the ethic of authenticity, responds to the tensions of modern morality and rivals the answers generated by the more mainstream tradition of the ethic of autonomy.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Virtue Ethics written by Daniel C. Russell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-14 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume addresses the history, future and contemporary application of virtue ethics.
Download or read book The Cultivation of the Arts and Sciences Maintained to be Favourable to Virtue and Happiness written by Henry Smithers and published by . This book was released on 1818 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Virtue of the Citizen written by Merja Kylmäkoski and published by Europäische Studien zur Ideen- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte / European Studies in the History of Science and Ideas. This book was released on 2001 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author examines Jean-Jacques Rousseau's political thought from the angle of classical republicanism. To offer an account of Rousseau's republicanism she explores his idea of the citizen and civic virtues. In addition, eighteenth-century conceptions of luxury and Rousseau's ideas of the patriot and liberty are discussed. Rousseau's republicanism is here considered to stem from his Genevan legacy and his ideas are seen as a critical response to the contemporary ascendancy of the Mandevillean idea of man, which emphasized the values and virtues attached to commerce.
Download or read book Man or Citizen written by Karen Pagani and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-06-19 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The French studies scholar Patrick Coleman made the important observation that over the course of the eighteenth century, the social meanings of anger became increasingly democratized. The work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau is an outstanding example of this change. In Man or Citizen, Karen Pagani expands, in original and fascinating ways, the study of anger in Rousseau’s autobiographical, literary, and philosophical works. Pagani is especially interested in how and to what degree anger—and various reconciliatory responses to anger, such as forgiveness—functions as a defining aspect of one’s identity, both as a private individual and as a public citizen. Rousseau himself was, as Pagani puts it, “unabashed” in his own anger and indignation—toward society on one hand (corrupter of our naturally good and authentic selves) and, on the other, toward certain individuals who had somehow wronged him (his famous philosophical disputes with Voltaire and Diderot, for example). In Rousseau’s work, Pagani finds that the extent to which an individual processes, expresses, and eventually resolves or satisfies anger is very much of moral and political concern. She argues that for Rousseau, anger is not only inevitable but also indispensable, and that the incapacity to experience it renders one amoral, while the ability to experience it is a key element of good citizenship.
Download or read book Rousseau Nature and the Problem of the Good Life written by Laurence D. Cooper and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2021-12 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of modern science created a crisis for Western moral and political philosophy, which had theretofore relied either on Christian theology or Aristotelian natural teleology as guarantors of an objective standard for &"the good life.&" This book examines Rousseau's effort to show how and why, despite this challenge from science (which he himself intensified by equating our subhuman origins with our natural state), nature can remain a standard for human behavior. While recognizing an original goodness in human being in the state of nature, Rousseau knew this to be too low a standard and promoted the idea of &"the natural man living in the state of society,&" notably in Emile. Laurence Cooper shows how, for Rousseau, conscience&—understood as the &"love of order&"&—functions as the agent whereby simple savage sentiment is sublimated into a more refined &"civilized naturalness&" to which all people can aspire.
Download or read book The Harmony of the Soul written by Neal O. Weiner and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1993-12-07 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Harmony of the Soul creates a naturalistic grounding for ethics and a moral grounding for psychotherapy. It is an original and startling synthesis of the ideas of mental health and moral virtue based on neglected affinities between classical Greek ethics, contemporary virtue ethics, sociobiology, and the basic presuppositions of psychotherapy. A central thesis of the book is that we can assume "the worst" about what science tells us about the human animal without having to sacrifice any of the things that are of most importance to ethics: virtue and the good life, harmony of the soul, freedom, conscience, and moral knowledge.
Download or read book Discourse on the Arts and Sciences written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and published by Collector's Library. This book was released on 2005 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Censored in its own time, the Social Contract (1762) remains a key source of democratic belief and is one of the classics of political theory. It argues concisely but eloquently, that the basis of any legitimate society must be the agreement of its members. As humans we were 'born free' and our subjection to government must be freely accepted. Rousseau is essentially a radical thinker, and in a broad sense a revolutionary. He insisted on the sovereignty of the people, and made some provocative statements that are still highly controversial. His greatest contribution to political thought is the concept of the general will, which unites individuals through their common self-interest, thus validating the society in which they live and the constraints it imposes on them. This new translation is fully annotated and indexed. The volume also contains the opening chapter of the manuscript version of the Contract, together with the long article on Political Economy, a work traditionally between the Contract and Rousseau's earlier masterpiece, the Discourse on Inequality.
Download or read book Reclaiming the History of Ethics written by Andrews Reath and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-05-13 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume offer an approach to the history of moral and political philosophy that takes its inspiration from John Rawls. The distinctive feature of this approach is to address substantive normative questions in moral and political philosophy through an analysis of the texts and theories of major figures in the history of the subject: Aristotle, Hobbes, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, and Marx. By reconstructing the core of these theories in a way that is informed by contemporary theoretical concerns, the contributors show how the history of the subject is a resource for understanding present and perennial problems in moral and political philosophy.
