Download or read book Essays Philosophical and Theological Whewells Morality Whewell s Systematic morality Morell s History of modern philosophy Soul in nature Kingsley s Phaethon Sir Wm Hamilton s philosophy Kingsley s Alexandria and her schools Theory of reasoning Plato his physics and metaphysics A plea for philosophical studies 1868 viii 2 430 p written by James Martineau and published by . This book was released on 1870 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Moral Life Essays in Honour of John Cottingham written by N. Athanassoulis and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-05-29 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays by leading philosophers on the work of John Cottingham, focussing on his work in moral philosophy, discussing themes from his contributions to the debate on partiality and impartiality, the role of the emotions in the good life and the meaning of the worthwhile life. Including a 'replies' chapter by John Cottingham.
Download or read book Ethics Beyond the Limits written by Sophie Grace Chappell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bernard Williams’ Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy is widely regarded as one of the most important works of moral philosophy in the last fifty years. Williams’s powerful sceptical critique of the "morality system" sent shockwaves through philosophy, the implications of which are still being reckoned with thirty years later. In this outstanding collection of new essays, fourteen internationally-recognised philosophers examine the enduring contribution that Williams’s book continues to make to ethics. After a detailed topical summary of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy by Adrian Moore, the full scope of the work is assessed, including the role of Aristotle and Hume in Williams’ thought and his arguments concerning the history of philosophy; the nature of virtue, the good life, practical reason, and deliberation; and the themes of duty, blame and inauthenticity. Ethics Beyond the Limits is required reading for students and researchers in ethics, metaethics, and moral psychology, and highly recommended for anyone studying the work of Bernard Williams.
Download or read book The Basis of Morality written by Arthur Schopenhauer and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "On the Basis of Morality" (from 1840) is one of Arthur Schopenhauer's significant works in ethics. In this treatise, he argues that morality stems from compassion. He starts his work with criticism of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, which Schopenhauer considered the clearest explanation of Kant's foundation of ethics. He continues with a positive construction of his own ethical theory and concludes the book with a brief description of the metaphysical foundations of ethics.
Download or read book The Philosophical and Theological Foundations of Ethics written by P. Byrne and published by Springer. This book was released on 1992-10-27 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study is an introduction to the problems of moral philosophy designed particularly for students of theology and religious studies. It offers an account of the nature and subject matter of moral reasoning and of the major types of moral theory current in contemporary moral philosophy. The account aims to bring out the major issues in moral theory, to present a clear, non-technical articulation of the structure of moral knowledge and to explore the relation between religious belief and morality.
Download or read book Reason Morality and Law written by John Keown DCL and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-03-21 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Finnis is a pioneer in the development of a new yet classically-grounded theory of natural law. His work offers a systematic philosophy of practical reasoning and moral choosing that addresses the great questions of the rational foundations of ethical judgments, the identification of moral norms, human agency, and the freedom of the will, personal identity, the common good, the role and functions of law, the meaning of justice, and the relationship of morality and politics to religion and the life of faith. The core of Finnis' theory, articulated in his seminal work Natural Law and Natural Rights, has profoundly influenced later work in the philosophy of law and moral and political philosophy, while his contributions to the ethical debates surrounding nuclear deterrence, abortion, euthanasia, sexual morality, and religious freedom have powerfully demonstrated the practical implications of his natural law theory. This volume, which gathers eminent moral, legal, and political philosophers, and theologians to engage with John Finnis' work, offers the first sustained, critical study of Finnis' contribution across the range of disciplines in which rational and morally upright choosing is a central concern. It includes a substantial response from Finnis himself, in which he comments on each of their 27 essays and defends and develops his ideas and arguments.
Download or read book The Scientific Basis of Morals and Other Essays written by William Kingdon Clifford and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2019-12-02 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The scientific basis of morals is a series of essays by William Kingdon Clifford. They cover philosophical areas such as right and wrong, the ethics of belief and the ethics of religion.
Download or read book The Justification of the Good written by Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov and published by Cosimo, Inc.. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this, perhaps his most important work, Solovyov explores notions of God, goodness, and spirituality, and how he saw the modern world was changing them. What does it mean to be "good"? What, if any, virtues are inherent in humanity? How can we reflect goodness in the practical realms of politics and society on the whole? Solovyov's thoughts on some of the most basic questions we have ever asked are provocative and intriguing; they had a profound influence on the writings of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, as well as the thinkers of the Soviet era. Russian philosopher and literary critic VLADIMIR SERGEYEVICH SOLOVYOV (1853-1900) lived at a vital moment in history, in which the burgeoning modernity of the Industrial Revolution was forever changing how humans live and what we believe. Solovyov spent his lifetime seeking truth-he experimented with and then discarded numerous religious philosophies, including atheism. Eventually, Solovyov settled on Christianity as the best path to goodness and rightness in the world.
Download or read book The Theory of Morality written by Alan Donagan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-12-10 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Let us . . . nominate this the most important theoretical work on ethical or moral theory since John Rawls's Theory of Justice. If you have philosophical inclinations and want a good workout, this conscientious scrutiny of moral assumptions and expressions will be most rewarding. Donagan explores ways of acting in the Hebrew-Christian context, examines them in the light of natural law and rational theories, and proposes that formal patterns for conduct can emerge. All this is tightly reasoned, the argument is packed, but the language is clear."—Christian Century "The man value of this book seems to me to be that it shows the force of the Hebrew-Christian moral tradition in the hands of a creative philosopher. Throughout the book, one cannot but feel that a serious philosopher is trying to come to terms with his religious-moral background and to defend it against the prevailing secular utilitarian position which seems to dominate academic philosophy."—Bernard Gert, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy
Download or read book The Ethics of Energy written by Sergio Franzese and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William James's moral philosophy is neither a remaking of utilitarianism nor it is a theory of values as it is assumed by the majority of his interpreters. Instead James offers an ethical view consistently arising out of valorization of energy of his days, and effecting a counter-tendency to the two great popular scientific currents of the 19th century: the universalizing of Darwinism and the pessimistic ideologies of social entropy. James's ethics moves away from the traditional idealistic or utilitarian grounds and takes place against the background of an up-and-coming philosophical anthropology hinged on the primacy of action. Human activity, however, needs to be understood in relation to Energy as the fabric of the universe pervading the whole spectrum of being in a continuum in which humanity and divinty are strictly intertwined.
Download or read book Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion written by Lord Henry Home Kames and published by Burns & Oates. This book was released on 1993 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in England written by William Whewell and published by London : J.W. Parker ; Cambridge : J. Deighton. This book was released on 1852 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Reason and Emotion written by John M. Cooper and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1999-01-03 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together twenty-three distinctive and influential essays on ancient moral philosophy--including several published here for the first time--by the distinguished philosopher and classical scholar John Cooper. The volume gives a systematic account of many of the most important issues and texts in ancient moral psychology and ethical theory, providing a unified and illuminating way of reflecting on the fields as they developed from Socrates and Plato through Aristotle to Epicurus and the Stoic philosophers Chrysippus and Posidonius, and beyond. For the ancient philosophers, Cooper shows here, morality was "good character" and what that entailed: good judgment, sensitivity, openness, reflectiveness, and a secure and correct sense of who one was and how one stood in relation to others and the surrounding world. Ethical theory was about the best way to be rather than any principles for what to do in particular circumstances or in relation to recurrent temptations. Moral psychology was the study of the psychological conditions required for good character--the sorts of desires, the attitudes to self and others, the states of mind and feeling, the kinds of knowledge and insight. Together these papers illustrate brilliantly how, by studying the arguments of the Greek philosophers in their diverse theories about the best human life and its psychological underpinnings, we can expand our own moral understanding and imagination and enrich our own moral thought. The collection will be crucial reading for anyone interested in classical philosophy and what it can contribute to reflection on contemporary questions about ethics and human life.
Download or read book Moral Realities written by Mark Platts and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-10-05 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scepticism about morality is as old as morality itself. Philosophers have attacked the `singular institution' of morality, but have these sceptics correctly identified their target? In this book a descriptive metaphysics of morals is presented, revealing how philosophical critics have consistently misidentified the institution of morality. Mark Platts' influential first book Ways of Meaning argued within the context of the philosophy of language that a `realist' account of moral thought was possible; Moral Realities defends the same possibility from the perspective of the philosophy of psychology. Platts engages the classical moral philosophies of Hume, Mandeville and Nietzsche, and tackles the powerful arguments of the contemporary moral relativists. His critique of the existing philosophical notions of desire and value enables him to clarify both what morality is and what it is not.
Download or read book The Genealogy of Morals written by Friedrich Nietzsche and published by Standard Ebooks. This book was released on 2023-10-09T20:05:09Z with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in German in 1887, The Genealogy of Morals was intended by Nietzsche as a clarification and supplement to his 1882 treatise Beyond Good and Evil. In his last published work, Ecce Homo, Nietzsche described the essays constituting The Genealogy of Morals as “three decisive overtures on the part of a psychologist to a revaluation of all values” and claimed that they were “as regards expression, aspiration, and the art of the unexpected, perhaps the most curious things that have ever been written.” While this self-assessment is probably an overstatement, The Genealogy of Morals is widely acknowledged to be a unique contribution to philosophy in both content and style. The style is intentionally difficult, contrived by turns to embolden, to repel, and to mislead. “In each case,” he wrote, “the beginning is calculated to mystify; it is cool, scientific, even ironical, intentionally thrust to the fore, intentionally reticent. … At the end, in each case, amid fearful thunderclaps, a new truth shines out between thick clouds.” In the first essay, Nietzsche introduces the idea of ressentiment, the source and basis (he contends) of the Christian and Jewish religions and the fundamental psychological mechanism of the associated “slave revolt” in morality, an evaluative inversion performed by the oppressed to compensate for, and to enable themselves to endure, their powerlessness and its attendant frustration. Nietzsche contrasts “noble” values, the central opposition of which is that of “good” and “bad” as applied to human beings themselves, with “slavish” values, the central opposition of which is “good” and “evil” as applied to actions. The vaunting of the latter opposition in Christianity represents, according to Nietzsche, “the great insurrection against the dominion of noble values” common to pagan Rome and ancient Greece. The second essay begins with a discussion of promising and the value of forgetfulness, then traces the origins of guilt and bad conscience to self-directed cruelty, the inward application of a naturally brutal animal instinct that has been prevented from finding outward expression. Nietzsche goes on to supply an analysis of the origin and purpose of punishment in human societies. “Cruelty,” Nietzsche asserts controversially in Ecce Homo, “is here exposed, for the first time, as one of the oldest and most indispensable elements in the foundation of culture.” “Ascetic ideals,” whose “three great pomp words are poverty, humility, and chastity,” are the subject of the third essay, the longest of the work and perhaps its rhetorical high point. Nietzsche here considers the ascetic ideal as instantiated by artists, scholars, and priests, noting differences between the three groups in the ideal’s expression and effects. He asks why ascetic ideals are so powerful, given that they are, as he believes, generally detrimental to human health and well-being, concluding that the ascetic ideal’s power arose from a historical dearth of competing ideals and that “man will wish Nothingness rather than not wish at all.” Contending with the popular perception that a scientific outlook is in principle opposed to religiosity, the latter being the natural home of ascetic ideals, Nietzsche deduces from his analysis of the “will to truth” that the relation of science to ascetic ideals themselves is not at all antagonistic. In fact, “science represents the progressive force in the inner evolution of that ideal”; even further, “valuation of ascetic ideals inevitably entails valuation of science.” Nietzsche also interestingly implicates himself and his own Genealogy in the preservation of ascetic ideals, identifying the bond between such ideals and philosophy itself as very strong. The third essay is notable for having been singled out by Nietzsche as an exercise in exposition of an aphorism. Scholars, notably Christopher Janaway, have disputed whether the aphorism on which the essay is supposedly a commentary is the epigraph from his previous work Thus Spake Zarathustra, or instead the first of the essay’s numbered paragraphs. Nietzsche’s turbulent, haphazardly erudite style has contributed to his mixed reception in philosophy and the broader culture, and to the understanding that he was just as concerned with literary virtuosity as philosophical clarity. Nevertheless, despite the literary complexity of his work, it’s still possible to ask of its content—as Bertrand Russell did in his History of Western Philosophy—“What are we to think of Nietzsche’s doctrines? How far are they true? Are they in any degree useful? Is there in them anything objective, or are they the mere power-fantasies of an invalid?” “There is no escaping Nietzsche,” wrote H. L. Mencken in 1908. “You may hold him a hissing and a mocking and lift your virtuous skirts as you pass him by, but his roar is in your ears and his blasphemies sink into your mind.” Whether its blasphemous sympathies attract or repel us, and whether its analysis ultimately unsettles or only reinforces our initial ethical presuppositions, the Genealogy of Morals remains an essential work in the history of ideas whose moral and political relevance shows little sign of diminishing. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.
Download or read book Moral Philosophy on the Threshold of Modernity written by Jill Kraye and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-03-30 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past twenty years the transition from the late Middle Ages to the early modern era has received increasing attention from experts in the history of philosophy. In part, this new interest arises from claims, made in literature aimed at a less specialist readership, that this transition was responsible for the subsequent philosophical and theological problems of the Enlightenment. Philosophers like Alasdair MacIntyre and theologians like John Milbank display a certain nostalgia for the medieval synthesis of Thomas Aquinas and, consequently, evaluate the period from 1300 to 1700 in rather negative terms. Other historians of philosophy writing for the general public, such as Charles Taylor, take a more positive view of the Reformation but nevertheless conclude that modernity has been shaped by 1 conflicts which stem from early modern times. Ethics and moral thought occupy a central place in these theories. It is assumed that we have lost something – the concept of virtue, for instance, or the source of common morality. Yet those who put forward such notions do not treat the history of ethics in detail. From the historian’s perspective, their far-reaching theoretical assumptions are based on a quite small body of textual evidence. In reality, there was a rich variety of approaches to moral thinking and ethical theories during the period from 1400 to 1600.
Download or read book Moral Reality written by Paul Bloomfield and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001-09-27 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We typically assume that the standard for what is beautiful lies in the eye of the beholder. Yet this is not the case when we consider morality; what we deem morally good is not usually a matter of opinion. Such thoughts push us toward being realists about moral properties, but a cogent theory of moral realism has long been an elusive philosophical goal. Paul Bloomfield here offers a rigorous defense of moral realism, developing an ontology for morality that models the property of being morally good on the property of being physically healthy. The model is assembled systematically; it first presents the metaphysics of healthiness and goodness, then explains our epistemic access to properties such as these, adds a complementary analysis of the semantics and syntax of moral discourse, and finishes with a discussion of how we become motivated to act morally. Bloomfield closely attends to the traditional challenges facing moral realism, and the discussion nimbly ranges from modern medical theory to ancient theories of virtue, and from animal navigation to the nature of normativity. Maintaining a highly readable style throughout, Moral Reality yields one of the most compelling theories of moral realism to date and will appeal to philosophers working on issues in metaphysics or moral philosophy.
