Download or read book The Science of Modern Virtue written by Peter Lawler and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Science of Modern Virtue examines the influence that the philosopher Rene Descartes, the political theorist John Locke, and the biologist Charles Darwin have had on our modern understanding of human beings and human virtue. Written by leading thinkers from a variety of fields, the volume is a study of the complex relation between modern science and modern virtue, between a kind of modern thought and a kind of modern action. Offering more than a series of substantive introductions to Descartes', Locke's, and Darwin's accounts of who we are and the kind of virtue to which we can aspire, the book invites readers to think about the ways in which the writings of these seminal thinkers shaped the democratic and technological world in which modern human beings live. Thirteen scholars in this volume learnedly explore questions drawn from the diverse disciplines of political science, philosophy, theology, biology, and metaphysics. Let the reader be warned: The authors of these essays are anything but consensual in their analysis. Considered together, the chapters in this volume carry on a lively internal debate that mirrors theoretical modernity's ongoing discussion about the true nature of human beings and the science of virtue. Some authors powerfully argue that Locke's and Darwin's thought is amenable to the claims made about human beings and human virtue by classical philosophers such as Aristotle and classical Christian theologians such as Thomas Aquinas. Others make the opposite case, drawing attention to the ways in which Descartes, Locke, and Darwin knowingly and dialectically depart from central teachings of both classical philosophy and classical Christian theology.

Download or read book The Good Life in the Scientific Revolution written by Matthew L. Jones and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amid the unrest, dislocation, and uncertainty of seventeenth-century Europe, readers seeking consolation and assurance turned to philosophical and scientific books that offered ways of conquering fears and training the mind—guidance for living a good life. The Good Life in the Scientific Revolution presents a triptych showing how three key early modern scientists, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, and Gottfried Leibniz, envisioned their new work as useful for cultivating virtue and for pursuing a good life. Their scientific and philosophical innovations stemmed in part from their understanding of mathematics and science as cognitive and spiritual exercises that could create a truer mental and spiritual nobility. In portraying the rich contexts surrounding Descartes’ geometry, Pascal’s arithmetical triangle, and Leibniz’s calculus, Matthew L. Jones argues that this drive for moral therapeutics guided important developments of early modern philosophy and the Scientific Revolution.

Download or read book Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism written by Peter Berkowitz and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2000-11-13 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Virtue has been rediscovered in the United States as a subject of public debate and of philosophical inquiry. Politicians from both parties, leading intellectuals, and concerned citizens from diverse backgrounds are addressing questions about the content of our character. William Bennett's moral guide for children, A Book of Virtues, was a national bestseller. Yet many continue to associate virtue with a prudish, Victorian morality or with crude attempts by government to legislate morals. Peter Berkowitz clarifies the fundamental issues, arguing that a certain ambivalence toward virtue reflects the liberal spirit at its best. Drawing on recent scholarship as well as classical political philosophy, he makes his case with penetrating analyses of four central figures in the making of modern liberalism: Hobbes, Locke, Kant, and Mill. These thinkers are usually understood to have neglected or disparaged virtue. Yet Berkowitz shows that they all believed that government resting on the fundamental premise of liberalism--the natural freedom and equality of all human beings--could not work unless citizens and officeholders possess particular qualities of mind and character. These virtues, which include reflective judgment, sympathetic imagination, self-restraint, the ability to cooperate, and toleration do not arise spontaneously but must be cultivated. Berkowitz explores the various strategies the thinkers employ as they seek to give virtue its due while respecting individual liberty. Liberals, he argues, must combine energy and forbearance, finding public and private ways to support such nongovernmental institutions as the family and voluntary associations. For these institutions, the liberal tradition powerfully suggests, play an indispensable role not only in forming the virtues on which liberal democracy depends but in overcoming the vices that it tends to engender. Clearly written and vigorously argued, this is a provocative work of political theory that speaks directly to complex issues at the heart of contemporary philosophy and public discussion. New Forum Books makes available to general readers outstanding, original, interdisciplinary scholarship with a special focus on the juncture of culture, law, and politics. New Forum Books is guided by the conviction that law and politics not only reflect culture, but help to shape it. Authors include leading political scientists, sociologists, legal scholars, philosophers, theologians, historians, and economists writing for nonspecialist readers and scholars across a range of fields. Looking at questions such as political equality, the concept of rights, the problem of virtue in liberal politics, crime and punishment, population, poverty, economic development, and the international legal and political order, New Forum Books seeks to explain--not explain away--the difficult issues we face today.

Download or read book After Virtue written by Alasdair MacIntyre and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-10-21 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Highly controversial when it was first published in 1981, Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue has since established itself as a landmark work in contemporary moral philosophy. In this book, MacIntyre sought to address a crisis in moral language that he traced back to a European Enlightenment that had made the formulation of moral principles increasingly difficult. In the search for a way out of this impasse, MacIntyre returns to an earlier strand of ethical thinking, that of Aristotle, who emphasised the importance of 'virtue' to the ethical life. More than thirty years after its original publication, After Virtue remains a work that is impossible to ignore for anyone interested in our understanding of ethics and morality today.

Download or read book Thomas Hobbes and the Science of Moral Virtue written by David Boonin-Vail and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1994-09-30 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Leviathan Thomas Hobbes defines moral philosophy as 'the science of Virtue and Vice', yet few modern readers take this description seriously. Moreover, it is typically assumed that Hobbes' ethical views are unrelated to his views of science. Influential modern interpreters have portrayed Hobbes as either an amoralist, or a moral contractarian, or a rule egoist, or a divine command theorist. David Boonin-Vail challenges all these assumptions and presents a new, and very unorthodox, interpretation of Hobbes's ethics. He shows that Hobbes is best understood as embracing a theory of virtue concerned with the development of good character traits rather than with rules of behaviour. In focusing in a quite new way on Hobbes's moral theory this book is likely to attract considerable attention amongst both philosophers and intellectual historians.

Download or read book Current Controversies in Virtue Theory written by Mark Alfano and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-02-11 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Virtue is among the most venerable concepts in philosophy, and has recently seen a major revival. However, new challenges to conceptions of virtue have also arisen. In Current Controversies in Virtue Theory, five pairs of cutting-edge philosophers square off over central topics in virtue theory: the nature of virtue, the connection between virtue and flourishing, the connection between moral and epistemic virtues, the way in which virtues are acquired, and the possibility of attaining virtue. Mark Alfano guides his readers through these essays (all published here for the first time), with a synthetic introduction, succinct abstracts of each debate, suggested further readings and study questions for each controversy, and a list of further controversies to be explored.

Download or read book The Practice of Virtue written by Jennifer Welchman and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology can be used to cover the virtue ethics component of an ethics course, either in conjunction with one of the larger ethics texts -- many include no material on virtue theory, or very little -- or with free standing editions; as the centrepiece of a course devoted entirely to virtue theory; or as a component of an introductory course that includes a section on ethics. Part 1 includes readings from five classic thinkers with importantly distinct approaches to virtue. Part 2 provides five new essays from contemporary thinkers that apply virtue theories to the resolution of practical moral problems. Jennifer Welchman provides a general Introduction on the history of virtue theory, a short introduction to each selection that highlights the distinctive aspects of the author's view, and suggested further readings for each selection.

Download or read book The Scientific Life written by Steven Shapin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-08-01 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who are scientists? What kind of people are they? What capacities and virtues are thought to stand behind their considerable authority? They are experts—indeed, highly respected experts—authorized to describe and interpret the natural world and widely trusted to help transform knowledge into power and profit. But are they morally different from other people? The Scientific Life is historian Steven Shapin’s story about who scientists are, who we think they are, and why our sensibilities about such things matter. Conventional wisdom has long held that scientists are neither better nor worse than anyone else, that personal virtue does not necessarily accompany technical expertise, and that scientific practice is profoundly impersonal. Shapin, however, here shows how the uncertainties attending scientific research make the virtues of individual researchers intrinsic to scientific work. From the early twentieth-century origins of corporate research laboratories to the high-flying scientific entrepreneurship of the present, Shapin argues that the radical uncertainties of much contemporary science have made personal virtues more central to its practice than ever before, and he also reveals how radically novel aspects of late modern science have unexpectedly deep historical roots. His elegantly conceived history of the scientific career and character ultimately encourages us to reconsider the very nature of the technical and moral worlds in which we now live. Building on the insights of Shapin’s last three influential books, featuring an utterly fascinating cast of characters, and brimming with bold and original claims, The Scientific Life is essential reading for anyone wanting to reflect on late modern American culture and how it has been shaped.

Download or read book Faces of Moderation written by Aurelian Craiutu and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2017-01-12 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the writings of twentieth-century thinkers such as Raymond Aron, Isaiah Berlin, Norberto Bobbio, Michael Oakeshott, and Adam Michnik, Faces of Moderation argues that moderation remains crucial for today's encounters with new forms of extremism.

Download or read book Prudence written by Robert Hariman and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together scholars in classics, political philosophy, and rhetoric to analyze prudence as a distinctive and vital form of political intelligence. Through case studies from each of the major periods in the history of prudence, the authors identify neglected resources for political judgement in today's conditions of pluralism and interdependency. Three assumptions inform these essays: the many dimensions of prudence cannot be adequately represented in the lexicon of any single discipline; the Aristotelian focus on prudence as rational calculation needs to be balanced by the Ciceronian emphasis on prudence as discursive performance embedded in familiar social practices; and understanding prudence requires attention to how it operates thorough the communicative media and public discourses that constitute the political community.

Download or read book Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue written by Ryan Patrick Hanley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-22 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book revisits the moral and political philosophy of Adam Smith to recover his understanding of morality in a market age.

Download or read book The Virtue of Aristotle s Ethics written by Paula Gottlieb and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-27 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text looks at Aristotle's claims, particularly the much-maligned doctrine of the mean.

Download or read book A Virtue for Courageous Minds written by Aurelian Craiutu and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political moderation is the touchstone of democracy, which could not function without compromise and bargaining, yet it is one of the most understudied concepts in political theory. How can we explain this striking paradox? Why do we often underestimate the virtue of moderation? Seeking to answer these questions, A Virtue for Courageous Minds examines moderation in modern French political thought and sheds light on the French Revolution and its legacy. Aurelian Craiutu begins with classical thinkers who extolled the virtues of a moderate approach to politics, such as Aristotle and Cicero. He then shows how Montesquieu inaugurated the modern rebirth of this tradition by laying the intellectual foundations for moderate government. Craiutu looks at important figures such as Jacques Necker, Madame de Staël, and Benjamin Constant, not only in the context of revolutionary France but throughout Europe. He traces how moderation evolves from an individual moral virtue into a set of institutional arrangements calculated to protect individual liberty, and he explores the deep affinity between political moderation and constitutional complexity. Craiutu demonstrates how moderation navigates between political extremes, and he challenges the common notion that moderation is an essentially conservative virtue, stressing instead its eclectic nature. Drawing on a broad range of writings in political theory, the history of political thought, philosophy, and law, A Virtue for Courageous Minds reveals how the virtue of political moderation can address the profound complexities of the world today.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Virtue written by Nancy E. Snow and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 905 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have seen a renaissance in the study of virtue -- a topic that has prevailed in philosophical work since the time of Aristotle. Several major developments have conspired to mark this new age. Foremost among them, some argue, is the birth of virtue ethics, an approach to ethics that focuses on virtue in place of consequentialism (the view that normative properties depend only on consequences) or deontology (the study of what we have a moral duty to do). The emergence of new virtue theories also marks this new wave of work on virtue. Put simply, these are theories about what virtue is, and they include Kantian and utilitarian virtue theories. Concurrently, virtue ethics is being applied to other fields where it hasn't been used before, including bioethics and education. In addition to these developments, the study of virtue in epistemological theories has become increasingly widespread to the point that it has spawned a subfield known as 'virtue epistemology.' This volume therefore provides a representative overview of philosophical work on virtue. It is divided into seven parts: conceptualizations of virtue, historical and religious accounts, contemporary virtue ethics and theories of virtue, central concepts and issues, critical examinations, applied virtue ethics, and virtue epistemology. Forty-two chapters by distinguished scholars offer insights and directions for further research. In addition to philosophy, authors also deal with virtues in non-western philosophical traditions, religion, and psychological perspectives on virtue.

Download or read book Nicomachean Ethics written by Aristotle and published by SDE Classics. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy written by Paul Guyer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-01-30 with total page 760 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The philosophy of Immanuel Kant is the watershed of modern thought, which irrevocably changed the landscape of the field and prepared the way for all the significant philosophical movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This 2006 volume, which complements The Cambridge Companion to Kant, covers every aspect of Kant's philosophy, with a particular focus on his moral and political philosophy. It also provides detailed coverage of Kant's historical context and of the enormous impact and influence that his work has had on the subsequent history of philosophy. The bibliography also offers extensive and organized coverage of both classical and recent books on Kant. This volume thus provides the broadest and deepest introduction currently available on Kant and his place in modern philosophy, making accessible the philosophical enterprise of Kant to those coming to his work for the first time.

Download or read book The Territories of Science and Religion written by Peter Harrison and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-04-06 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Harrison takes what we think we know about science and religion, dismantles it, and puts it back together again in a provocative new way. It is a mistake to assume, as most do, that the activities and achievements that are usually labeled religious and scientific have been more or less enduring features of the cultural landscape of the West. Harrison, by setting out the history of science and religion to see when and where they come into being and to trace their mutations over timereveals how distinctively Western and modern they are. Only in the past few hundred years have religious beliefs and practices been bounded by a common notion and set apart from the secular. And the idea of the natural sciences as discrete activities conducted in isolation from religious and moral concerns is even more recent, dating from the nineteenth century. Putting the so-called opposition between religion and science into historical perspective, as Harrison does here for the first time, has profound implications for our understanding of the present and future relations between them. "