In A Logic in Madness, Aaron J. Hauptman presents the case of Mr. A, a college-age man suffering from the unexpected and cruel severance of a romantic relationship. This breakup caused Mr. A to become severely depressed, harboring a desire to starve himself. However, Mr. A adamantly refused any sort of pharmacotherapy for his condition. Being someone who has “a doggedness with rationality” and who cares deeply about being logical, he offered several arguments and reasons for his refusal. One of (...) these was: “I am depressed for a very good reason and if, because of that, I have these feelings then it is right for me to have these feelings”. He further regarded drug therapy as “dishonest,”... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Good Conceived as an End The Good as a Convergent End The Meaning of “Eudaimonia” Happiness vs. the Happy Life The Finality Criterion The Self‐sufficiency Criterion Inclusivism The Shape of the Happy Life Concluding Remarks Notes Bibliography.

What is the best human life? is a question for the Aristotelian statesman and for those whom upbringing has endowed with good starting points. The analysis of Aristotle's answer takes us to the idea of happiness, to the problem of its relation to other goods, and to its definition in terms of the human function.

This chapter contains section titled: The Good Life: Booze, Pills, Hot and Cold Running Interns? “Be the Best Machines (and Humans) the Universe Has Ever Seen” “Be Ready to Fight or You Dishonor the Reason Why We're Here” “Each of Us Plays a Role. Each Time a Different Role” Notes.

Happiness is a large idea. It looms enticingly before us when we are young, delivers verdicts on our lives when we are old, and seems to inform a responsible engagement with children. The question is raised: do we want this idea? I explore a distinction between rich and poor conceptions of happiness, suggesting that many sceptical arguments are directed against the latter. If happiness is to receive its teleological due, recognised in rather the way Aristotle saw it, as a final (...) end that crucially lacks specificity, it must be richly conceived without denying the significance of unhappiness or despair. I suggest that Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is ‘completed’ in a distinctively Aristotelian sense by authors like George Eliot and Virginia Woolf. Substantial excerpts are discussed to show how ideas like ‘making others happy’ may be richly conceived. By treating literary examples (poetically articulated, sensually received) as ineliminable reference points in our thinking, we open up a new way of imagining relationships in education. We attend communally, conversationally and often argumentatively to the dramas of human life. This, I argue, is how we grapple with large ideas and bring about ethical learning. (shrink)

There is a familiar problem in moral theories that recognize positive obligations to help others related to the practical room these obligations leave for ordinary life, and the risk that open-ended obligations to help others will consume our lives and resources. Responding to this problem, Kantians have tended to emphasize the idea of limits on positive obligations but are typically unsatisfactorily vague about the nature and extent of these limits. I argue here that aspects of Kant’s discussion of duties of (...) virtue owed to ourselves suggest a useful metric we can use in discussing these limits and that generalizing this account and combining it with elements of Barbara Herman’s view, offers us an attractive model of moral deliberation with the resources we need to engage the critic’s challenge properly. (shrink)

In the eighteenth century, Rousseau argued that the principal source of human unhappiness was our tendency to make invidious comparisons when humans were forced to cooperate in the pre-social state of nature. This increased proximity fuelled a desire for status and relative position which is the main source of the unhappiness in modern civilisation. I argue, first, that there is now substantial evidence supporting Rousseau's view that status matters much more to individuals than do absolute levels of wealth. However, I (...) also argue that there is mounting evidence that Rousseau failed to appreciate the extent to which our desire for status is natural. According to some evolutionary biologists, human beings evolved in an environment of scarcity and resource competition, where each individual's position was closely linked to his or her prospects for survival and reproductive success. Consequently, we are adapted by evolution to compete for status and relative position, which leads to a situation in which most people end up less happy. (shrink)

What is the relation between virtue and wellbeing? Our claim is that, under certain conditions, virtue necessarily tends to have a positive impact on an individual’s wellbeing. This is so because of the connection between virtue and psychological happiness, on the one hand, and between psychological happiness and wellbeing, on the other hand. In particular we defend three claims: that virtue is constituted by a disposition to experience fitting emotions, that fitting emotions are constituents of fitting happiness, and that fitting (...) happiness is a constituent of wellbeing. What follows is that, under certain conditions, virtue disposes the individual to experience wellbeing-constituting states. We end with a discussion of two objections that may be raised against our proposal. (shrink)

Gabriel Richardson Lear presents a bold new approach to one of the enduring debates about Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: the controversy about whether it coherently argues that the best life for humans is one devoted to a single activity, namely philosophical contemplation. Many scholars oppose this reading because the bulk of the Ethics is devoted to various moral virtues--courage and generosity, for example--that are not in any obvious way either manifestations of philosophical contemplation or subordinated to it. They argue that Aristotle (...) was inconsistent, and that we should not try to read the entire Ethics as an attempt to flesh out the notion that the best life aims at the "monistic good" of contemplation. In defending the unity and coherence of the Ethics, Lear argues that, in Aristotle's view, we may act for the sake of an end not just by instrumentally bringing it about but also by approximating it. She then argues that, for Aristotle, the excellent rational activity of moral virtue is an approximation of theoretical contemplation. Thus, the happiest person chooses moral virtue as an approximation of contemplation in practical life. Richardson Lear bolsters this interpretation by examining three moral virtues--courage, temperance, and greatness of soul--and the way they are fine. Elegantly written and rigorously argued, this is a major contribution to our understanding of a central issue in Aristotle's moral philosophy. (shrink)

This is a study about the meaning of happiness (εὐδαιμονία) in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (EN). It is argued that εὐδαιμονία in EN means actuality, and it has to be interpreted through the lenses of two metaphors used by Aristotle in EN 1.7 1098a21 and 10.6 1176a30: the “perimeter of good” and the “imprint of happiness.” To explain the meaning of happiness Aristotle first has to delineate the “perimeter of good” of human beings, and he does that with the help of (...) two criteria: the final end [τέλος] and the function of humanity [ἔργον ἀνθρώπου]. These two criteria are metaphysical concepts which describe the “good” as the final metaphysical aim of every person, and the best every person can be. This metaphysical teleological aim is the “actuality of the soul” according with excellence. This is the “perimeter” within which Aristotle enquires about εὐδαιμονία—the good of humans. (shrink)

In this paper, I will develop a new theory of the nature of happiness, or “perfect happiness.” I will examine what perfect happiness is and what it is not and I will try to answer some fundamental questions about this property. According to the theory, which I shall call “the fulfillment theory,” perfect happiness is perfect fulfillment. The analysis of happiness in this paper is a development of the old idea that happiness is getting what you want and can be (...) classified as a kind of desire-satisfaction theory. According to the fulfillment theory of happiness, it is necessarily the case that an individual x is perfectly happy if and only if all x’s wants are fulfilled. The interpretation of this basic definition is important, since the consequences of the particular version defended in this essay are radically different from the consequences of many other popular theories of happiness. The fulfillment theory is also quite different from most other desire-satisfaction theories of happiness. We will see that it has many interesting consequences and that it can be defended against some potentially serious counterarguments. The upshot is that the analysis of (perfect) happiness developed in the present paper is quite attractive. (shrink)

There are long-standing doubts about whether data from subjective scales—for instance, self-reports of happiness—are cardinally comparable. It is unclear how to assess whether these doubts are justified without first addressing two unresolved theoretical questions: how do people interpret subjective scales? Which assumptions are required for cardinal comparability? This paper offers answers to both. It proposes an explanation for scale interpretation derived from philosophy of language and game theory. In short: conversation is a cooperative endeavour governed by various maxims (Grice 1989); (...) because subjective scales are vague and individuals want to make themselves understood, scale interpretation is a search for a focal point (Schelling 1960). A specific focal point it hypothesised; if this hypothesis is correct, subjective data will be cardinally comparable. Four individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for cardinal comparability are specified. The paper then argues this hypothesis can be empirically be tested, makes an initial attempt to do so using subjective well-being data, and concludes it is supported. Numerous areas for further research are identified including, at the end of the paper, how certain tests could be used to ‘correct’ subjective data if they are not cardinal. (shrink)

Many researchers studying subjective wellbeing (SWB) understand SWB as a concept that is close to Bentham’s notion of happiness. This conception of happiness is philosophically controversial, because it treats pleasure as a homogenous experience. I analyze an important deviation from Bentham in John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism and its relevance for SWB research: qualitative differences in pleasurable experiences. I argue that in cases where lives involving qualitatively different experiences are compared, Mill’s qualitative perspective is incompatible with an important assumption in the (...) SWB literature: that happiness can be meaningfully rated by people on a scale. I illustrate the problem by means of the question of whether becoming a parent makes people happier. I analyze whether the problem can be avoided on alternative views of happiness, but argue that on all plausible accounts of happiness, the problem persists. I conclude that the problem it poses for self-reported happiness is genuine and should be acknowledged by SWB researchers. I end by discussing the ways in which this conclusion can help the study of happiness move forward. (shrink)

Emerging research on the subject of happiness-in psychology, economics, and public policy-reawakens and breathes new life into long-standing philosophical questions about happiness. By analyzing this research from a philosophical perspective, Lorraine L. Besser is able to weave together the contributions of other disciplines, and the result is a robust, deeply contoured understanding of happiness made accessible for nonspecialists. This book is the first to thoroughly investigate the fundamental theoretical issues at play in all the major contemporary debates about happiness, and (...) it stands out especially in its critical analysis of empirical research. The book's coverage of the material is comprehensive without being overwhelming. Its structure and pedagogical features will benefit students or anyone studying happiness for the first time: Each chapter opens with an initial overview and ends with a summary and list of suggested readings. (shrink)

Ancient moral philosophers, especially Aristotle and his followers, typically shared the assumption that ethics is primarily concerned with how to achieve the final end for human beings, a life of “happiness” or “human flourishing.” This final end was not a subjective condition, such as contentment or the satisfaction of our preferences, but a life that could be objectively determined to be appropriate to our nature as human beings. Character traits were treated as moral virtues because they contributed well toward this (...) ideal life, either as means to it or as constitutive aspects of it. Traits that tended to prevent a “happy” life were considered vices, even if they contributed to a life that was pleasant and what a person most wanted. The idea of “happiness” was central, then, in philosophical efforts to specify what we ought to do, what sort of persons we should try to become, and what sort of life a wise person would hope for. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Happiness in Premodern Judaism: Virtue, Knowledge, and Well-BeingDaniel H. FrankHava Tirosh-Samuelson. Happiness in Premodern Judaism: Virtue, Knowledge, and Well-Being. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 596. Cloth, $50.00.Franz Rosenzweig tried hard to convince the neoKantian Hermann Cohen of the merits of Zionism and the normalization it would bring to Jews and Jewish life. His attempt met with this response from Cohen: "Oho! So the gang (...) now wants to be happy, does it?" For those ignorant of the history of Jewish philosophy, one might imagine that Jewish philosophers, no less than their non-philosophical kinsmen, were so weighed down by the burdens of history and persecution that happiness could play no role in their theorizing. But happiness plays a key role in the history of Jewish moral and political philosophy, especially in the premodern period. Even Spinoza, the last of the medievals and the first of the moderns, the great critic of the rabbinic tradition and of Maimonides in particular, is concerned in his Ethics with identifying those activities that together constitute human well-being and the good life. Only lately, since the Enlightenment and Kant, has non-eudaimonism been a live option for Jewish thinkers. Only with the rise of (modern) Orthodoxy, and its predilection for construing goodness as rectitude and rule-following, has eudaimonism fallen out of favor. But with Tirosh-Samuelson's weighty volume on happiness in premodern Judaism, there can be no excuse in the future to imagine that all Jews are, or must be, closet Kantians, strict deontologists. To think otherwise seems to come close to taking on the classical (anti-Semitic) dichotomy of legalistic Judaism vs. spiritual Christianity. In it own way, Happiness in Premodern Judaism is a critique of such a one-sided, monochromatic view of Judaism, whether from the Christian or even from the Jewish side.Tirosh-Samuelson writes explicitly as an intellectual historian, rather than as a philosopher. She understands herself and her project as one that presents just the facts, without evaluating them. While one may cavil at a lost opportunity, in the present case this would be churlish, given the enormous erudition on display. After an introductory chapter outlining the foundational moral theories of Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic philosophers, the text presents the (Greek-inspired) areteic wisdom literature of the Second Temple period, the teleological theocentrism of the rabbis, the Greco-Arabic Islamicate culture that nurtured Jewish philosophers from Saadia in the tenth century to Maimonides in the twelfth, the rabbinic and kabbalistic critiques of the philosophical ideal of happiness commencing [End Page 338] with the translation (into Hebrew) of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and finally, very important and the focus of much recent scholarly work, the transformation of Jewish eudaimonism through direct contact with Christian Scholasticism and later with the humanist Renaissance. All in all, a millennium and a half of Jewish intellectual history is presented in a sober and scholarly way.Not surprisingly Maimonides plays a pivotal role in the story that Tirosh-Samuelson relates. A Janus-like figure, he represents the culmination and height of accommodation with Greek and Greco-Arabic philosophical culture. However, with the gradual worsening of the socio-economic condition of European Jewry in the thirteenth century, his accommodationism seemed traitorous, and as a result generations of thinkers, mystics and philosophers alike, strove to critically distance themselves from Maimonidean Aristotelianism. Tirosh-Samuelson is admirably clear in pointing out that such anti-Maimonidean tendencies are ill-characterized as anti-philosophical. Hasdai Crescas in the late-fourteenth and early-fifteenth centuries launched a massive critique of Maimonides' physics, metaphysics, and moral philosophy, but did so in as rigorous a manner as any philosopher would. The picture that enfolds over the course of the text is one of vigorous dialectic between partisans of 'alien' (Greek) wisdom and those who viewed such wisdom with considerable suspicion. Such a dialectic parallels, not surprisingly, developments in Christian philosophy.The trajectory of the story of premodern Jewish musings on happiness is from the centrality of reason and intellect, and the contemplative activity that is reason's preeminent actuality, to the primacy... (shrink)

Foot considers the view that practical rationality is nothing but the pursuit of happiness, which constitutes an objection to the account of practical rationality developed in the preceding chapters. Foot considers the different ways happiness is predicated of human beings, distinguishing happiness as humanity's good from enjoyment and contentment. She argues that the common view that happiness is a state of mind, detachable from beliefs about special objects, is in error because happiness does not have the same logical grammar as (...) words like excitement or pleasure. Foot concludes that happiness is a protean concept, appearing in many different forms; however, happiness may be thought of as humanity's good in such a way that combining happiness with wickedness is ruled out a priori. This understanding of happiness as humanity's good is close to Aristotle's eudaimonia, insofar as it means operation in conformity with the virtues; as Foot understands the term, happiness is the enjoyment of good things, meaning the pursuit and attainment of right ends. (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)

Aristotle describes human happiness as a life of virtuous activity in Book One of the Nicomachean Ethics but as a life of contemplative activity and a life of ethically virtuous activity in Book Ten. In which kind of life does Aristotle ultimately believe that happiness consists? The answer lies in the role of philosophical wisdom within ethically virtuous activity. I argue that philosophical wisdom has a dual role: its exercise is the end of ethically virtuous activity and the virtue by (...) which that end is rationally apprehended. Just as ethically virtuous activity depends on the exercise of philosophical wisdom in this dual way, so human happiness can be understood as a single life of virtuous activity whose end is the exercise of philosophical wisdom in contemplative activity. The exercise of philosophical wisdom will include ethically virtuous activity as an end that includes what is desired for its sake. (shrink)

John Wesley did not directly address the question, but he could have answered "Yes'" to "Was Jesus Ever Happy?" given his understanding of "happiness." His eudaimonistic understanding of happiness was that it consists in renewing and actualizing the image of God within us, especially the image of love. More particularly, it consists in actually living a life of moral virtue, love included, of spiritual fulfillment, of joy or pleasure taken in loving God, others, and self, and in minimizing unnecessary (...) pain and suffering, which we are morally obligated to do for others and even for ourselves. Jesus had it all most of the time, though not always, obviously not at the painful end of his life when he felt God-forsaken. -/- . (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 33.2 (2005) 42-70 [Access article in PDF] "O Happy Living Things" Frankenfoods and the Bounds of Wordsworthian Natural Piety Anne-Lise François With all the flowers Fancy e'er could feignWho breeding flowers will never breed the same. —John Keats, "Ode to Psyche" And I could wish my days to beBound each to each in natural piety. —William Wordsworth, "My heart leaps up" O happy living things! no (...) tongue Their beauty might declare:A spring of love gusht from my heart, And I bless'd them unaware!Sure my kind saint took pity on me, And I bless'd them unaware. —Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" "O happy living things!"—vitamin-enriched grains; potatoes equipped to kill their predators; silk-producing goats; fast-growing salmon that hardly require feeding. Is it possible to predicate the breathless exclamation that escapes Coleridge's mariner, unaware not of water snakes but of the fantastic array of genetically modified creatures—animals and plants—currently under design or production by biotech industries? Already in May 2000 a New York Times article was announcing the imminent arrival of "fast-growing trout and catfish, oysters that can withstand viruses, and an 'Enviropig,' whose feces are less harmful to the environment because they contain less phosphorus." An article inset describes the emergent production of "pharm-animals":These domesticated beasts—cows, pigs, goats, sheep, and chickens—have been given the ability to produce pharmaceuticals and other valuable substances in their milk, eggs or semen. Endowed by scientists with foreign genes, often taken from humans, these animals, or bioreactors, as they are also known, earn their keep as living chemical factories. Two companies, the Genzyme Corporation of Cambridge, Mass., and PPL Therapeutics, a Scottish company, already have products from pharm animals being tested in clinical trials supervised by the Food and Drug Administration. Many other animals are [End Page 42] still in the development stage. For example, Nexia Biotechnologies in Canada is working on a goat that carries a gene from spiders allowing it to produce spider silk in its milk. When the spider silk, which consists of extremely strong, light proteins, is extracted from the goat's milk, the substance, potentially, can be used in applications like bulletproof vests. [Yoon] This last sentence is intriguing. The genetic revolution often bills itself as a second green revolution that will prevent starvation and alleviate disease, promising to feed the world's growing population in terms that tend to essentialize poverty and hunger as inevitable symptoms of a human condition, rather than understand them through the lens of specific colonial and postcolonial histories. But bulletproof vests? The indignant leftist response here would be to deride the collusion between biotechnology and the military-industrial complex—bulletproof vests leaving little doubt as to whose desires count as universal, timeless needs. Yet such a response is perhaps too quick to attribute reason to these genetic experiments in cross-species breeding, and too quick to accept the terms in which biotechnicians present themselves—as the instruments of reason, whether of global capitalism or universal human progress. Part of what this essay wishes to suggest is that to dream up such things and to think of wanting to do them—make a goat produce spider silk in its milk—involve particular fantasies, fantasies not simply about recreating the world in one's image, but about learning to desire the world again, to be excited by it or "surprised" by its existence, to borrow a phrase from Stanley Cavell. The journalist's parenthetical "potentially" indicates that no use has yet been determined, no burning need fuels such experiments, and hints at the boredom behind them—what William Wordsworth might have called the "state of almost savage torpor" in which desire itself has to be invented.As the New York Times writer's double metaphor of animal as laborer- and factory-in-one suggests—"these animals, or bioreactors, as they are also known, earn their keep as living chemical factories"—the binaries animal-human, machine-animal... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 151-154 [Access article in PDF] Book Review The Happiness Project: Transforming the Three Poisons that Cause the Suffering We Inflict on Ourselves and Others The Happiness Project: Transforming the Three Poisons that Cause the Suffering We Inflict on Ourselves and Others. By Ron Leifer, M.D. Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion, 1997.313 pp. This book focuses mostly on Buddhism and psychotherapy, but it ranges widely and (...) includes many reflections on Christianity. Today there are many good books that compare Buddhism with Western psychology, but this one is not to be missed by anyone interested in the topic. Leifer (a former colleague and friend of Ernest Becker, who wrote TheDenial ofDeath) is obviously a very experienced psychiatrist, with deep knowledge of psychoanalytic theory to supplement his many years of practice [End Page 151] as a therapist. This book is many things: a primer on demythologized Buddhism; a superior "self-help" book; a history of psychotherapy, including a critique of its modern medicalization; a speculative account of the evolution of human consciousness; and, not least, the most insightful interpretations of the Job, Oedipus, and Eden myths that I have encountered. The prose style is lucid, and only space limitations keep me from quoting it at length.The title turns out to be ironic, since our Happiness Projects are the main source of our unhappiness. Our selfish strivings for happiness are, paradoxically, the main cause of the suffering we inflict on ourselves and others.What we "fail to see" (avidya)is not some great mysterious wisdom. "The core of the esoteric knowledge we seek consists of secrets we hide from ourselves. We hide from them because they are not what we want them to be. The world is not what we want it to be. Life is not what we want it to be. Others are not what we want them to be. We are not ourselves what we want to be. We hide from these truths because they mystify and terrify us" (12). The basic "secret" of happiness is that the three poisons--greed, ill will, and ignorance--are the source of our pain and suffering, by creating rebounding karmic ripples. The ego is a trickster who is continually the victim of his own trickery. True happiness can only be the product of an inner transformation that changes our habitual patterns of thought and action, enabling us to "relax into existence." Leifer's psychologized Buddhism is a therapeutic path cleansed of the mystical and paranormal; there is no place here for psychic powers or any transcendental salvation (nirvana is not discussed). The focus throughout is on how we are bedeviled by our own desires.The book is organized into four main parts. The first offers Leifer's understanding of the first two Buddhist truths. The second part, "Western Views of Suffering," includes profound interpretations of Job and Oedipus Rex. Job's suffering illustrates the first truth, that life is suffering, and his patience is virtuous, even heroic, in its refusal to demand that life be different than it is--an endurance that allows him to avoid making life worse: "Patience is the willingness to suffer without aggression" (131).The key to the Oedipus story is in his answer to the Sphinx's riddle: humans are the creatures who walk on four legs as infants, on two legs as mature adults, and then on three legs (with a cane) in old age. The riddle is a metaphor for the truths of our impermanence, old age and death. But Oedipus cannot accept it. "From a Buddhist point of view, the story of Oedipus is a metaphor for neurotic mind. Oedipus was the victim of his own grasping ego--of his desires and aggressions. His fate was sealed by his own efforts to escape it. The source of Oedipus' pain and tragedy were his own ignorance, passion, and aggression: the three poisons" (135). His desire for Mom is better understood as a symbol of human desire generally: our refusal to grow up... (shrink)

This paper is a study of the role of happiness in Kant’s theory. I begin by noting two recurrent characterizations of happiness by Kant, and discuss their relationship. Then I take up the general issue of the relation of happiness to moral virtue. I show that, for Kant, the antagonists are not morality and happiness, but the moral point of view and “self-conceit”, the inveterate tendency to elevate the concern for contentment or satisfaction of inclination to the status of a (...) supreme principle. Indeed, I try to show that there are deep positive connections between happiness and moral virtue because of the distinctive content of the moral life and of the indeterminacy of happiness. The capacity to unite one’s ends into a “system” in accordance with reason requires the moral point of view. Not only is morality not imprudent, but by itself prudence alone gives no definite principle of organization.The second issue I investigate is Kant’s theory of the non-moral or cond itional good. Since the Highest (complete) Good for Kant consists of perfect virtue and happiness, it follows that all non-moral goods have value only because they are components or conditions of happiness. This is a strong and dubious position. Given Kant’s account(s) of happiness, it entails that nothing that fails to affect contentment or the satisfaction of inclination has non-moral value. This denies the possibility of non-moral ideas of excel ence that could compete with both morality and happiness for human allegiance. Consequently, although Kant is often thought to give too little importance to happiness in human life, arguably he accords it too much value. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers who are concerned with the following three philosophical issues can learn much from Scotus: (1) the defense of agent-causal accounts of the will; (2) the search for common ground between ancient and Kantian ethics: and (3) the co-existence of free will and the capacity for sin in heaven.1) Free Will and Agent Causation: According to Scotus, the will moves itself to act, but does not cause itself. Human actions are done for reasons determinedby the agent; they are not (...) reducible to events (which are themselves necessitated by prior events).2) Reconciling Ancient and Kantian Ethics: Like Kant, Scotus thinks that creatures cannot be morally responsible for their actions if happiness is their solemotivation for choosing whatever they choose; Scotus distinguishes between motivations and ends, although less sharply than Kant does. For Scotus, thedesire for happiness includes the desire for self-perfection; thus happiness for Scotus is never reducible to hedonism, nor is happiness our sole motivation.Our freedom lies in the will’s ability to love good things according to the value they have in themselves, not according to the value that they have for us.3) Is Heaven a Problem? A familiar explanation of the problem of evil is that evil is permitted because free will is required for moral goodness; without free willthere would be no moral evil, but neither would there be any moral goodness, so the world is better than it would be if God had chosen not to create freecreatures. But if free will is such a great good, then we must retain the capacity to sin in heaven, or else heavenly existence is inferior to earthly existence.And, if we do retain the capacity to sin in heaven, then heaven is not essentially devoid of evil. Scotus would respond to this problem by stating that love, notfreedom, is the greatest good. Thus, his account of heaven is consistent with what it means to love God above all, for his own sake, and without the motivationof happiness or any other benefit. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers who are concerned with the following three philosophical issues can learn much from Scotus: (1) the defense of agent-causal accounts of the will; (2) the search for common ground between ancient and Kantian ethics: and (3) the co-existence of free will and the capacity for sin in heaven.1) Free Will and Agent Causation: According to Scotus, the will moves itself to act, but does not cause itself. Human actions are done for reasons determinedby the agent; they are not (...) reducible to events (which are themselves necessitated by prior events).2) Reconciling Ancient and Kantian Ethics: Like Kant, Scotus thinks that creatures cannot be morally responsible for their actions if happiness is their solemotivation for choosing whatever they choose; Scotus distinguishes between motivations and ends, although less sharply than Kant does. For Scotus, thedesire for happiness includes the desire for self-perfection; thus happiness for Scotus is never reducible to hedonism, nor is happiness our sole motivation.Our freedom lies in the will’s ability to love good things according to the value they have in themselves, not according to the value that they have for us.3) Is Heaven a Problem? A familiar explanation of the problem of evil is that evil is permitted because free will is required for moral goodness; without free willthere would be no moral evil, but neither would there be any moral goodness, so the world is better than it would be if God had chosen not to create freecreatures. But if free will is such a great good, then we must retain the capacity to sin in heaven, or else heavenly existence is inferior to earthly existence.And, if we do retain the capacity to sin in heaven, then heaven is not essentially devoid of evil. Scotus would respond to this problem by stating that love, notfreedom, is the greatest good. Thus, his account of heaven is consistent with what it means to love God above all, for his own sake, and without the motivationof happiness or any other benefit. (shrink)