In a suggestive reading of Descartes’ The Passions of the Soul, Luce Irigaray explores the possibility that the passion of wonder, the first of all the passions, can provide the basis for an ethics of sexual difference. Wonder is the first of all passions because it has no opposite, is prior to judgment and comparison, and because it is united to most other passions. Wonder is surprise at the extraordinary, and Irigaray believes it is the ideal way for women and (...) men to regard each other, as it is prior to judgement, and thus free of hierarchical relations, contrary to traditional ethics. In this sense, it leaves us open to new experiences and the distinctiveness of the other. For Descartes, a different passion, the passion of generosity, gives the key to ethics. Generosity is a species of wonder combined with love, which he understands as proper self-esteem. This proper self-esteem ensures that we have appropriate esteem for others by recognising them as like ourselves in the most important respects – the capacity to exercise free will and the resolve to use it well. He believes that if we value ourselves appropriately, then we will respond to others appropriately. This passion must be cultivated as a habit and virtue. In this paper, I examine how wonder and generosity can be linked to ethics, the relationship between these two passions, and Iris Marion Young’s view that Irigaray’s understanding of wonder can easily be extended to any structured social difference, such as race, class and religion by adopting a stance of ‘moral humility’ and accepting that our relations with others are asymmetrically reciprocal. (shrink)

Patrick Frierson - Learning to Love: From Egoism to Generosity in Descartes - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.3 313-338 Learning to Love: From Egoism to Generosity in Descartes Patrick R. Frierson The whole of philosophy is like a tree. The roots are metaphysics, the trunk is physics, and the branches emerging from the trunk are all the other sciences, which may be reduced to three principal ones, namely medicine, mechanics, and morals. (...) Descartes is well known for his metaphysics and physics, the roots and trunk of his philosophical project. But Descartes's morals are generally neglected, partly because they are so difficult to find. He does not dedicate a major published work to morality. His most direct comments on it are in letters to Princess Elizabeth and Pierre Chanut. The published work that most touches on moral issues is The Passions of the Soul, which is primarily a treatise on the relationship between mind and body. As a result of this lack of primary sources , there have been only a few significant studies of Descartes's moral philosophy in French, and only two major works devoted to it in English. This neglect of Descartes's ethics is unfortunate, not least since ethical concerns sometimes influence his work in other areas. This.. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the emotional make-up of Descartes’s generous person. Described as having complete control over the passions, the generous person is not passion-free; she feels compassion for those in need but unable to bear their misfortunes with fortitude, hates vice, takes satisfaction in her own virtue, etc. To bring to light the coherence of the generous person’s emotional configuration, a compare and contrast analysis with Descartes’s deficient moral type, the abject person, is provided. Real life as well as (...) literary examples (Queen Christina of Sweden, Descartes himself and Kadhy Demba, one of the main characters of Marie NDiaye’s novel Trois Femmes Puissantes) further refine the portrait of Descartes’s generous person and show that generosity is achievable by anyone who uses their will well. Descartes’s position on harmonizing the passions is reconstructed as a developmental trajectory: harmonizing the emotions is possible courtesy of God who put this sphere of created affairs under our jurisdiction; harmonizing the passions is required since the alternative is sub-optimal (souls enslaved and miserable); finally, harmonizing the emotions is satisfying. Since, as the above examples demonstrate, in the process of making their emotional composition coherent, different people take different routes and thus “create for themselves a personal, quite personal ideal,” acquiring Cartesian generosity points the way to Nietzsche’s later notion of self-creation. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the emotional make-up of Descartes’s generous person. Described as having complete control over the passions, the generous person is not passion-free; she feels compassion for those in need but unable to bear their misfortunes with fortitude, hates vice, takes satisfaction in her own virtue, etc. To bring to light the coherence of the generous person’s emotional configuration, a compare and contrast analysis with Descartes’s deficient moral type, the abject person, is provided. Real life as well as (...) literary examples (Queen Christina of Sweden, Descartes himself and Kadhy Demba, one of the main characters of Marie NDiaye’s novel Trois Femmes Puissantes) further refine the portrait of Descartes’s generous person and show that generosity is achievable by anyone who uses their will well. Descartes’s position on harmonizing the passions is reconstructed as a developmental trajectory: harmonizing the emotions is possible courtesy of God who put this sphere of created affairs under our jurisdiction; harmonizing the passions is required since the alternative is sub-optimal (souls enslaved and miserable); finally, harmonizing the emotions is satisfying. Since, as the above examples demonstrate, in the process of making their emotional composition coherent, different people take different routes and thus “create for themselves a personal, quite personal ideal,” acquiring Cartesian generosity points the way to Nietzsche’s later notion of self-creation. (shrink)

Generosity is not best understood as an alliance of forces, necessary for mortal beings with limited time and skills. Sociability as generosity exceeds the realm of need and follows directly from our strength of character [fortitudo] because it expresses a positive power to overcome anti-social passions, such as hatred, envy, and the desire for revenge. Spinoza asserts that generous souls resist and overwhelm hostile forces and debilitating affects with wisdom, foresight, and love. The sociability yielded by generosity, then, is not (...) just a form of cooperation we need to survive and produce leisure for study and contemplation. Generosity is not a mere means but a positive expression of freedom, because it is the activity through which a strong soul (and body) transforms enemies into friends. It is not an expression of lack, but of an acquired power that infuses one’s social milieu with empowering love and joy, creating agreements in nature and power where they did not previously exist. Attention to generosity reveals not only that there are social virtues proper to Spinoza’s understanding of freedom but that freedom itself is, by necessity, social. (shrink)

Descartes is not widely recognized for his ethics; indeed, most readers are unaware that he had an ethics. However, Descartes placed great importance on his ethics, claiming that ethics is the highest branch of his philosophical system. I aim to understand the systematic relationship Descartes envisions between his ethics and the rest of his philosophy, particularly his metaphysics and epistemology. I defend three main theses. First, I argue against the recent trend in the literature that claims that the chief virtue (...) in Descartes’ ethics—generosity—is acquired in the Meditations. On this view, the presence of moral virtue in the Meditations shows that ethical practice is intertwined with metaphysics and epistemology. I argue that generosity cannot be acquired in the Meditations because acquiring generosity presupposes several metaphysical and physical truths that the meditator cannot access given her epistemic position. Thus, I maintain that metaphysics and epistemology is foundational to ethics. Second, I resolve the tension between Descartes’ description of distinct virtues, and his insistence that there is only a single virtue—the disposition to judge well. Drawing from his theory of conceptual distinction in his metaphysics, I argue that Descartes offers a unique account of the unity of the virtues. Although Descartes describes different virtues, he thinks that all of them are identical to each other because they are reducible to the disposition to judge well. Nonetheless, we can conceptually distinguish between the virtues because we can regard the disposition to judge well in different ways given the various applications it has in different types of moral situations. Third, I show that some of Descartes’ ethical concepts inform his epistemology. I draw from Descartes’ theory of virtue to address “the problem of knowledge preservation,” that is, how to render perfect knowledge— scientia—stable in light of the instability of clear and distinct perceptions. I argue that Descartes intends to preserve scientia by grounding items of scientia in virtuous habits of belief. These habits of belief are established through repeated engagement with cognitive routes to clear and distinct perceptions, and are ultimately grounded in memory. This reading has the advantage of explaining Descartes’ notoriously confusing remarks about memory in response to the Cartesian circle. (shrink)

In this thesis I argue that foundational to attaining Cartesian generosity, both as a passion and as a virtue are the clear and distinct perceptions of mind, God, and body. I challenge Lisa Shapiro’s account of generosity, and her suggestion that generosity regulates the passions expressed in the Meditations. Unlike Shapiro I attend closely to the distinction between the passion of generosity and the virtue of generosity, and how to acquire these different states of the soul. I propose that the (...) passion of generosity cannot be aroused in the soul until after the meditations have been completed and the full inventory of clear and distinct perceptions attained. I interpret the meditations as orienting the meditator towards attaining virtue; by putting her in a position to attend frequently to the nature of free will after the six meditations have been completed. I interpret this frequent attendance to the will as a “Seventh Meditation,” which arouses the passion of generosity. After the passion has been attained, the virtue of generosity can then be acquired through self-cultivation, which instills generosity as a habit of the soul. The virtue of generosity is what allows one to gain mastery of the passions, and I provide an account of how this can be done through a process of reconditioning the passions. (shrink)

Descartes' morals are often considered a marginal epiphenomenon not only with respect to his metaphysics, but also in regard to the ethical theories that preceded and followed it, that is, broadly Aristotle's eudaimonism, Kantian deontologism and Mill's utilitarianism. I argue in this paper that Descartes' morals do not play a merely subaltern role in his metaphysics, as is often claimed. I first present the specificity and the evolution of his morals by giving an account of his provisory and perfect morals. (...) Second I argue that a close reading of important passages from his correspondence and his treatise on the Passions of the Soul indicates that Descartes develops a third kind of morals based on the virtue-passion of generosity. The last part of the paper discusses Descartes' own treatment of the passions and suggests against the standard view that Descartes' concern is also the veri hominess , and ultimately the generosi hominess . South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 25(2) 2006: 177-188. (shrink)

Out of the ferment of recent debates about the intellectual virtues, Roberts and Wood have developed an approach they call 'regulative epistemology'. This is partly a return to classical and medieval traditions, partly in the spirit of Locke's and Descartes's concern for intellectual formation, partly an exploration of connections between epistemology and ethics, and partly an approach that has never been tried before. Standing on the shoulders of recent epistemologists - including William Alston, Alvin Plantinga, Ernest Sosa, and Linda Zagzebski (...) - Roberts and Wood pursue epistemological questions by looking closely and deeply at particular traits of intellectual character such as love of knowledge, intellectual autonomy, intellectual generosity, and intellectual humility. Central to their vision is an account of intellectual goods that includes not just knowledge as properly grounded belief, but understanding and personal acquaintance, acquired and shared through the many social practices of actual intellectual life. This approach to intellectual virtue infuses the discipline of epistemology with new life, and makes it interesting to people outside the circle of professional epistemologists. It is epistemology for the whole intellectual community, as Roberts and Wood carefully sketch the ways in which virtues that would have been categorized earlier as moral make for agents who can better acquire, refine, and communicate important kinds of knowledge. (shrink)

This article describes the main topics of Descartes’ ethics through discussion of key primary texts and corresponding interpretations in the secondary literature. Although Descartes never wrote a treatise dedicated solely to ethics, commentators have uncovered an array of texts that demonstrate a rich analysis of virtue, the good, happiness, moral judgment, the passions, and the systematic relationship between ethics and the rest of philosophy. The following ethical claims are often attributed to Descartes: the supreme good consists in virtue, which is (...) a firm and constant resolution to use the will well; virtue presupposes knowledge of metaphysics and natural philosophy; happiness is the supreme contentment of mind which results from exercising virtue; the virtue of generosity is the key to all the virtues and a general remedy for regulating the passions; and virtue can be secured even though our first-order moral judgments never amount to knowledge. -/- Descartes’ ethics was a neglected aspect of his philosophical system until the late 20th century. Since then, standard interpretations of Descartes’ ethics have emerged, debates have ensued, and commentators have carved out key interpretive questions that anyone must answer in trying to understand Descartes’ ethics. For example: what kind of normative ethics does Descartes espouse? Are the passions representational or merely motivational states? At what point in the progress of knowledge can the moral agent acquire and exercise virtue? Is Descartes’ ethics as systematic as he sometimes seems to envision? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Descartes on Love and/as ErrorByron WillistonBut if this medicine, love, which cures all sorrow With more, not only be no quintessence, But mixed of all stuffs, paining soul, or sense, And of the sun his working vigour borrow, Love’s not so pure, and abstract, as they use To say, which have no mistress but their Muse, But as all else, being elemented too, Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.1One (...) of philosophy’s most enduring questions is inspired by Plato’s Euthyphro: do we love something because it is lovable, or is it lovable because we love it?2 Perhaps nowhere is this problem more intractable than in Descartes’s theory of love. In his view love is the concrete attempt on the part of humans to develop an ethical reciprocity which ideally fulfils the need both to discover and to create value. The strict disjunction of the Platonic question is to this extent somewhat misleading because Descartes is genuinely challenged by the respective demands of both sides of the question. It would therefore be a mistake to fasten on one side of this distinction to the utter exclusion of the other.But the temptation to do precisely this with Descartes is strong indeed. This is a temptation which extends even to ethical matters, in which Descartes seems loathe to subordinate the search for certainty to merely contingent practical demands. In addressing the problem of moral weakness he writes, for [End Page 429] example, that “the strength of the soul is inadequate without knowledge of the truth.”3 The call to live in the light of certain truths—moral or otherwise—is so persistent a theme for him that the burden of proof would seem to be on those who want to claim that this is nevertheless not so in certain areas. The bulk of this paper is thus devoted to showing that, despite some appearances, Descartes is not concerned overmuch with the problem of attaining certainty and avoiding error in love judgments. He wants us to see love as a complex psycho-physical phenomenon which cannot be reduced to the desire to obtain true judgments about the world.To focus the discussion I examine Irving Singer’s philosophy of love as presented in The Nature of Love and especially his hermeneutic distinction between “appraisal” and “bestowal,” a distinction which maps felicitously onto the Platonic disjunction as sketched above. Singer criticizes the Cartesian theory of love as excessively “appraisive,” that is, as relying too heavily on an objective standard as guarantor of the worth of beloved objects. I maintain on the contrary that this interpretation distorts what Descartes’s texts tell us. By arguing that the will, with no necessary input from the appraising intellect, is paramount in love judgments, I show that love for Descartes is largely an imaginative means of “bestowing” value which as such does not require either the guidance or the corroboration of objective criteria. The bestowal theory warrants, rather, the free subjective creation of value. The distinction which Singer uses to criticize Descartes is thus turned to Descartes’s favor.I. Before getting to that argument, however, we need to examine the place which love as a specific passion has within the overall economy of the third notion primitive,4 that is, the union of body and soul as distinct from the treatment of these elements as mutually separate. Passions are for Descartes a species of thought. In a general sense all “perceptions” are passions of the soul. They represent the world to the will which then acts in some way on them (“action” is taken as the other species of thought). Now of these perceptions generally considered, some are caused by the external objects of the senses5 and some by the natural appetites and affections of the body.6 There are, however, those perceptions “whose effects we feel as being in the soul itself....”7 These are strictly speaking the “passions” of the soul; and despite our not always being able to locate their proximate cause,8 they may be stimulated by the [End Page 430] “fortuitous movement of the spirits,”9 by intellectual judgments, or by external... (shrink)

While Descartes’s Passions of the Soul has been taken to hold a place in the history to human physiology, until recently philosophers have neglected the work. In this research summary, I set Descartes’s last published work in context and then sketch out its philosophical significance. From it, we gain further insight into Descartes’s solution to the Mind--Body Problem -- that is, to the problem of the ontological status of the mind--body union in a human being, to the nature of body--mind (...) causation, and to the way body-caused thoughts represent the world. In addition, the work contains Descartes’s developed ethics, in his account of virtue and of the passion of générosité in particular. Through his taxonomy of the passions and the account of their regulation, we also learn more about his moral psychology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Descartes’s Moral Theory by John MarshallMartin HarveyJohn Marshall. Descartes’s Moral Theory. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. Pp. xi + 177. Cloth, $35.00.In this concise, well-wrought and provocative work, John Marshall sets two primary goals for himself: 1) to show that Descartes, contrary to the received view, does provide us with the foundational elements of a full fledged ethical theory, and 2) to prove, again contrary to standard interpreters, (...) that Descartes’s early theory of morals, as sketched in the Discourse, is at one with the later theory propounded in The Passions of the Soul and numerous correspondences with Princess Elizabeth.The book is divided into three parts. The first section includes a thorough discussion of Descartes’s self-described morale par provision which provides the philosophical inquirer with practical guidance while the theoretical foundations of his or her belief system are shorn by radical doubt. These four maxims—to follow the customs of one’s country, practice one’s faith and rely on the opinions of the wise, to act resolutely in the face of uncertainty, to master one’s passions and to live the life, at least in Descartes’s case, of a philosopher—should not, Marshall argues, be viewed as ‘provisional’ in a pejorative sense (16–19). Instead, Marshall claims that Descartes takes them to be derivable from his four rules of method (14; 32–33). Therefore, the morale par provision is not some sort of “convenient” compromise but actually forms the second order core of a viable ethical theory (16). The second part, Descartes’s “Final Morality” is devoted to exploring Descartes’s conception of virtue and his notion of the good life (57). Succinctly, the good life for Descartes is happiness which, according to Marshall, in a very weakly Neo-Stoic sense is taken to consist in virtue and wisdom. Formally defined, Cartesian virtue is “the disposition always to judge as well as we can what is the best plan of action and to adhere strictly to that plan” (63). In turn, in a letter to Elizabeth, we are informed that behaving virtuously requires one to display strength and firmness of will, to judge well, and to possess well ordered desires—evidence which Marshall takes to show a close correspondence with the maxims of the earlier morale par provision. (74–5). Contra commentators such as Geroult, an apparent conceptual continuum between the early and later theories thereby obtains. (See Martial Geroult, Descartes’s Philosophy Interpreted according to the Order of Reasons, translated by Roger Ariew [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985], Chapters 19–20.)Unfortunately, and as Marshall readily admits, Descartes provides us with little substantive guidance concerning his axiology and theory of right action. Thus, the third, and more “speculative” part of the work seeks to correct this deficit by delving into a proposed Cartesian metaethics (115). Marshall begins by fleshing out Descartes’s [End Page 677] concept of the Summum Bonum, i.e., virtue. Cartesian virtue is a second-order good which instructs us to strive after and promote various intrinsically valuable first-order goods such as joy, knowledge, friendship, free will, the love of God, etc. (118). As such, Descartes seems to provide us with a fairly straightforward teleological conception of ethics. Nonetheless, when we turn to moral theory proper, Marshall wants to claim that Descartes exhibits certain proto-Kantian leanings, entailed by his concept of generosite as discussed at length in The Passions. The genereux, i.e., those who display generosite, are individuals who, Marshall argues, always act with “respect” towards others and thus treat their fellows both benevolently and justly (152). The basis for this respect is to be found, and this is somewhat of a stretch, albeit an interesting one, in our mutual capacity for free and rational willing (156). From here, of course, it would be a rather short step to Kant. More work needs to be done, however, to square this seemingly non-consequentialist conception of right action with Descartes’s teleological axiology.Regardless, Marshall has accomplished his first task—the normative theory outlined in The Passions, although rudimentary, certainly deserves to be viewed as ethical, not simply prudential, in... (shrink)

L’admiration comme principe phénoménologique de la subjectivité humaine Résumé: Le texte est une tentative d'analyse phénoménologique (principalement inspiré de Ricœur) du thème de l'admiration, que Descartes dans les Passions de l’âme décrit comme passion première et principale. Envisagé comme principe de la subjectivité, cette passion expliquerait l'accès non théorique au monde et à soi-même, et permet de comprendre la constitution du sujet passionnel. En analysant ce sujet, appelé par Descartes l'union de l'âme et du corps, les catégories traditionnelles d'attention, d'imagination (...) et enfin de volonté et de temporalité se trouvent profondément reformulées. Dans le mode admiratif spécifique d’un tel sujet, qui se caractérise par interaction dynamique de l'âme et du corps, on peut parler des étapes successives de la vie passionnée, au sein de laquelle émergent les autres passions “principales” (l'amour, la haine, le désir, la joie et la tristesse), pour trouver enfin son accomplissement dans une expérience éthique de la générosité. Mots-clés: Passion; Admiration; Union de l’âme et du corps; Descartes; Ricoeur. A admiração como princípio fenomenológico da subjetividade Resumo: O texto é uma tentativa de análise fenomenológica (principalmente inspirada por Ricoeur) do tema da admiração, que Descartes n’As paixões da alma descreve como paixão primeira e principal. Considerado como princípio da subjetividade, essa paixão explicaria o acesso não teórico ao mundo e a si mesmo, e permite compreender a constituição do sujeito passional. Analisando esse sujeito, chamado por Descartes a união da alma e do corpo, as categorias tradicionais de atenção, imaginação e, enfim, de vontade e temporalidade se encontram profundamente reformuladas. No modo admirativo específico de um tal sujeito, que se caracteriza pela interação dinâmica da alma e do corpo, podemos falar das etapas sucessivas da vida apaixonada, ao seio da qual emergem as outras paixões « principais » (o amor, o ódio, o desejo, a alegriae a tristeza), para encontrar, enfim, sua realização numa experiência ética da generosidadade. Palavras-chave : Paixão; Admiração; União da alma e do corpo; Descartes; Ricoeur. Admiration as a phenomenological principle of human subjectivity Abstract: The text is a phenomenological analysis (mainly inspired by Ricœur) of the theme of admiration, which Descartes in the Passions of the Soul describes as a first and main passion. Considered as a principle of subjectivity, this passion would explain the non-theoretical access to the world and to oneself, and allows us to understand the constitution of such passionate subject. Analyzing this subject, called by Descartes the union of the soul and the body, the traditional categories of attention, imagination and finally, those of will and temporality are deeply reformulated. In the specific admiring mode of the subject, which is characterized by dynamic interaction of the soul and body, we can speak of the successive stages of passionate life, in which emerge the other “principal passions" (love, hatred, desire, joy and sadness), to finally find its culmination in an ethical experience of generosity. Key words: Passion; Admiration; Union of the soul and body; Descartes; Ricoeur. (shrink)

본 논문은 데카르트의 윤리학에서 사랑이 하는 역할을 살펴보고자 한다. 데카르트의 윤리는 관대함을 중심으로 한 덕 윤리인데, 여기서 관대함은 자유로운 주체들의 상호 존중을 내포한 “자기 존중”을 말한다. 반면에 사랑은 전체의 이익에 대한 계산적 모색을 가능하게 하는 정념이다. 따라서 본 논문에서는 마리옹과 캉부슈네라는 두 프랑스 주석가의 해석을 통해서 관대함의 윤리 안에서 이익에 대한 계산적 모색이 수행하는 역할을 살펴볼 것이다. 마리옹에 따르면 데카르트의 “관대함”은 주체의 순수한 자기촉발로 특징지어진다. 이러한 순수한 자기촉발 안에서 주체는 이익에 대한 계산 없이 타자를 타자로서 만나게 된다. 그리하여 계산을 염두에 (...) 둔 윤리는 진정한 윤리가 될 수 없다는 것이 마리옹의 생각이다. 반대로 캉부슈네는 데카르트가 전체의 이익에 대한 고려를 주체의 자기촉발 안에서 생각하고 있다는 것을 보여준다. 이는 상호 존중의 윤리 안에 전체의 이익에 대한 계산적 고려가 필수적인 부분임을 시사한다. (shrink)

Nietzsche's ethics is basically an ethics of virtue. In his own unique way, and in accordance with his extra-moral view of life, Nietzsche recovers and re-appropriates certain virtues – notably pagan, aristocratic virtues – as part of his project to reconceptualise (‘rehabilitate') the virtues in terms of virtù (virtuosity and vitality), to which he also refers as his ‘moraline-free' conception of the virtues. The virtue of generosity (in the sense of magnanimity) plays a central role in Nietzschean ethics. According to (...) Nietzsche, the truly noble or virtuous person is one who lives beyond resentment and feelings of remorse and guilt. He lives his life from the fullness and plenitude of his own being and what he is able to bestow on others. Nietzsche seeks to rekindle and rehabilitate the aristocratic ‘pathos of distance' as the true origin of ethical life. This pathos of distance basically emanates from self-respect: ‘The noble soul has reverence for itself' (1974b: §287). For Nietzsche, this means that one should realize the greatest multiplicity of drives and form-giving forces in oneself, in the most tension-fraught but ‘controlled' manner. This control, this imposing a form on oneself without neglecting the multiplicity in oneself, is a creative, artistic activity. Nietzsche also refers to this as a process of transforming the self into a work of art, of giving style to one's own existence. Thus we free ourselves from guilt, resentment and the rage against contingency. It is of the utmost importance for Nietzsche that one should attain satisfaction with oneself, for ‘only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is continually ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight.' (1974a: §290). To attain satisfaction with oneself ultimately means to affirm life in its totality. This implies a life beyond resentment, i.e. a life that is characterised by generosity or magnanimity ( megalopsychia, magnanimitas ), which is for Nietzsche the ‘crown' of all the virtues. South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 26 (1) 2007: pp. 17-30. (shrink)

The article analyses the Passions de l'âme (The Passions of the Soul) to bring out Cartesian strategies. Descartes demonstrates the limits of the mechanistic explanation of passions through their immediate and final causes: animal spirits. This explanation, coupled with a theoiy of affective objects, of the importance of passion-inspiring objects which are the first, principal causes of passions, ends in an exaltation of generosity, virtue and passion for freedom. Abstract mechanistic vocabulary has meaning only because the vocabularies of intentionality and (...) ethics reflect on it. Thus perhaps the work should be read backwards, beginning with the end. (shrink)

Noa Naaman-Zauderer’s book aims to bring to light the ethical underpinnings of Descartes’ system: on her view, in both the practical and the theoretical spheres Descartes takes our foremost duty to lie in the good use of the will.The marked ethical import of Cartesian epistemology takes the form of a deontological, non-consequentialist view of error: epistemic agents are praised/blamed when they fulfill/flout the duty to not assent to ideas that are less than clear and distinct.Extra-theoretical realms admitting of no clear (...) and distinct perceptions are subject to ‘softer’ duties of acting on the basis of the best available reasons. Since Cartesian epistemology involves ethical considerations,and since the late Cartesian ethics of virtue crucially depends on metaphysical knowledge about the nature and function of the will, Descartes’ ethics is not just a fruit of his tree of knowledge but it also nourishes its own roots. (shrink)

John Hick attempts to justify evil’s existence by claiming it is necessary for the process of “soul-making,” which allows for the development of a more valuable type of moral character than a world without evil. Hick’s theodicy has ramifications for ethics as well as philosophy of religion. His theodicy commits him to a conception of virtue theory that significantly departs from the ethical theories held by many theists. An explication of Hick’s ethical theory and comparison with relevant aspects of Thomas (...) Aquinas’s ethical theory showshow Hick’s ethical theory makes this departure. At stake in this paper is whether Hick’s ethical theory and account of the virtue of love make his theodicy less plausible. (shrink)

John Hick attempts to justify evil’s existence by claiming it is necessary for the process of “soul-making,” which allows for the development of a more valuable type of moral character than a world without evil. Hick’s theodicy has ramifications for ethics as well as philosophy of religion. His theodicy commits him to a conception of virtue theory that significantly departs from the ethical theories held by many theists. An explication of Hick’s ethical theory and comparison with relevant aspects of Thomas (...) Aquinas’s ethical theory showshow Hick’s ethical theory makes this departure. At stake in this paper is whether Hick’s ethical theory and account of the virtue of love make his theodicy less plausible. (shrink)

The standard interpretation of Descartes's ethics maintains that virtue presupposes knowledge of metaphysics and the sciences. Lisa Shapiro, however, has argued that the meditator acquires the virtue of generosity in the Fourth Meditation, and that generosity contributes to her metaphysical achievements. Descartes's ethics and metaphsyics, then, must be intertwined. This view has been gaining traction in the recent literature. Omri Boehm, for example, has argued that generosity is foundational to the cogito. In this paper, I offer a close reading of (...) Cartesian generosity, arguing that the meditator cannot acquire generosity in the Second or Fourth Meditation. (shrink)

This work intends to point out the role that the idea of God has in Cartesian morals. Both the conception of a God responsible of an universal rational order and the solution to evil question are the grounds for the idea of happiness related to the virtue understood as rational control of passions. Devotion, passion derived from love, is considered by Descartes as the most useful passion that man can experience, as it contributes to the strengthening of the thinking subject, (...) to the so-called ‘generosity’, the true objective of Cartesian ethics. (shrink)

What is the function of Cartesian virtue within the motivational and cognitive economy of the soul? In this paper I show that Cartesian virtue is a higher-order motivational disposition. Central to the interpretation I defend is Descartes’s view that the will can govern an individual’s attention. An exercise of this capacity, I argue, is a higher-order operation. Because Cartesian virtue is a resolution to focus attention on what reason deems worthy of consideration, it should therefore be understood as a higher-order (...) disposition. To lay the groundwork for this interpretation, I examine Descartes’s theory of motivation. An examination of the sources of Cartesian motivation yields two important points for my reading: (1) that the will is not completely unconstrained in its operations and (2) that there are three sources of motivation: intellectual clarity, the will, and the passions. I show that virtue strengthens the will’s natural disposition toward intellectual clarity, thereby enabling the will to withstand the occasionally harmful sway of the passions. By strengthening the will’s disposition toward clarity, virtue at the same time safeguards the will’s freedom, enables an individual to will what seems best, and, as a result, ensures the individual’s happiness. It carries this out, I contend, insofar as it is a higher-order motivational disposition, a disposition exercised by the person of generosity. (shrink)

This work intends to point out the role that the idea of God has in Cartesian morals. Both the conception of a God responsible of an universal rational order and the solution to evil question are the grounds for the idea of happiness related to the virtue understood as rational control of passions. Devotion, passion derived from love, is considered by Descartes as the most useful passion that man can experience, as it contributes to the strengthening of the thinking subject, (...) to the so-called ‘generosity’, the true objective of Cartesian ethics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics for a Layered SelfLaughter, Reciprocity, Generosity, HomeCynthia WillettI can imagine no better way to respond to these insightful readings than to turn the spotlight on the important books that Ann Murphy and Megan Craig have written on affect and ethics! Craig’s book, Levinas and James: Toward a Pragmatic Phenomenology, weaves radical empiricism into phenomenology as only a philosopher who is also an artist could. Her evocative queries on (...) prereflective affects, perception, and ethical attunement shed light on the role of moods for unsettling rigid ego boundaries, ethical subjectivity, the feeling of being alive, the audible dimension of ethical encounters, life beyond a struggle to survive, temporality, and ethical ambiguity. These themes are compelling for any postmoral ethics that operates beyond or below the register of modern moral theory’s abstract laws and transparent cogitos. Her work balances an ethical concern for vulnerability with a vital regard for the vibrancy of living creatures and landscapes.Ann Murphy’s Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary illuminates philosophical questions with an abiding lucidity that does not weaken but amplifies the complexity and difficulty of ethics. Murphy’s work exposes how tropes of violence saturate philosophical discourses of both identity formation and of political and historical transformation, and how this violence, embedded in norms, denies sympathetic concern to those outside the limits of cultural intelligibility. Building upon recent work by Judith Butler, Adriana Caverero, and others, Murphy addresses the ambiguities arising from the multiple responses that exposure to vulnerability provokes. These responses can signal care but [End Page 70] they can also manifest violence. Even as she acknowledges the complex underside of cultural intelligibility, Murphy affirms sympathy and generous concern as paradigmatic virtues to be cultivated in response to various forms of violence. She probes the significance of shame and guilt for collective responsibility, ever alert to alterity and difference. With attentive care to the singular contributions of a broad range of philosophers and critical traditions, she argues compellingly for a corporeal ethics grounded on the ontological fact of vulnerability.Through their work, Murphy and Craig pose astute questions for my project, and, in fact, for any endeavor to conceptualize an ethics attentive to an embodied sociality. I describe the multifaceted approach I contribute toward this task as a call and response ethics for a layered self. Craig wonders if the more basic feature before any “call” is contact, touch, or immersion. She notes my concern that “any purported gap or abyss between humans and animals has less to do with unique human capacities than with the rise of urban centers and the loss of contact with other species.” Harm arises from a loss of contact. This is so true. Ethics as contact calls attention to the poetry of proximity, to erotic waves that transmit through the sound or feel of the other’s breath, the heat of the body, and the smell of the skin. This intense proximity serves as a compelling source for ethical sociality, resonating in some respects with what Merleau-Ponty explores as the sense of flesh and touch and, as Murphy suggests, a transcendental eros. This contact is as primal and ordinary as the skin-to-skin contact of caregiver and infant or, perhaps, the skin-to-hair contact of a terrier and her human companion, lost for a moment in inexplicable laughter. From these observations, Craig asks if “call and response” as a locution or central designation adequately captures the intimacy and intensity of these engagements.Craig’s remarks raise the further question of what is at stake in designations or phrasings. An ethics of call and response, designated as such, emerges from phenomenological but also crucially Africana and critical theory traditions. As a relational ethics, this ethics of call and response highlights social relations and expectations, opening a path outside of what Murphy characterizes as the trifecta of virtue ethics, deontology, and utilitarianism. It attends to desire (eros) beneath, in between, and above the prescriptive rules of moral reason or the interests of individuals. At its center are social bonds (friendship and companionship, community and domination, love, hate, and other social emotions, belonging and alienation, and the conflicts of groups and reconciliation) rather... (shrink)

This paper is concerned with Descartes’s view on the passions’ moral value, that is, their value with respect to achieving the ethical ends of virtue and happiness. In this regard, there is no question that the passions possess a kind of conative value because of their power to move or incline us in ways that contribute to ethical ends. This paper’s question is whether the passions also contribute to ethical ends in a cognitive sense by informing us of the moral (...) value of things, in other words, telling us whether things are good or bad with respect to the ends of virtue and happiness. The answer to this question is less clear for two reasons. Firstly, in order for the passions to inform us in this way they would have to be the sort of mental state that purports to tell us the way things are, in other words, that contain some sort of presentation or assessment of things. To borrow language from present day philosophy of mind, they would have to be contentful mental states. But this way of thinking about the passions is opposed by a long tradition, running from Descartes’s contemporaries to today, that regards Cartesian passions as purely conative or appetitive movements, along the lines of Thomistic passions. Secondly, even if the passions are contentful, it is not clear whether their contents accurately report the value of things with respect to ethical goals. Descartes frequently warns that the passions provide unreliable ethical guidance because they report on good and evil with respect to more bodily and animalistic aims: bodily health, self-preservation and the continuation of the species In taking up this question, I am guided by the work of Cambridge Platonist, Henry More. More offered a positive assessment of Descartes’s theory of the passions, which served as the basis for More’s ethical theory in the Enchiridion Ethicum. More’s astute reading of Descartes is useful to my investigation both because he reads the Cartesian passions as contentful mental states and because he uses this reading to explain their accuracy and reliability with respect to virtue. Following More's interpretation, I argue that Descartes recognizes a category of passions—including, most notably, the passion of generosity and the passions following from it—that are more ethically reliable and that serve roughly the same ethical functions as the affections of More's boniform faculty. (shrink)

Philosophers have devoted a great deal of time and energy to understanding and assessing the metaphysical and epistemological branches of Descartes' and Spinoza's philosophical systems, and deservedly so---they are arguably the most brilliant and innovative metaphysicians and epistemologists of the seventeenth century. The primary aim of this dissertation is to contribute to showing that their brilliance and innovation is also manifested in the ethical branch of their systems. ;Descartes is not known as a moral philosopher, but this reflects the interests (...) of his commentators more than it reflects Descartes' own interests. In his correspondence and in The Passions of the Soul, there is a fully developed theory of virtue. His theory of virtue, I believe, cannot be clearly understood outside the context of his theory of freedom of the will. So, in Chapter One, I present and defend an account of his theory of the will's freedom, and then, in Chapter Two, I examine his theory of virtue within the interpretive framework I develop in Chapter One. An important aim of Chapter Two is to show how his theory of virtue, an ethical doctrine, is connected with his theory of free will, a doctrine belonging to metaphysics. ;Spinoza, unlike Descartes, is known for his work in moral philosophy. But though his ethical views have not suffered the neglect that his predecessor's has, his ethical theory has not been accurately understood. Contrary to the orthodox Hobbesean interpretation, in Chapters Three and Four I construct and defend a rationalist interpretation of Spinoza's ethical theory. Like Plato and Kant and unlike Hobbes and Hume, I argue that, for Spinoza, reason is practical in two important senses: it is a source of motivation and it is a source of ethical prescriptions. (shrink)

Descartes's approach to practical judgments about what is beneficial or harmful, or what to pursue or avoid, is almost exactly the opposite of his approach to theoretical judgments about the true nature of things. Instead of the cautious skepticism for which Descartes is known, throughout his ethical writings he recommends developing the habit of making firm judgments and resolutely carrying them out, no matter how doubtful and uncertain they may be. Descartes, strikingly, takes irresolution to be the source of remorse (...) and repentance, of vice, and of a weak soul. In order to explain its dangerousness, this essay offers an analysis of irresolution as a failure of the will to determine itself to follow a judgment in the face of ignorance or uncertainty. This analysis connects irresolution to weakness of will and explains why Descartes regards resolution as an essential component of virtue. (shrink)

Anglophone philosophers have on the whole overlooked much of the last ten years or so of Descartes' philosophical career. In the period following publication of the Meditations, however, Descartes was extremely active in attempting to develop a comprehensive ethics, rooted in his analysis of human passions. His work in this area grew out of a lengthy correspondence with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia and was later systematically presented in the Passions of the Soul. The present volume is the first collection of (...) essays dealing specifically with this aspect of Descartes' thinking. It is thus a valuable contribution to our understanding of the first modern philosopher. Since in the Passions Descartes provides us with the most sophisticated and extended discussion of the composite human being anywhere in his writings, this volume is an indispensable aid to understanding the full scope of Cartesian anthropology. Just what is the nature of the passions? Does Descartes' analysis of the passions undercut his dualism? How do the passions both contribute to our good, and, if we are not careful, prevent us from recognizing it? How can the passions be regulated rationally? How do the passions affect our freedom? These and other questions are addressed in these original and insightful articles, all by leading Descartes scholars. (shrink)

: In a reading of René Descartes's The Passions of the Soul, Luce Irigaray explores the possibility that wonder, first of all passions, can provide the basis for an ethics of sexual difference because it is prior to judgment, and thus nonhierarchical. For Descartes, the passion of generosity gives the key to ethics. I argue that wonder should be extended to other differences and should be combined with generosity to form the basis of an ethics.

In a reading of René Descartes's The Passions of the Soul, Luce Irigaray explores the possibility that wonder, first of all passions, can provide the basis for an ethics of sexual difference because it is prior to judgment, and thus nonhierarchical. For Descartes, the passion of generosity gives the key to ethics. I argue that wonder should be extended to other differences and should be combined with generosity to form the basis of an ethics. -/- .

This book tells the story of modern ethics, namely the story of a discourse that, after the Renaissance, went through a methodological revolution giving birth to Grotius’s and Pufendorf’s new science of natural law, leaving room for two centuries of explorations of the possible developments and implications of this new paradigm, up to the crisis of the Eighties of the eighteenth century, a crisis that carried a kind of mitosis, the act of birth of both basic paradigms of the two (...) following centuries: Kantian ethics and utilitarianism. The new science of natural law carried a fresh start for ethics, resulting from a mixture of the Old and the New. It was, as suggested by Schneewind, an attempt at rescuing the content of Scholastic and Stoic doctrines on a new methodological basis. The former was the claim of existence of objective and universal moral laws; the latter was the self-aware attempt at justifying a minimal kernel of such laws facing skeptical doubt. What Bentham and Kant did was precisely carrying this strategy further on, even if restructuring it each of them around one out of two alternative basic claims. The nineteenth- and twentieth-century critics of the Enlightenment attacked both not on their alleged failure in carrying out their own projects, but precisely on having adopted Grotius’s and Pufendorf’s project. What counter-enlightenment has been unable to spell out is which alternative project could be carried out facing the modern condition of pluralism, while on the contrary, if we takes a closer look at developments in twentieth-century ethics or at on-going discussions on practical issues, we might feel inclined to believe that Grotius’s and Pufendorf’s project is as up-to-date as ever. -/- Table of Contents -/- Preface I. Fathers of the Reformation and Schoolmen 1.1. Luther: passive justice and the good deeds; 1.2. Calvin: voluntarism and predestination; 1.3. Baroque Scholasticism; 1.4. Casuistry and Institutiones morales -/- II Neo-Platonists, neo-Stoics, neo-Sceptics 2.1. Aristotelian, neo-Platonic, neo-Epicurean and neo-Cynic Humanists; 2.2. Oeconomica and the art of living; 2.3. Neo-Stoics; 2.4. Neo-Sceptics; 2.5. Moralistic literature -/- III Neo-Augustinians 3.l. The Jansenists on natura lapsa, sufficient grace, pure love; 3.2. Nicole on the impossibility of self-knowledge; 3.3. Nicole on self-love and charity; 3.4. Nicole against civic virtue, for Christian civility; 3.5. Malebranche on general laws and necessary evil; 3.6. Malebranche on Neo-Augustinianism and Platonism. -/- IV Grotius, Pufendorf and the new moral science 4.1. Grotius against Aristotle and the sceptics; 4.2. Mersenne and Gassendi; 4.3. Descartes on ethics as the last branch of philosophy’s tree; 4.4. Hobbes on scepticism and the new moral science; 4.5. Spinoza on the new moral science as a descriptive science;4.6. Locke on voluntarism and probabilism; 4.7. Pufendorf on natural law as an exact science; 4.8. Pufendorf on physical and moral entities; 10. Pufendorf on self-preservation -/- V The empiricist version of the new moral science: from Cumberland to Paley 5.1. Cumberland against Hobbesian voluntarism; 5.2. Cumberland and theological consequentialism; 5.3. Cumberland on universal benevolence and self-love; 5.4. Shaftesbury on the moral sense; 5.5. Hutcheson on natural law and moral faculties; 5.6. Gay, Brown, Paley and theological consequentialism. -/- VI The rationalist version of the new moral science: from Cudworth to Price 6.1. The Cambridge Platonists; 6.2. Shaftesbury on the moral sense; 6.3. Butler and a third way between voluntarism and scepticism; 6.4. Price and the rational character of moral truths; -/- VII Leibniz’s compromise between the new moral science and Aristotelianism 1.Leibniz against voluntarism; 2.Leibniz against the division between the physical and the moral good; 3.Leibniz on la place d’autrui and theological consequentialism; 4.Thomasius, Wolff, Crusius -/- VIII French eighteenth-century philosophers without the new moral science 8.1. The genealogy of our ideas of virtue and vice; 8.2. Maupertuis and moral arithmetic 8.3. The philosophes and the harmony of interests; 8.4. Rousseau on corruption, self-love, and virtue; 8.5. Sade on the merits of vice -/- IX Experimental moral science: Hume and Adam Smith 9.1. Mandeville’s paradox; 9.2. Hutcheson on the law of nature and moral faculties; 9.3. Hume on experimental moral philosophy and the intermediate principles; 9.4. Hume’s Law; 9.5. Hume on the fellow-feeling; 9.6. Hume on natural and artificial virtues and disinterested pleasure for utility; 9.7. Adam Smith’s anti-realist metaethics; 9.8. Adam Smith on self-deception and the paradox of happiness; 9.9. Adam Smith on sympathy and the impartial spectator; 9.10. Adam Smith on the twofold criterion for moral judgement and its paradox; 9.11. Reid on the refutation of scepticism and the self-evidence of duty -/- X Kantian ethics 10.1. Kantian metaethics: moral epistemology; 10.2. Kantian metaethics: moral ontology; 10.3. Kantian metaethics: moral psychology; 10.4. Kantian normative ethics; 10.5. Kant on the impracticability of applied ethics; 10.6. Kantian moral anthropology; 10.7. Civilisation and moralisation; 10.8. Theology on a moral basis and the origins of evil; 10.9. Fichte and the transformation of theoretical philosophy into practical philosophy XI Bentham and utilitarianism 11.1. Bentham’s linguistic theory; 11.2. Bentham’s moral ontology, psychology, and theory of action; 11.3. The principle of greatest happiness; 11.4. The critique of religious ethics; 11.5. The new morality; 11.6. Interest and duty; 11.7. Virtues; 11.8. Private ethics and legislation -/- XII Followers of the Enlightenment: liberal Judaism and Liberal Theology 12.1. Mendelssohn; 12.2. Salomon Maimon; 12.3. Haskalā and liberal Judaism; 12.4. Liberal Theology. -/- XIII Counter-Enlighteners 13.1.Romanticism and the fulfilment of individuality as the Summum Bonum; 13.2. Hegel on history as the making of liberty; 13.3. Hegel on the unhappy consciousness and the beautiful soul; 13.4. Hegel on Morality and Sittlichkeit; 13.5. Marx on ideology, alienation, and praxis; 13.6. Schopenhauer on compassion; 13.7. Kierkegaard on faith beyond ethics. -/- XIV Followers of the Enlightenment: intuitionists and utilitarian 14.1 Whewell‘s criticism of utilitarianism; 14.2 Whewell on morality and the philosophy of morality; 14.3 Whewell on the Supreme Norm; 14.4 Whewell on the conflict between duties; 14.5 Mill and the proof of the principle of utility; 14.6 Mill’s eudemonistic utilitarianism; 14.7 Mill on rules -/- XV Followers of the Enlightenment: neo-Kantians and positivists 15.1. French spiritualism; 15.2. Neo-Kantians: the Marburg school; 15.3. Neo-Kantians: the Marburg school; 15.4. Comte’s positivism and the invention of altruism; 15.5. Social Darwinism; 15.6. Wundt and an ethic of humankind -/- XVI Post-enlighteners: Sidgwick 16.1. Criticism of intuitionism; 16.2. On ethical egoism; 16.3. Criticism of utilitarianism -/- XVII Post-enlighteners: Durkheim 17.1. Sociology as physics of customs; 17.2. Morality as physics of customs and as practical science; 17.3. On Kantian ethics and utilitarianism; 17.4. The variability of moralities;17.5. Social solidarity as end and justification of morality; 17.6. Secular morality as “sociodicy”; XVIII Post-enlighteners: Nietzsche 18.1. On the Dionysian; 18.2. On the deconstruction of the world of values 18.3 On the twofold genealogy of moralities; 18.4. On ascetics and nihilism; 18.5. Normative ethics of self-fulfilment -/- Bibliography / Index of names / Index of concepts -/- . (shrink)

In a reading of René Descartes's The Passions of the Soul, Luce Irigaray explores the possibility that wonder, first of all passions, can provide the basis for an ethics of sexual difference because it is prior to judgment, and thus nonhierarchical. For Descartes, the passion of generosity gives the key to ethics. I argue that wonder should be extended to other differences and should be combined with generosity to form the basis of an ethics.

Passions unchained and the power of the imagination. Descartes on vanity, love and joy Most seventeenth-century moralists and philosophers, such as Pascal and Malebranche, commonly describe the passions and the imagination as symptoms of the corruption of human nature. Descartes is not an easy fit in this general framework, especially since most studies of his account of the passions read him rather univocally as committed only to a scientific investigation of certain phenomena that properly belong to the soul but do (...) originate in bodily movements. In this paper, it will be argued that Descartes’ account of the passions is more complex. Namely, by suggesting, on the one hand, that the passions are all good in themselves and, on the other hand, that the passion of generosity is the highest human virtue, Descartes seems at a remarkable distance from many of his contemporaries. Yet, Descartes equally warns against the potentially dangerous effects of the passions, particularly when the passions and the faculty of imagination collaborate closely. The representation of the object of a passion is often illegitimately and excessively esteemed by the imagination. This inclines the human soul to assume the images represented by a passion as real and then willingly attributes a disproportionate significance to these. As such, the human soul is necessarily at the mercy of error and deception. This nuanced appreciation of the passions will be illustrated in reference to the passions of vanity (‘orgueil’), joy (‘joie’) and love (‘amour’), which are the three fundamental passions that determine the relationship of the soul to itself and the external world. If the representations of these passions are exposed to the influence of the imagination, they potentially turn into the source of all human errors and immorality. Descartes also emphasizes, however, the positive use of the passions which is enabled by retaining the possibility of free will. What is more, the use of free will can even turn the most dangerous passions into virtues if the (imaginary) representation of their objects does not seduce the soul to (self-)deception.​. (shrink)

This volume in the Oxford Readings in Philosophy looks at central areas in Plato's philosophy: ethics, politics, religion, and the soul. It includes essays on virtue, knowledge, and happiness; justice and happiness; pleasure; Platonic love; feminism; the ideally just state, democracy and totalitarianism; and the nature of the soul and moral motivation.

This paper examines Descartes’ account of hatred. Descartes holds that individuals should not hate, because hatred separates us from goods, causes sadness, and produces vicious character traits. Although some scholars argue that hatred is necessary to protect the body, I argue that Descartes holds that hatred is not necessary to protect the body, because there are other means of protecting the body that do not involve hatred. I conclude this paper by showing the place of hatred in Descartes’ broader moral (...) theory, especially his emphasis on the wellbeing of the soul and the virtue of generosity. (shrink)

The commentaries on the Ethica nova and the Ethica vetus written by some masters of the arts – presumably operating in the Paris faculty – in the first half of the thirteenth century expound in an original way the doctrine of the virtutes consuetudinales which Aristotle, at the end of the first book of his Ethica (I 13), distinguishes into the two main classes of the “moral virtues” and the “intellectual virtues”. The present paper aims at highlighting the particularly important (...) task which is assigned to the intellectual virtues in these early commentaries: joining man to God directly, through a contemplation which becomes love. The masters of the arts maintain that the moral virtues, in spite of the definition given by Aristotle (habitus a quo quis bonus est et opus eius bene reddit), are not sufficient alone to bring man to perfection, but that other more perfect virtues, namely the intellectual ones, are needed in order to make him know and love the supreme good. Having no knowledge of the sixth book of the Ethica, in which Aristotle deals in particular with the intellectual virtues, our masters know only their general description and are concerned with clarifying their relationships with the moral virtues, compared to which they appear to be sometimes really distinct and sometimes united to them in sharing the recta ratio, so much that they may constitute a double virtue. Although the masters of the arts seem to be well-informed about the teaching of the theologians – which they often cite without opposing to it, albeit stressing their own philosophical point of view –, it is significant that no reference whatsoever is made by them to the theological virtues and that they have recourse to the themes of Avicennian mysticism such as the doctrine of the two faces of the soul. Besides presenting the commentaries on the Ethica vetus from a general point of view, I will focus on the Paris commentary in Ethicam veterem (Paris BN lat. 3804A, ff. 152ra-159vb, 241ra-247vb; Paris BN lat. 3572, ff. 226ra-235ra), of which I am preparing a critical edition. The Paris commentary contains in fact a special and original discussion of the doctrine of the virtutes intellectuales. (shrink)

In his dialogues, Plato presents different ways in which to understand the relation between Forms and particulars. In the Symposium, we are presented with yet another, hitherto unidentified Form-particular relation: the relation is Love (Erôs), which binds together Form and particular in a generative manner, fulfilling all the metaphysical requirements of the individual’s qualification by participation. Love in relation to the beautiful motivates human action to desire for knowledge of the Form, resulting in the lover actively cultivating and bringing into (...) being new beauty in the world, and in herself. Chapters 1 and 2 of this thesis offer a survey of the arguments and examples Plato puts forward in the text of the corpus regarding the nature of Forms and the nature of participation, alongside a framework of the traditional interpretations of these two Platonic concepts in the literature. Chapter 3 turns to a close examination of Erôs in the Symposium, arguing that the love Plato presents in this dialogue is of a different sort than appetitive emotion. It is an aesthetic and intellectual attraction, capable of stimulating cognitive achievement. Erôs, however, does not stop there. The lover is led not only to contemplation of beauty, but to the generation of beauty, which is the subject of Chapter 4. The emotive-turn-to-cognitive relation of Erôs, I argue, is the clearest picture Plato paints of how possession of properties can be explained through participation in Forms. Erôs leads the lover to produce beauty in the world and in the soul, which explains how love in relation to the beautiful can lead to becoming beautiful. The object of love is the generation of beauty, the mortal mechanism of participation in the Form by which the lover herself becomes beautiful. Finally, Chapter 5 focusses on beauty itself and its role in moral education. Beauty, for Plato, is required for creative generation and can be understood as a uniquely powerful virtue of soul. (shrink)

Many moral philosophers have criticized intensive animal farming because it can be harmful to the environment, it causes pain and misery to a large number of animals, and furthermore eating meat and animal-based products can be unhealthful. The issue of industrially farmed animals has become one of the most pressing ethical questions of our time. On the one hand, utilitarians have argued that we should become vegetarians or vegans because the practices of raising animals for food are immoral since they (...) minimize the overall happiness. Deontologists, on the other hand, have argued that the practices of raising animals for food are immoral because animals have certain rights and we have duties toward them. Some virtue ethicists remain unconvinced of deontic and consequentialist arguments against the exploitation of animals and suggest that a virtue-based approach is better equipped to show what is immoral about raising and using animals for food, and what is virtuous about ethical veganism. (shrink)

This paper applies emerging research on epistemic virtues to business ethics. Inspired by recent work on epistemic virtues in philosophy, I develop a view in which epistemic virtues contribute to the acquisition of knowledge that is instrumentally valuable in the realisation of particular ends, business ends in particular. I propose a conception of inquiry according to which epistemic actions involve investigation, belief adoption and justification, and relate this to the traditional ‘justified true belief’ analysis of knowledge. I defend the view (...) that epistemic virtues enable and/or motivate people to perform epistemic actions. An examination of the key epistemic virtues of love of knowledge, epistemic courage, temperance, justice, generosity and humility provides some initial evidence suggesting that the way epistemic virtues enable or motivate is by countering a number of biases that have been uncovered by behavioural economics, and also indicates ways in which the instrumental epistemic value view is superior to other approaches to epistemic virtue offered in the literature. (shrink)

Ethical veganism is the view that raising animals for food is an immoral practice that must be stopped because of the harm it causes to the animals, the environment, and our health. Carlo Alvaro argues the only way to stop that harm is to acquire the virtues that enable us to act justly and benevolently toward animals.

What is the highest good? In the ethics of René Descartes, we can distinguish between at least seven different answers to this question: God; the sum of all the different goods that “we either possess... or have the power to acquire” ; free will; virtue; love of God; wisdom; and supernatural beatitude. In this paper, I argue that each of these answers, in Descartes’s view, provides the correct particular conception, relative to a distinct sense or concept of the highest good. (...) Just as there are seven different conceptions of the highest good, according to Descartes, there are thus also seven different senses or concepts of the highest good. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: Greatness of Soul as a Virtue Greatness of Soul and other Virtues The Great‐souled Person: The “Portrait” and its Problems The Aesthetics of Virtue Acknowledgment References Further reading.

This chapter presents an overview and discussion of the primary Buddhist virtues within the context of the Buddhist path of moral and spiritual development. Buddhist ethics counsels practitioners to overcome the three poisons of greed, hatred, and ignorance and to cultivate those states and traits of mind (and the actions they motivate) that conduce to the genuine happiness and spiritual freedom of oneself and others. The chapter will discuss the four immeasurable states of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. It (...) will then discuss the six perfections of generosity, moral discipline, forbearance, vigor, meditation, and wisdom. The chapter will conclude with a discussion of the prospects of a Buddhist virtue ethics. (shrink)

Se propone un examen crítico de la última obra de J.-L. Marion titulada, dedicada a la unión de alma y cuerpo, y cuya tesis principal es: los problemas que esta unión suscita confunden dos términos, cuerpo y mi cuerpo. Esta confusión lleva a que se apliquen al primero categorías propias del segundo. Se examinan las "paradojas ónticas" que mi cuerpo (la carne) inaugura (a); se despeja la tesis de dos interpretaciones de las meditaciones primera y sexta (b); se discute la (...) "excepción a la metafísica" instaurada por el conocimiento de mi cuerpo (c); se arriesga, siguiendo una indicación del autor, la apertura a una dimensión ética que exige examinar ya no la unión de cuerpo y alma, sino la unión por el amor a un semejante y a la comunidad de semejantes (d). -/- The article carries out a critical examination of J.-L. Marion's latest work, "Sur la pensée passive de Descartes", whose main thesis is that the problems posed by the union of body and soul confuse two terms: body and my body. This confusion leads to the application to the former of categories inherent to the latter. The paper examines the "ontic paradoxes" that my body (the flesh) gives rise to (a); it clarifies the thesis of two interpretations of the First and Sixth Meditations (b); it discusses the "exception to metaphysics" established by the knowledge of my body (c); and, following an indication by the author, it proposes an opening to the ethical dimension, which demands an examination of the union, through love, with a fellow human being and with the community of human beings, rather than of the union of body and soul (d). -/- Neste artigo, propõe-se um exame crítico da última obra de J.-L. Marion, intitulada "Sur la pensée passive de Descartes", dedicada à união de alma e corpo, e cuja tese principal é: os problemas que essa união suscita confundem dois termos, corpo e meu corpo. Essa confusão leva a que se apliquem ao primeiro categorias próprias do segundo. Examinam-se os "paradoxos ônticos" que meu corpo (a carne) inaugura; a tese de duas interpretações das medita ccedil;ões primeira e sexta é esclarecida; arrisca-se, seguindo uma indicação do autor, a abertura a uma dimensão ética que exige examinar já não a união de corpo e alma, mas sim a união pelo amor a um semelhante e à comunidade de semelhantes. (shrink)

The virtue of μεγαλοψυχία or greatness of soul is prominent in the works of Aristotle as well as in the Peripatetic and Stoic traditions. However, mention of μεγαλοψυχία is extremely rare in our surviving evidence for the Epicurean school. In this paper I reconstruct a viable Epicurean position on μεγαλοψυχία. I argue that the Epicureans have a distinctive account of the virtue that is compatible with their hedonist ethics, and that can also be seen as a reaction to Aristotle. I (...) also demonstrate that the Epicurean account relates closely to their critical engagement with the Cynics and their emphasis on the importance of friendship and generosity in the good life. (shrink)

This book offers a novel and comprehensive interpretation of Descartes’s moral philosophy. In contrast to other influential interpretations, the book argues that the central tenet of his ethical thought is that each person ought to live in the way that is most conducive to their degree of overall perfection. -/- While Descartes’s ethical thought has attracted only a very modest amount of attention among scholars, this book demonstrates that it constitutes an important and integral component of his philosophical project as (...) a whole. It argues that Descartes’s ethics constitutes a form of moral perfectionism. In the Cartesian picture, we satisfy this requirement of perfection by using our free will well in all our conduct, something which is also necessary for obtaining happiness for ourselves. To be guaranteed happiness, however, we need to acquire the virtue of generosity, which, besides a habit of using one’s free will well, entails a habit of being attentive in one’s thought to various truths about oneself and about the world we live in. Descartes offers an interesting attempt to make living well depend entirely on ourselves and not on fate or fortune. He also leaves room for the presence of passions within such a life and for acknowledging that even fully virtuous persons’ lives may differ in their degrees of overall perfection. -/- Descartes’s Moral Perfectionism will appeal to scholars and graduate students working on Descartes, the history of early modern philosophy, and the history of ethics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself, and: Maimonides and His HeritageLouis E. NewmanLove Thy Neighbor as Thyself Lenn E. Goodman New York: Oxford, 2008. 235 pp. $55.00.Maimonides and His Heritage Edited by Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, Lenn E. Goodman, and James Allen Grady Albany: SUNY, 2009. $24.95.Perhaps no principle is more central to Western religious ethics than that of “loving your neighbor as yourself.” It is at the heart of the (...) Hebrew Bible’s ethic [End Page 196] of caring for others, especially those most marginalized, both within and outside of the Israelite community. It is rooted in the belief that all humans are created in the divine image, and its implications extend to a myriad of specific injunctions designed to secure the rights of individuals as individuals as well as to ensure the just distribution of goods within society. It has been the subject of extended reflection by generations of Jewish and Christian philosophers (among many others), has spawned multiple versions of the Golden Rule, and has received modern philosophical expression in Kant’s categorical imperative. It should not surprise us, then, that any treatment of such a far-reaching religious–moral principle will require a scholar whose reach extends from the Bible to contemporary moral theory.Lenn Goodman demonstrates in this book that he is more than equal to the task. First given as two of the 2005 Gifford Lectures (the others that year were given by a Christian, a Muslim, and a secular philosopher), these chapters explore the ways in which love of neighbor is at the very heart of biblical ethics, as well as the theory of ethical obligation that it implies. Goodman’s erudition is on full display here as he moves easily from Aristotelian virtue ethics to medieval Jewish Bible commentators to contemporary natural law theorists.Following the long line of commentators who read “as thyself” as a gloss on “neighbor”—namely, that we love the other because she is a person, like oneself—Goodman writes that “our first obligation to one another is respect for subjecthood” (14). All other biblical injunctions with respect to moral behavior are merely corollaries of the notion that all persons are of equal worth insofar as they are equally created in God’s image and so entitled to equal consideration. Goodman takes pains to emphasize that this commandment, though, cannot be reduced to the sum total of positive injunctions; it aims to inculcate an attitude (“love”) that both motivates our moral behavior and extends its scope to encompass the infinite task of emulating God.The most philosophically interesting part of Goodman’s discussion comes in his treatment of monotheism’s contribution to ethics. After all, the command to love our neighbor is presented to us both as a command from God and as a command to love God by loving God’s creatures. How are our idea of God and our relationship with God correlated with our understanding of the nature of moral duty and the scope of moral life?As Goodman sees it, monotheism asserts that “God... is not just a judge but an ontic principle, the greatest reality, highest good and source of all goods, which are conceived as God’s work, expressions of his generosity and wisdom” (45). At the same time, he eschews any simple divine command theory of morality according to which the good is determined by God, either verbally or ontologically. For, “It’s not just that we know the right because we know God’s will. We also know God’s will because we know what is right” (51). This dialectical understanding of God and the good is best captured in Goodman’s claim that “we bring our moral notions, suasions, customs, instincts, attitudes [End Page 197] and intuition to the Law, and they enter into dialogue with what we read, informing our hermeneutic, as scripture itself and the conception of the God encountered in scripture, inform them in turn” (53).Goodman acknowledges that such a view runs headlong into the problem of divinely sanctioned mass murder (see the book of Joshua) and, most famously, the injunction to utterly destroy the Amalakites (Deut. 25:17... (shrink)

This exploration of the virtue of accurate self-appraisal in great people as seen by some philosophers argues that a justified belief in one's fundamental superiority need not entail arrogant or egotistical behaviour towards others, but can harmonize with marked tendencies to respectfulness, generosity and understanding, although not with moral permissiveness. Even if accurate self-appraisal means thinking oneself basically better, this virtue can be consistent with social dispositions that contemporary egalitarians admire. ;The proposal to interpret humility as accurate knowledge of one's (...) merits comes from current writers who reject any merit in humility's more traditional associations of self-effacement. The new humility, they claim, can apply to those preeminent in any field, who keep their exceptional merits in perspective in spite of recognizing them. This self-restraint is attributed to an underlying assumption that all persons have equal worth or rights. The thesis disputes the adequacy of this account by noting that moral virtues themselves can be regarded as merits of unrivalled importance and that, with regard to their distribution, people are basically unequal. Consequently, humility in highly moral people might be better seen as a kind of accurate self-estimate that balances an assumption of human equality with an equally crucial awareness that one's moral character and concomitant judgments are basically superior. The assumption of equality is claimed to be fully compatible with the belief in personal superiority and not the sine qua non of moral decency in social relations. ;Aristotle's megalopsuchos, or "great soul," and Spinoza's good person, while not egalitarians, know themselves morally preeminent, yet both possess many still admirable beliefs and traits. The same applies to one interpretation of Nietzsche's noble soul. These thinkers suggest the compatibility of self-preference with respectfulness towards all--sometimes especially towards the weakest--people. Kant's egalitarian view downplays any notion of personal superiority, but not convincingly. Aquinas suggests a tension between humility and moral competence in worldly dealings, but only because he tries to uphold the Aristotelian great soul while not jettisoning the recurrent Christian motif of self-denigration. (shrink)