The ethical naturalist asks us to take seriously the idea that practical norms are a species of natural norms, such that moral goodness is a kind of natural goodness. The ethical naturalist has not demonstrated, however, how it is possible for a power of reason to be governed by natural norms, because her own attempts to do this have led her into a dilemma. If she takes the first horn and stresses that ethical naturalism provides objective, natural norms of the (...) species, then she fails to show how such norms are practical, or operative from a deliberative point of view. If she takes the second horn and stresses that ethical naturalism yields a picture of knowledge of human life that is practical because it comes through virtuous dispositions of intellect and will, then she fails to have an account of how it is knowledge of facts about a life form, potentially accessible to a non-human knower. In this paper, I argue that one potential resolution to this dilemma can be found in the writings of Thomas Aquinas. On a broadly Thomist account of practical reason, the first principles of practical reason are our common human ends or goods, which are constitutive of a good human life. The work of practical reason on this naturalistic account is twofold: to conceive and order these ends into some general conception of how to live, and to apply this general conception to the particular situations of one’s life in order to realize one’s vision of the good life, here and now. (shrink)

Philosophers of action and perception have reached a consensus: the term ‘intentionality’ has significantly different senses in their respective fields. But Anscombe argues that these distinct senses are analogically united in such a way that one cannot understand the concept if one focuses exclusively on its use in one’s preferred philosophical sub-discipline. She highlights three salient points of analogy: (i) intentional objects are given by expressions that employ a “description under which;” (ii) intentional descriptions are typically vague and indeterminate; and (...) (iii) intentional descriptions may be false. I explore these three features as they apply to both perception and action and defend Anscombe’s view that the analogical concept of intentionality is a grammatical concept. That is, there are two distinctive linguistic/social practices that involve, respectively, a special sense of the question ‘Why?’ and a special sense of the question ‘What?’ To competently ask and answer the questions that constitute these practices not only reflects, but also conveys a grammatical understanding of intentionality’s basic, formal structure. (shrink)

This essay revisits Elizabeth Anscombe's ‘Modern Moral Philosophy' with two goals in mind. The first is to recover and reclaim its radical vision, by setting forth a unified account of its three guiding theses. On the interpretation advanced here, Anscombe's three theses are not independently intelligible; their underlying unity is the perceived necessity of absolute prohibitions for any sound account of practical reason. The second goal is to show that Anscombe allows for a thoroughly unmodern sense of ‘moral' that applies (...) to human actions; the paper concludes with some reasons to think that this unmodern sense of ‘moral' is worthy of further philosophical attention and defense. (shrink)

The perennial appeal of Kantian ethics surely lies in its conception of autonomy. Kantianism tells us that the good life is fundamentally about acting in accordance with an internal rather than an external authority: a good will is simply a will in agreement with its own rational, self-constituting law. In this paper, I argue against Kantian autonomy, on the grounds that it excessively narrows our concept of the good, it confuses the difference between practical and theoretical modes of knowing the (...) good, and it cannot respect the essential efficacy of the principles of practical reason. (shrink)

The prevailing consensus among leibniz scholars is that Leibniz’s rational psychology is thoroughly egoist. To take a recent and especially prominent example, Nicholas Jolley compares Leibniz to his philosophical adversaries Hobbes and Spinoza in just this respect. He writes,Leibniz is as uncompromising as they are in maintaining that no one deliberately does anything except for the sake of his own welfare, for one seeks the good even of those whom we love for the sake of the pleasure we derive from (...) their happiness. According to this standard reading, Leibniz argues that all acts of altruism are merely apparent; ultimately, he maintains, such acts are done for the sake of the pleasure they bring about in the agent. (shrink)

Constitutivism locates the ground of practical normativity in features constitutive of rational agency and rests on the concept of a constitutive norm – a norm that is internal to a thing such that...

Recent research in the humanities and social sciences suggests that individuals who understand themselves as belonging to something greater than the self--a family, community, or religious or spiritual group--often feel happier, have a deeper sense of purpose or meaning in their lives, and have overall better life outcomes than those who do not. Some positive and personality psychologists have labeled this location of the self within a broader perspective "self-transcendence." This book presents and integrates new, interdisciplinary research into virtue, happiness, (...) and the meaning of life by re-orienting these discussions around the concept of self-transcendence. The essays are organized around three broad themes connected to self-transcendence. First, they investigate how self-transcendence helps us to understand aspects of the moral life as it is studied within psychology, including the development of wisdom, the practice of moral praise, and psychological well-being. Second, they explore how self-transcendence is linked to virtue in different religious and spiritual traditions including Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Finally, they ask how self-transcendence can help us theorize about Aristotelean and Thomist conceptions of virtue, like hope and piety, and how this helps us to re-conceptualize happiness and meaning in life. (shrink)