Why is it that most among the relatively few moral philosophers since Kant who, like J. S. Mill, have discussed the question whether there can be moral duties to oneself, have answered it negatively? One reason is that those philosophers have supposed that all moral action must be, inter alia, social; and they may have thought so because of their commitment to what is here called a 'corporationist' moral view. But such a conception of morality as social is objectionable because (...) it does not square with ordinary opinion and because it introduces an artificial division between types of action which go together in real life. (shrink)

Of the six basic categories which a normative ethical theory may recognize and exemplify, The first five are fairly clearly employed by kant in the "tugendlehre", But the sixth is not given adequate recognition by him. In order to establish those conclusions, One has to investigate the leading notion of the "tugendlehre", That of obligatory ends. Closely connected with that notion is kant's division of duties into perfect and imperfect ones. Consideration of a number of ways of elucidating that division (...) leads one to conclude that it is not really so sharp as kant suggests. The sphere of duty comprises a continuum of duties of wider and of narrower obligation; beyond that sphere belong many things which one morally "ought" to prize and to pursue, But which do not constitute obligatory ends for men. (shrink)

There are two central distinctions upon which the present argument is predicated. First is the distinction between two correlative aspects of what is involved in a value-judgment or in an “experiencing” of value: actualized-value and value-ideal. This we find to be a distinction without which all attempt at clear talk about “value” is so hopelessly ambiguous as to be unintelligible. Second is the distinction between property-platonism and platonism-proper. After these two sets of distinctions have been explicated, our thesis will be (...) pursued: Moore is not a value-platonist-proper at all, because his famous “non-natural” property, goodness, is not a value-ideal. Moore is merely a value-property-platonist. (shrink)

KANT is the foremost philosopher to have argued at length for there being moral duties to oneself, and he puts forward the most extensive list of such duties to be found in philosophical writings. Kant's most detailed statement of his views concerning duties to oneself is to be found in his late work, the Tugendlehre or Doctrine of Virtue, which forms the second part of his Metaphysic of Morals, that work for which the much more famous Grundlegung was the foundational (...) study. I shall confine my consideration of Kant entirely to the Tugendlehre, for his views there, at least concerning duties to oneself, represent only an amplification of ideas that he had expressed in earlier writings. (shrink)

The following pages offer, for the first time in English, a translation of Spinoza's Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione which aims to render Spinoza's views as literally as possible; the aim is accuracy rather than elegance. In addition to this new translation itself, I have prepared an extensive commentary on textual problems posed, e.g., by discrepancies (all of which have been indicated) between the original Latin and the original Dutch editions of the treatise, or by the difficulties of rendering certain of (...) Spinoza's phrases into English. There is also a relatively brief introduction, and a detailed index (which no previous English translation of this treatise has included). (shrink)

Various philosophers have already written articles about what might be called the philosophical lessons to be derived from James’s tales and novels. Showing a close acquaintance with those articles as well as with recent literary studies of James’s work, Pippin, the author of several earlier books concerned with modernity or with modern philosophical texts, has here produced a book which is at once a detailed and subtle interpretation of several of James’s most famous fictional works and also the presentation of (...) an explicit philosophical view about “modern moral life” that appears to be adumbrated in those fictions. That view is that in the modern world, where fluid relationships based ultimately upon money or the lack of it have undermined traditional authority, the possibility of a meaningful life for oneself turns out to require appropriate recognition of others in what amounts to a continuing dialogue, one in which the meaning of one’s own intentions, desires, and attitudes is dependent, in large part, on what others “make” of them and on how they respond, while at the same time one’s response to others is importantly determinative of who they are and of what they mean or meant. Expressed differently, the view is that there are, at least in the modern world, no social—and, indeed, no moral or psychological— facts, but only at best mutually supportive interpretations, each the product of a person’s self-reflections and of one’s responses to the reflections of that person in others. Pippin, however, is not directly concerned to defend the latter view, although it seems clear that he regards it as at least fundamentally correct. His principal concern, rather, is to defend, through his careful readings of various of James’s works, the thesis that that view is implicit in such great works of James’s as The Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl. In a related way, Pippin takes James’s wonderful stories about ghosts or about secret truths to be concerned with modern persons who, despite their modernity, are committed, even if not in a wholly conscious way, to the existence of real social or moral facts of the matter. (shrink)