Happiness and Greek Ethical Thought

Happiness and Greek Ethical Thought
Author: M. Andrew Holowchak
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2004-08-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1847142052

This book presents a fresh exploration of happiness through the ideas of the ancient Greek philosophers. It introduces readers to the main currents of Greek ethical thought (Socratic living, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Epicureanism, Scepticism, Stoicism, Cynicism) and takes a close look at characters such as Socrates, Diogenes and Alexander the Great. Yet Happiness and Greek Ethical Thought is much more than just a casual stroll through ancient thinking. It attempts to show how certain common themes in Greek thought are essential for living a happy life in any age. The author maintains that, in many respects, the Greek integrative ideal, contrary to the hedonistic individualism that many pluralistic societies at least implicitly advocate, is a much richer alternative that warrants honest reconsideration today.

The Morality of Happiness

The Morality of Happiness
Author: Julia Annas
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 516
Release: 1993-08-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780198024163

Ancient ethical theories, based on the notions of virtue and happiness, have struck many as an attractive alternative to modern theories. But we cannot find out whether this is true until we understand ancient ethics--and to do this we need to examine the basic structure of ancient ethical theory, not just the details of one or two theories. In this book, Annas brings together the results of a wide-ranging study of ancient ethical philosophy and presents it in a way that is easily accessible to anyone with an interest in ancient or modern ethics. She examines the fundamental notions of happiness and virtue, the role of nature in ethical justification and the relation between concern for self and concern for others. Her careful examination of the ancient debates and arguments shows that many widespread assumptions about ancient ethics are quite mistaken. Ancient ethical theories are not egoistic, and do not depend for their acceptance on metaphysical theories of a teleological kind. Most centrally, they are recognizably theories of morality, and the ancient disputes about the place of virtue in happiness can be seen as akin to modern disputes about the demands of morality.

The Quest for the Good Life

The Quest for the Good Life
Author: Øyvind Rabbås
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2015-10-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191064025

How should I live? How can I be happy? What is happiness, really? These are perennial questions, which in recent times have become the object of diverse kinds of academic research. Ancient philosophers placed happiness at the centre of their thought, and we can trace the topic through nearly a millennium. While the centrality of the notion of happiness in ancient ethics is well known, this book is unique in that it focuses directly on this notion, as it appears in the ancient texts. Fourteen papers by an international team of scholars map the various approaches and conceptions found from the Pre-Socratics through Plato, Aristotle, Hellenistic Philosophy, to the Neo-Platonists and Augustine in late antiquity. While not promising a formula that can guarantee a greater share in happiness to the reader, the book addresses questions raised by ancient thinkers that are still of deep concern to many people today: Do I have to be a morally good person in order to be happy? Are there purely external criteria for happiness such as success according to received social norms or is happiness merely a matter of an internal state of the person? How is happiness related to the stages of life and generally to time? In this book the reader will find an informed discussion of these and many other questions relating to happiness.

Happiness and Greek Ethical Thought

Happiness and Greek Ethical Thought
Author: Mark Holowchak
Publisher:
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2004
Genre: Ethics, Ancient
ISBN: 9781472597922

This book presents a fresh exploration of happiness through the ideas of the ancient Greek philosophers. It introduces readers to the main currents of Greek ethical thought (Socratic living, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Epicureanism, Scepticism, Stoicism, Cynicism) and takes a close look at characters such as Socrates, Diogenes and Alexander the Great. Yet Happiness and Greek Ethical Thought is much more than just a casual stroll through ancient thinking. It attempts to show how certain common themes in Greek thought (the role of reason as a guide for all actions, regard for virtue as a type of.

Happiness and Greek Ethical Thought

Happiness and Greek Ethical Thought
Author: M. Andrew Holowchak
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2004-08-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1847142052

This book presents a fresh exploration of happiness through the ideas of the ancient Greek philosophers. It introduces readers to the main currents of Greek ethical thought (Socratic living, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Epicureanism, Scepticism, Stoicism, Cynicism) and takes a close look at characters such as Socrates, Diogenes and Alexander the Great. Yet Happiness and Greek Ethical Thought is much more than just a casual stroll through ancient thinking. It attempts to show how certain common themes in Greek thought are essential for living a happy life in any age. The author maintains that, in many respects, the Greek integrative ideal, contrary to the hedonistic individualism that many pluralistic societies at least implicitly advocate, is a much richer alternative that warrants honest reconsideration today.

The Virtues of Happiness

The Virtues of Happiness
Author: Paul Bloomfield
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2016-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190612002

As children, we learn life is unfair: bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. So, it is natural to ask, "Why play fairly in an unfair world? If being immoral will get you what you want and you know you can't get caught, why not do it?" The answers, as argued herein, begin by rejecting the idea that morality and happiness are at odds with one another. From this point of view, we can see how immorality undermines its perpetrator's happiness: self-respect is necessary for happiness, and immorality undermines self-respect. As we see how our self-respect is conditional upon how we respect others, we learn to evaluate and value ourselves, and others, appropriately. The central thesis is the result of combining the ancient Greek conception of happiness (eudaimonia) with a modern conception of self-respect. We become happy, we life the best life we can, only by becoming virtuous: by being as courageous, just, temperate, and wise as can be. These are the virtues of happiness. This book explains why it is bad to be bad and good to be good, and what happens to people's values as their practical rationality develops.

Fiction and the Philosophy of Happiness

Fiction and the Philosophy of Happiness
Author: Brian Michael Norton
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 1611484308

Fiction and the Philosophy of Happiness explores the novel's participation in eighteenth-century "inquiries after happiness," an ancient ethical project that acquired new urgency with the rise of subjective models of wellbeing in early modern and Enlightenment Europe. Combining archival research on treatises on happiness with illuminating readings of Samuel Johnson, Laurence Sterne, Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Godwin and Mary Hays, Brian Michael Norton's innovative study asks us to see the novel itself as a key instrument of Enlightenment ethics. His central argument is that the novel form provided a uniquely valuable tool for thinking about the nature and challenges of modern happiness: whereas treatises sought to theorize the conditions that made happiness possible in general, eighteenth-century fiction excelled at interrogating the problem on the level of the particular, in the details of a single individual's psychology and unique circumstances. Fiction and the Philosophy of Happiness demonstrates further that through their fine-tuned attention to subjectivity and social context these writers called into question some cherished and time-honored assumptions about the good life: happiness is in one's power; virtue is the exclusive path to happiness; only vice can make us miserable. This elegant and richly interdisciplinary book offers a new understanding of the cultural work the eighteenth-century novel performed as well as an original interpretation of the Enlightenment's ethical legacy.

Nicomachean Ethics

Nicomachean Ethics
Author: Aristotle
Publisher: SDE Classics
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2019-11-05
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9781951570279

The Oxford Handbook of Virtue

The Oxford Handbook of Virtue
Author: Nancy E. Snow
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 905
Release: 2018
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 019938519X

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

Happiness and Greek Ethical Thought

Happiness and Greek Ethical Thought
Author: M. Andrew Holowchak
Publisher: Continuum
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2004-10-31
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780826474728

This book presents a fresh exploration of happiness through the ideas of the ancient Greek philosophers. It introduces readers to the main currents of Greek ethical thought (Socratic living, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Epicureanism, Scepticism, Stoicism, Cynicism) and takes a close look at characters such as Socrates, Diogenes and Alexander the Great. Yet Happiness and Greek Ethical Thought is much more than just a casual stroll through ancient thinking. It attempts to show how certain common themes in Greek thought are essential for living a happy life in any age. The author maintains that, in many respects, the Greek integrative ideal, contrary to the hedonistic individualism that many pluralistic societies at least implicitly advocate, is a much richer alternative that warrants honest reconsideration today.