Action and Character According to Aristotle

Action and Character According to Aristotle
Author: Kevin L. Flannery
Publisher: CUA Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2013-09-24
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0813221609

Aristotle, according to the author, depicts the way in which human acts of various sorts and in various combinations determine the logical structure of moral character. Some moral characters--or character types--manage to incorporate a high degree of practical consistency; others incorporate less, without forfeiting their basic orientation toward the good. Still others approach utter inconsistency or moral deprivation, although even these, insofar as they are responsible for their actions, retain a core element of rationality in their souls. According to Aristotle, moral character depends ultimately on the structure of individual acts and on how they fit together into a whole that is consistent--or not consistent--with justice and friendship.--From publisher's description.

Aristotle's Ethics

Aristotle's Ethics
Author: Hope May
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2011-10-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1441182748

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is devoted to the topic of human happiness.Yet, although Aristotle's conception of happiness is central to his whole philosophical project, there is much controversy surrounding it. Hope May offers a new interpretation of Aristotle's account of happiness - one which incorporates Aristotle's views about the biological development of human beings.May argues that the relationship amongst the moral virtues, the intellectual virtues, and happiness, is best understood through the lens of developmentalism.On this view, happiness emerges from the cultivation of a number of virtues that are developmentally related.May goes on to show how contemporary scholarship in psychology, ethical theory and legal philosophy signals a return to Aristotelian ethics.Specifically, May shows how a theory of motivation known as Self-Determination Theory and recent research on goal attainment have deep affinities to Aristotle's ethical theory.May argues that this recent work can ground a contemporary virtue theory that acknowledges the centrality of autonomy in a way that captures the fundamental tenets of Aristotle's ethics.

Nicomachean Ethics

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

Aristotle on Desire

Aristotle on Desire
Author: Giles Pearson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2012-08-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1139561014

Desire is a central concept in Aristotle's ethical and psychological works, but he does not provide us with a systematic treatment of the notion itself. This book reconstructs the account of desire latent in his various scattered remarks on the subject and analyses its role in his moral psychology. Topics include: the range of states that Aristotle counts as desires (orexeis); objects of desire (orekta) and the relation between desires and envisaging prospects; desire and the good; Aristotle's three species of desire: epithumia (pleasure-based desire), thumos (retaliatory desire) and boulêsis (good-based desire - in a narrower notion of 'good' than that which connects desire more generally to the good); Aristotle's division of desires into rational and non-rational; Aristotle and some current views on desire; and the role of desire in Aristotle's moral psychology. The book will be of relevance to anyone interested in Aristotle's ethics or psychology.

Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism

Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism
Author: Brad Inwood
Publisher: Oxford [England] : Clarendon Press
Total Pages: 362
Release: 1985
Genre: Ethics, Ancient
ISBN: 0198247397

This book reconstructs in detail the older Stoic theory of the psychology of action, discussing it in relation to Aristotelian, Epicurean, Platonic, and some of the more influential modern theories. Important Greek terms are transliterated and explained; no knowledge of Greek is required.

The Virtue of Aristotle's Ethics

The Virtue of Aristotle's Ethics
Author: Paula Gottlieb
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2009-04-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 052176176X

This text looks at Aristotle's claims, particularly the much-maligned doctrine of the mean.

Plato's Moral Psychology

Plato's Moral Psychology
Author: Rachana Kamtekar
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2017-12-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0192519387

Plato's Moral Psychology is concerned with Plato's account of the soul and its impact on our living well or badly, virtuously or viciously. The core of Plato's moral psychology is his account of human motivation, and Rachana Kamtekar argues that throughout the dialogues Plato maintains that human beings have a natural desire for our own good, and that actions and conditions contrary to this desire are involuntary (from which follows the 'Socratic paradox' that wrongdoing is involuntary). Our natural desire for our own good may be manifested in different ways: by our pursuit of what we calculate is best, but also by our pursuit of pleasant or fine things - pursuits which Plato assigns to distinct parts of the soul. Kamtekar develops a very different interpretation of Plato's moral psychology from the mainstream interpretation, according to which Plato first proposes that human beings only do what we believe to be the best of the things we can do ('Socratic intellectualism') and then in the middle dialogues rejects this in favour of the view that the soul is divided into parts with some good-dependent and some good-independent motivations ('the divided soul').

Evil in Aristotle

Evil in Aristotle
Author: Pavlos Kontos
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2018-02-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1107161975

Provides the first full study of Aristotle's notion of evil and sheds light on its content, potential, and influence.

Moral Psychology

Moral Psychology
Author: Valerie Tiberius
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2014-05-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1136304371

This is the first philosophy textbook in moral psychology, introducing students to a range of philosophical topics and debates such as: What is moral motivation? Do reasons for action always depend on desires? Is emotion or reason at the heart of moral judgment? Under what conditions are people morally responsible? Are there self-interested reasons for people to be moral? Moral Psychology: A Contemporary Introduction presents research by philosophers and psychologists on these topics, and addresses the overarching question of how empirical research is (or is not) relevant to philosophical inquiry.

Socratic Moral Psychology

Socratic Moral Psychology
Author: Thomas C. Brickhouse
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2012-01-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9781107403925

Socrates' moral psychology is widely thought to be 'intellectualist' in the sense that, for Socrates, every ethical failure to do what is best is exclusively the result of some cognitive failure to apprehend what is best. Until publication of this book, the view that, for Socrates, emotions and desires have no role to play in causing such failure went unchallenged. This book argues against the orthodox view of Socratic intellectualism and offers in its place a comprehensive alternative account that explains why Socrates believed that emotions, desires and appetites can influence human motivation and lead to error. Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith defend the study of Socrates' philosophy and offer an alternative interpretation of Socratic moral psychology. Their novel account of Socrates' conception of virtue and how it is acquired shows that Socratic moral psychology is considerably more sophisticated than scholars have supposed.