Search

Do we have a unified pre-theoretical concept of morality? This paper makes a start on the larger argument that we do not, by countering criticisms of virtue ethics on the ground that it does not adequately capture such a pre-theoretical concept. One criticism is discussed and met, namely that the reasons on which virtuous people act fail to have the special force of moral reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most controversial issues in recent studies of Fichte concerns the status of his normative ethics, that is, his theory of what makes actions morally good or bad. Scholars are divided over Fichte's view regarding the 'final end' of moral striving, since it appears this end can be either a specific goal permitting maximizing calculations (the consequentialist reading defended by Kosch 2015), or an indeterminate goal permitting only duty-based decisions (the deontological reading defended by Wood 2016). While I think both interpretive positions contain an element of truth, my aim in this paper is to defend a third alternative, according to which Fichte's normative ethics presents us with a unique form of social perfectionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Synthesis Philosophica is the property of Croatian Philosophical Society and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article argues that Chrétien de Troyes' Yvain serves as an exemplum of Christian virtue through which the author explores caritas—love directed toward a higher purpose than oneself—as the theological virtue under which all others are ordered and which the hero Yvain must work to perfect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the aspects of proportionment of happiness to virtue and the relevance of future divine justice amidst many moral difficulties surrounding the idea. It explores the transactional model of punishment and reward for those who neglect their continuing relationship with God who judges. It mentions that the idea of a proportionment of happiness to virtue represents a simplification of the on-going task human beings face in realizing morality among themselves.

The article discusses the thoughts of the philosopher Charles S. Peirce on ideals and ethics. A brief overview of Pierce's phenomenological categories, and their implications for personal identity, is provided. Topics such as evolutionary love, concrete reasonableness, and the relationship between a person and the world are discussed. This leads to a discussion of objective ethical theory in Pierce's work. An argument is presented that people become authentic, and capable of living a good life, through the embodiment of ethical ideals.

Examples of "nameless" virtues are discussed by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics. They are also found in the Confucian Analects. This paper explores what makes a virtue nameless in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Analects, and then argues that restrained speech is best understood as a nameless virtue in the Analects. It further argues that the virtue of restrained speech merits careful study because it contributes to our understanding of nameless virtues generally, while also deepening our understanding of Kongzi's ethics by showing why he thought it was important to cultivate certain virtues. Indeed, many of the things that make restrained speech valuable hold in a contemporary setting as well, making restrained speech a virtue that is important for us today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the psychological phenomena of "endurance" and "non-endurance," and the ethical implications of a Confucian approach, which regards non-endurance as an impulse of primary virtue. It states that human beings have indefinite desires and intentions, thus a contradiction emerged between limited resources and boundless desires. In order to achieve a balance development, various civilizations have laid down different visible and invisible rules so as to enforce restraints on people's desire with different social status. These rules are actually application of the skill of endurance, which could be a choice made due to fear of punishment. However, from Confucius' perspective, one achieves the greatest virtue-benevolence through a process of exercising self-restraint.

The author contends that attempts to define modesty have failed because they are unable to adequately account for the virtue's social dimensions. He claims that modesty is a valuable disposition for moral agents to possess because it facilitates jealousy, bitterness and other emotions that arise in social circumstances. Moreover, he discusses the definition of modesty offered by Michael Ridge, who attempted to rule out false modesty using means that lead him to neglect the social aspects of the virtue. Lastly, the author offers his own definition of modesty and explains some features of it to promote its advantages.

Aristotle famously held that there is a crucial difference between the person who merely acts rightly and the person who is wholehearted in what she does. He captures this contrast by insisting on a distinction between continence and full virtue. One way of accounting for the important difference here is to suppose that, for the genuinely virtuous person, the requirements of virtue “silence” competing reasons for action. I argue that the silencing interpretation is not compelling. As Aristotle rightly saw, virtue can have a cost, and a mark of the wise person is that she recognizes it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the prominence of the concept of virtue in contemporary ethical theory, accounts of virtue have often left readers with the impression that the virtuous person is an unattainable ideal or is just psychologically implausible. This article argues that reviving the ancient Greek idea that virtues are like practical skills can help provide a more plausible account of virtue and the virtuous person. The moral knowledge of the virtuous person is analogous to the practical knowledge of the expert in a skill. Instead of relying on a reconstruction of an ancient account of skills for the comparison to virtue, this paper adapts a modem account of skill acquisition developed by Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus in their research on artificial intelligence and human expertise. The skill model of virtue offers a promising direction for virtue theory, by using the research on skills to illuminate the otherwise murky concept of virtue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Julia Annas is one of the few modern writers on virtue that has attempted to recover the ancient idea that virtues are similar to skills. In doing so, she is arguing for a particular account of virtue, one in which the intellectual structure of virtue is analogous to the intellectual structure of practical skills. The main benefit of this skill model of virtue is that it can ground a plausible account of the moral epistemology of virtue. This benefit, though, is only available to some accounts of virtue. Annas claims that Aristotle rejects this skill model of virtue, and so the model of virtues as a skill that Annas endorses for the modern virtue theory is Socratic.This paper argues that while Aristotle rejects the Socratic model of virtue as a skill, he does not reject the model of virtue as a skill altogether. Annas has mischaracterized Aristotle’s position on the skill model, because she has not recognized that Aristotle endorses a different account of the structure of skill than the one put forth by Socrates. In addition, recent research on expertise provides an account of skills very much at odds with the description of skills offered by Annas, but similar to the account endorsed by Aristotle.Contrary to Annas, not only is the skill model of virtue compatible with a neo-Aristotelian account of virtue, but it also appears that basing a skill model of virtue on a Socratic account of virtue is likely to prove unsuccessful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we posit a radical retheorization of anorexia as a form of deviance. We examine how the disciplinary practices and moral technologies typical of contemporary secondary schooling signify and enter into the articulation of three ‘virtue discourses’ (discipline, achievement and healthism), and tease out how these ‘virtue discourses’ play into the formation of the ‘anorexic’ subject. Informed by Foucauldian theory, our analysis draws on our life history interview study with teenage girls diagnosed with anorexia nervosa and their parents. We argue that anorexia can be understood not as a form of deviance but as a ‘paradox of virtue’ involving zealous compliance with and taking up of socially and culturally sanctioned ‘virtue discourses’ that are immanent in schooling and wider society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the notion of bringing a family business's family values and traditions regarding religion and forgiveness into their everyday lives to create healing when family business differences have broken or severed family relationships. The philosophy of the ritual is to pair it with other family rituals and use it as a tool to begin to focus on the future. The ritual helps the family understand that hurts are inevitable in the context of family businesses, but that the ritual is a way to get beyond them and start over again. The forgiveness ritual that is created draws on the family's history and use of religious traditions to create forgiveness and a new beginning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on city officials' actions when morality issues (gay rights, pornography regulations, etc.) are at stake. Cases drawn from a systematic sample of cities reveal a continuum of local officials' actions ranging from actions unfavorable to activists to evasion of the issue to actions favorable to activists. In order to account for this variation, hypotheses are developed that identify, institutional, arrangements, ideology of issue activists, and the community's cultural context as key explanatory concepts. Empirical tests show that (a) officials m cities with more developed counter-cultural elements handle morality issues differently than officials in cities where orthodox/traditional sub-cultural elements dominate, (b) narrower measures of community demand/references specific to particular kinds of incidents are less useful in predicting governmental action on these issues, (c) institutions (ward versus at-large council elections; mayor versus city manager executive) are important in mediating the expectations or pressures stemming from the local sub-culture, and (d) official actions vary considerably depending upon the ideological stance and degree of controversiality of issue activists, but this too is contingent on the mediating effects of institutional arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Michael Sandel's formative project about perfectionism, freedom, and virtue. With regards to perfection-based politics, Sandel works as a republicanism that is teleology or perfectionist in evaluating public rules in terms of the moral worth or intrinsic good of the ends they serve. On this view, the right is determined by what honors or advances some important human good. Furthermore, Sandel goes to defend a positive conception of freedom and the public promotion of substantive virtues linked to the realization of that freedom and that good.

The author reflects on the tension between ideals and reality. She asserts that a tension is generated out of the struggle to live an ethical life in a world characterized by the depersonalization of large-scale bureaucracies and the attendant breakdown in communication and irresponsibility of actions. She discusses the steps that must be taken to eradicate poverty. She believes that the problem of poverty must be addressed in a way that is consistent with one's ideals.

This article discusses several observations on the relationship between sociological research and theory. What sociologists and social anthropologists call the cultural value or belief system of a society can be lived up to only partially, fragmentarily, intermittently and only in an approximate way. Ideals and beliefs can only influence conduct alongside of personal ties, primordial attachments, and responsibilities in corporate bodies and they can come into play primarily in the form of vague notions regarding the right and good in concrete forms. For the rest of the time, the ultimate values of then society, what is sacred to its members, are suspended amidst the distractions of concrete tasks, which makes the values ambiguous and thus gives freedom for individual innovation, creation, and adaptation. Theory will bear fruit in sociology only when it has been assimilated into the perception of concrete and particular events, and not as long as it is thought to be something which comes before and emerges from research. Sociological theory must be the explicit articulation of our thought about concrete events, and the explication of the presuppositions and implications of the thought so articulated.

The article offers suggestions for teachers in the U.S. on how to conduct their classes on Monday mornings. Aside from teaching the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic, the children should be trained to have such habits of thought, feeling and choice, which focus on high ideals. A fragment from a life-story, paragraph from a newspaper, or a few lines of poetry may provide the theme for cultivating the right ideals in pupils.