The British Moralists on Human Nature and the Birth of Secular Ethics

The British Moralists on Human Nature and the Birth of Secular Ethics PDF Author: Michael B. Gill
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139458299
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Book Description
Uncovering the historical roots of naturalistic, secular contemporary ethics, in this volume Michael Gill shows how the British moralists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries completed a Copernican revolution in moral philosophy. They effected a shift from thinking of morality as independent of human nature to thinking of it as part of human nature itself. He also shows how the British Moralists - sometimes inadvertently, sometimes by design - disengaged ethical thinking, first from distinctly Christian ideas and then from theistic commitments altogether. Examining in detail the arguments of Whichcote, Cudworth, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson against Calvinist conceptions of original sin and egoistic conceptions of human motivation, Gill also demonstrates how Hume combined the ideas of earlier British moralists with his own insights to produce an account of morality and human nature that undermined some of his predecessors' most deeply held philosophical goals.

The British Moralists on Human Nature and the Birth of Secular Ethics

The British Moralists on Human Nature and the Birth of Secular Ethics PDF Author: Michael B. Gill
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781107165403
Category : Ethics
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Book Description
Uncovering the historical roots of naturalistic, secular contemporary ethics, Gill shows how the British moralists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries completed a Copernican revolution in moral philosophy, effecting a shift from thinking of morality as independent of human nature to thinking of it as part of human nature itself.

The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century

The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century PDF Author: James A. Harris
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191502693
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 1541

Book Description
Philosophy in eighteenth-century Britain was diverse, vibrant, and sophisticated. This was the age of Hume and Berkeley and Reid, of Hutcheson and Kames and Smith, of Ferguson and Burke and Wollstonecraft. Important and influential works were published in every area of philosophy, from the theory of vision to theories of political resistance, from the philosophy of language to accounts of ways of governing the passions. The philosophers of eighteenth-century Britain were enormously influential, in France, in Italy, in Germany, and in America. Their ideas and arguments remain a powerful presence in philosophy three centuries later. This Oxford Handbook is the first book ever to provide comprehensive coverage of the full range of philosophical writing in Britain in the eighteenth century. It provides accounts of the writings of all the major figures, but also puts those figures in the context provided by a host of writers less well known today. The book has five principal sections: 'Logic and Metaphysics', 'The Passions', 'Morals', 'Criticism', and 'Politics'. Each section comprises four chapters, providing detailed coverage of all of the important aspects of its subject matter. There is also an introductory section, with chapters on the general character of philosophizing in eighteenth-century Britain, and a concluding section on the important question of the relation at this time between philosophy and religion. The authors of the chapters are experts in their fields. They include philosophers, historians, political theorists, and literary critics, and they teach in colleges and universities in Britain, in Europe, and in North America.

The British Moralists and the Internal 'Ought'

The British Moralists and the Internal 'Ought' PDF Author: Stephen L. Darwall
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521457828
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Book Description
This book is a major work in the history of ethics, and provides the first study of early modern British philosophy in several decades. Professor Darwall discerns two distinct traditions feeding into the moral philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On the one hand, there is the empirical, naturalist tradition, comprising Hobbes, Locke, Cumberland, Hutcheson, and Hume, which argues that obligation is the practical force that empirical discoveries acquire in the process of deliberation. On the other hand, there is a group including Cudworth, Shaftesbury, Butler, and in some moments Locke, which views obligation as inconceivable without autonomy and which seeks to develop a theory of the will as self-determining.

The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century

The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century PDF Author: Peter R. Anstey
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191642002
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 672

Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century comprises twenty-six new essays by leading experts in the field. This unique scholarly resource provides advanced students and scholars with a comprehensive overview of the issues that are informing research on the subject, while at the same time offering new directions for research to take. The volume is ambitious in scope: it covers the whole of the seventeenth century, ranging from Francis Bacon to John Locke and Isaac Newton. The Handbook contains five parts: the introductory Part I examines the state of the discipline and the nature of its practitioners as the century unfolded; Part II discusses the leading natural philosophers and the philosophy of nature, including Bacon, Boyle, and Newton; Part III covers knowledge and the human faculty of the understanding; Part IV explores the leading topics in British moral philosophy from the period; and Part V concerns political philosophy. In addition to dealing with canonical authors and celebrated texts, such as Thomas Hobbes and his Leviathan, the Handbook discusses many less well-known figures and debates from the period, whose importance is only now being appreciated.

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Ethics

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Ethics PDF Author: Roger Crisp
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191655759
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 920

Book Description
Philosophical ethics consists in the human endeavour to answer rationally the fundamental question of how we should live. The Oxford Handbook of the History of Ethics explores the history of philosophical ethics in the western tradition from Homer until the present day. It provides a broad overview of the views of many of the main thinkers, schools, and periods, and includes in addition essays on topics such as autonomy and impartiality. The authors are international leaders in their field, and use their expertise and specialist knowledge to illuminate the relevance of their work to discussions in contemporary ethics. The essays are specially written for this volume, and in each case introduce the reader to the main lines of interpretation and criticism that have arisen in the professional history of philosophy over the past two or three decades.

Hume’s Moral Philosophy and Contemporary Psychology

Hume’s Moral Philosophy and Contemporary Psychology PDF Author: Philip A. Reed
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351720511
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Book Description
Recent work at the intersection of moral philosophy and the philosophy of psychology has dealt mostly with Aristotelian virtue ethics. The dearth of scholarship that engages with Hume’s moral philosophy, however, is both noticeable and peculiar. Hume's Moral Philosophy and Contemporary Psychology demonstrates how Hume’s moral philosophy comports with recent work from the empirical sciences and moral psychology. It shows how contemporary work in virtue ethics has much stronger similarities to the metaphysically thin conception of human nature that Hume developed, rather than the metaphysically thick conception of human nature that Aristotle espoused. It also reveals how contemporary work in moral motivation and moral epistemology has strong affinities with themes in Hume’s sympathetic sentimentalism.

The Routledge Companion to Ethics

The Routledge Companion to Ethics PDF Author: John Skorupski
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136964223
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 877

Book Description
The Routledge Companion to Ethics is an outstanding survey of the whole field of ethics by a distinguished international team of contributors. Over 60 chapters are divided into six clear sections: the history of ethics meta-ethics perspectives from outside ethics ethical perspectives morality debates in ethics. The Companion opens with a comprehensive historical overview of ethics, including chapters on Plato, Aristotle, Hume, and Kant, and ethical thinking in China, India and the Arabic tradition. The second part covers the domain of meta-ethics. The third part covers important challenges to ethics from the fields of anthropology, psychology, sociobiology and economics. The fourth and fifth sections cover competing theories of ethics and the nature of morality respectively, with entries on consequentialism, Kantian morality, virtue ethics, relativism, evil, and responsibility amongst many others. A comprehensive final section includes the most important topics and controversies in applied ethics, such as rights, justice and distribution, the end of life, the environment, poverty, war and terrorism. The Routledge Companion to Ethics is a superb resource for anyone interested in the subject, whether in philosophy or related disciplines such as politics, education, or law. Fully indexed and cross-referenced, with helpful further reading sections at the end of each chapter, it is ideal for those coming to the field of ethics for the first time as well as readers already familiar with the subject.

The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment

The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment PDF Author: Alexander Broadie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108420702
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 395

Book Description
Provides a comprehensive introduction to the full range of achievements of the Scottish thinkers who so profoundly influenced western culture.

Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy Volume VI

Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy Volume VI PDF Author: Daniel Garber
Publisher: Oxford University Press (UK)
ISBN: 0199659605
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390

Book Description
Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy is an annual series, presenting a selection of the best current work in the history of early modern philosophy. It focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant. It also publishes papers on thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are important in illuminating early modern thought. The articles in OSEMP will be of importance to specialists within the discipline, but the editors also intend that they should appeal to a larger audience of philosophers, intellectual historians, and others who are interested in the development of modern thought.