Happiness and Human Flourishing in Kant's Ethics

1999 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Hill
Keyword(s):  
Character Traits ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Moral Virtues ◽  
Happy Life ◽  
Wise Person ◽  
Subjective Condition ◽  
Kant's Ethics ◽  
Moral Philosophers

Ancient moral philosophers, especially Aristotle and his followers, typically shared the assumption that ethics is primarily concerned with how to achieve the final end for human beings, a life of “happiness” or “human flourishing.” This final end was not a subjective condition, such as contentment or the satisfaction of our preferences, but a life that could be objectively determined to be appropriate to our nature as human beings. Character traits were treated as moral virtues because they contributed well toward this ideal life, either as means to it or as constitutive aspects of it. Traits that tended to prevent a “happy” life were considered vices, even if they contributed to a life that was pleasant and what a person most wanted. The idea of “happiness” (or human flourishing) was central, then, in philosophical efforts to specify what we ought to do, what sort of persons we should try to become, and what sort of life a wise person would hope for.

Persons Together

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan L. Mittleman
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Market Relations ◽  
The Image Of God

This chapter moves into the political and economic aspects of human nature. Given scarcity and interdependence, what sense has Judaism made of the material well-being necessary for human flourishing? What are Jewish attitudes toward prosperity, market relations, labor, and leisure? What has Judaism had to say about the political dimensions of human nature? If all humans are made in the image of God, what does that original equality imply for political order, authority, and justice? In what kinds of systems can human beings best flourish? It argues that Jewish tradition shows that we act in conformity with our nature when we elevate, improve, and sanctify it. As co-creators of the world with God, we are not just the sport of our biochemistry. We are persons who can select and choose among the traits that comprise our very own natures, cultivating some and weeding out others.

Socrates’ First City: Pleonexia and the Thought Experiment

Apeiron ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Diaco
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Happy Life ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
The City

AbstractThe present study provides an analysis of Socrates’ account of the first polis in Republic 2 as a thought experiment and draws attention to the fact that Socrates combines both explanatory and evaluative aspects in his scenario. The paper further shows how the analysis of the city of pigs as a thought experiment can explain the lack of pleonexia by saving both the letter of the text, according to which there are no “pleonectic” desires in the city of pigs, and the fact that the first polis is nonetheless concerned with human beings. For, in contrast to the account offered by Glaucon earlier in Book 2, Socrates highlights our needs and lack of self-sufficiency as well as our compatibility with an advantageous and happy life in a community.

scholarly journals A Framework for Authentic Ethical Decision Making in the Face of Grand Challenges: A Lonerganian Gradation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Larres ◽  
Martin Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Business Ethics ◽  
Ethical Decision ◽  
Ethical Decision Making ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Codes Of Ethics ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Invariant Structure ◽  
Grand Challenges

AbstractThis paper contributes to the contemporary business ethics narrative by proposing an approach to corporate ethical decision making (EDM) which serves as an alternative to the imposition of codes and standards to address the ethical consequences of grand challenges, like COVID-19, which are impacting today’s society. Our alternative approach to EDM embraces the concept of reflexive thinking and ethical consciousness among the individual agents who collectively are the corporation and who make ethical decisions, often in isolation, removed from the collocated corporate setting. We draw on the teachings of the Canadian philosopher and theologian, Fr. Bernard Lonergan, to conceptualize an approach to EDM which focuses on the ethics of the corporate agent by nurturing the universal and invariant structure that is operational in all human beings. Embracing Lonergan’s dynamic cognitive structure of human knowing, and the structure of the human good, we advance a paradigm of EDM in business which emboldens authentic ethical thought, decision making, and action commensurate with virtuous living and germane to human flourishing. Lonergan’s philosophy guides us away from the imposition of over-arching corporate codes of ethics and inspires us, as individual agents, to attend to the data of our own consciousness in our ethical decision making. Such cognitional endowment leads us out of the ethics of the ‘timeless present’ (Islam and Greenwood in Journal of Business Ethics 170: 1–4, 2021) towards ethical authenticity in business, leaving us better placed to reflect upon and address the ethical issues emanating from grand challenges like COVID-19.

scholarly journals ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AND HINDUISM

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (9SE) ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Mamta Kothari
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Natural Cycle ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human History ◽  
Happy Life ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Nature Preserves ◽  
Day By Day ◽  
Water Vegetation

Under the environment, air, water, vegetation, plants, animals, humans all come. In nature, all these quantities and their composition are arranged in such a way that a balanced life continues on the earth. For the last few years, ever since the Earth came into being as animal, animal and other bacterial consumers, this cycle of nature has been going on continuously and smoothly. Whatever is needed and is getting from nature and nature preserves it by producing more in itself. If we observe human history, five hundred and seven hundred years ago, man was close to nature. The food he got from nature was normal, it was his happy life, when water and air were safe. But gradually the change took place with time and the desire of man to live happily increased. With the advancement of science man began to interfere with the natural cycle. The effect of this was that the items of the primary needs of human beings began to lack water, air and food. The immense reserves of nature started decreasing day by day and the word pollution emerged. There was a need for environmental protection. पर्यावरण के अन्तर्गत वायु जल भूमि वनस्पति पेड़ पौधे, पशु मानव सब आते है । प्रकृति में इन सबकी मात्रा और इनकी रचना कुछ इस प्रकार व्यवस्थित है कि पृथ्वी पर एक संतुलनमय जीवन चलता रहे । विगत करोंड़ांे वर्षो से जब से पृथ्वी मनुष्य पशुपक्षी और अन्य जीव-जीवाणु उपभोक्ता बनकर आये तब से, प्रकृति का यह चक्र निरंतर और अबाध गति से चल रहा है । जिसको जितनी आवष्यकता है व प्रकृति से प्राप्त कर रहा है और प्रकृति आगे के लिये अपने में और उत्पन्न करके संरक्षित कर लेती है । मानव इतिहास का अवलोकन करे तो आज से पंाॅच सौ सात सौ वर्ष पूर्व मनुष्य प्रकृति के समीप था । प्रकृति से मिले भोजन पर सामान्य आश्रित था , वह उसका सुखमय जीवन था, जब जल वायु निरापद थे । लेकिन धीरे-धीरे समय के साथ परिवर्तन हुवा और मनुष्य मंे सुखमय जीने की लालसा में वृद्धि हुई । विज्ञान की प्रगति के साथ मनुष्य ने प्राकृतिक चक्र में हस्तक्षेप करना शुरू कर दिया । इसका दूष्प्रभाव यह हुवा कि मनुष्य की प्राथमिक आवष्यकताओं की वस्तुऐं जल, वायु भोजन का अभाव होने लगा । प्रकृति के अपार भण्डार दिन प्रतिदिन कम होने लगे और प्रदुषण शब्द का उदय हुवा । पर्यावरण संरक्षण की आवष्यकता होने लगी ।

Virtue as a Trait

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Miller
Keyword(s):  
Character Traits ◽  
Moral Virtues ◽  
Empirical Issue ◽  
Mixed Traits

One of the most common assumptions about the moral virtues is that they are traits, or more specifically, traits of character. But what are character traits, and what character traits do individuals actually possess today? This chapter takes up each of these questions in turn. First it considers the metaphysics of character traits, distinguishing between three competing views: the summary view, the conditional view, and the dispositional view. Then it turns to the empirical issue of whether most people actually have character traits, and if so, what they tend to look like. Different options include the possession of traditional virtues, traditional vices, local traits, and mixed traits.

Philosophical Background

2021 ◽  
pp. 11-18
Author(s):  
Mark Timmons
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
Phenomenal World ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The World ◽  
Philosophical Background ◽  
The Will ◽  
Kant's Ethics ◽  
Immortality Of The Soul ◽  
Cognition And Knowledge

This chapter provides a brief overview of certain elements of Kant’s metaphysics and epistemology that are essential background for understanding certain features of his ethical theory. In particular, it presents Kant’s distinction between the ‘world of sense’ or ‘phenomenal world’ and the ‘world of understanding’ or ‘noumenal world’ as a basis for explaining the limits of theoretical cognition which rules out theoretical cognition and knowledge of God, immortality of the soul, and freedom of the will, yet allows Kant to affirm their reality on moral grounds, needed to explain how the highest good is possible. Of importance for understanding certain claims in his work on virtue is the distinction between the phenomenal world and the noumenal world as it applies to human beings. The chapter concludes with reflections on the relation between Kant’s ethics and his metaphysical and epistemological commitments.

Bioethics Contra Biopower

2019 ◽  
pp. 247-266
Author(s):  
Bruce Jennings
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Theories Of Justice ◽  
Mutual Relations ◽  
Genomic Editing

This chapter engages two issues as they bear on genomic editing and the effects of biotechnology on human well-being: (1) how technology influences a reductionistic and manipulative understanding of biopower and biopolitics, fundamentally at odds with the worldview of bioethical humanism; and (2) how the reconceptualization of human flourishing in capability theories of justice bears on the ethics of biotechnology. The argument of this chapter appeals to a relational or “ecological” humanism that will assist bioethics in developing a critique of the technologies and knowledges of molecular reductionism. In the perspective of relational humanism, human beings are empowered as subjects of value and agents of self-realization, and mutual relations of interdependence and solidarity are affirmed. Along these lines, a reframed debate concerning the governance of biopower and the promotion of just human flourishing in an age of biotechnology can take place.

5. Ethics

2018 ◽  
pp. 65-76
Author(s):  
Brad Inwood
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Self Control ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Wise Person ◽  
The Family

Ethics is the part of the Stoics’ legacy that is most prominent and influential today. Their theory of the good life for human beings falls into the family of theories associated with Socrates and his followers. This tradition includes Plato and most Platonists, Xenophon, the Cynics, Aristotle, and later Aristotelians, all of whom share the view that virtue, the excellence of a human being, is the highest value and is its own reward. ‘Ethics’ discusses the Stoics’ views on human nature and rationality; the four basic virtues: justice, courage, wisdom, and moderation or self-control; and the doctrine that the fully rational and wise person will be free of passions.

Liberal Order in the Twenty-First Century: Searching for Eunomia Once Again

2019 ◽  
Vol 139 (2-4) ◽  
pp. 271-284
Author(s):  
Amichai Magen
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Political Liberty ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Good Order ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Unique Potential

Adherents of economic and political liberty are again compelled to ask fundamental questions about the nature and prospects of good order (or Eunomia). This article: (1) offers a quaternary definition of the concept of “order;” (2) contends that Eunomia is essentially about the creation, adaptation, and protection of the conditions necessary for human beings to live lives that are free from fear so as to maximize each individual’s unique potential for human flourishing; and (3) outlines an evolutionary understanding of Eunomia, whereby contemporary liberal orders represent the cumulative outcome of three sets of elite-selected “wins” over illiberal ones. To survive and thrive in the twenty-first century liberalism must once again contest and defeat rival orders.

Virtue and the “Good Life” in the Book of Job

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Patricia L. Vesely
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Living Well ◽  
Presence Of God ◽  
Human Happiness ◽  
External Goods

Abstract In this article, I argue that Job 29 provides an eudaimonic depiction of human happiness whereby virtue, combined with a number of “external goods” is held up as the best possible life for human beings. I compare Job’s vision of the “good life” with an Aristotelian conception of εὐδαιμονία and conclude that there are numerous parallels between Job and Aristotle with respect to their understanding of the “good life.” While the intimate presence of God distinguishes Job’s expectation of happiness with that of Aristotle, Job is unique among other eudaimonic texts in the Hebrew Bible in that expectations of living well are expressed in terms of virtue, rather than Torah piety. In the second portion of the article, I assess Job’s conception of human flourishing from the perspective of the divine speeches, which enlarge Job’s vision of the “good life” by bringing Job face-to-face with the “wild inhabitants” of the cosmos.

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