4. Living virtuously

2018 ◽  
pp. 45-60
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Berry
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Economic Aspects ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Commercial Society ◽  
Human Conduct ◽  
Moral Questions

Does someone deserve to be praised or punished? Can one individual merit owning more resources than another? Can blame be rightly attached to unintended actions? These are examples of moral questions that arise in everyday life. The Moral Sentiments is an ‘analysis of the principles’ that govern or underlie judgments of human conduct and character. ‘Living virtuously’ considers Adam Smith’s views on justice, benevolence, prudence, and other virtues. It is a central plank in Smith’s overall philosophy that individuals in a commercial society are able to act justly, prudently, and benevolently. There is no divergence between the ‘moral’ and ‘economic’ aspects of his thought.

scholarly journals Adam Smith on the Virtues: A Partial Resolution of the Adam Smith Problem

1997 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Spencer J. Pack
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Government Control ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Market Prices ◽  
Commercial Society ◽  
Partial Resolution ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Just Price ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Theory Of Moral Sentiments

It is now easy to see, in the light of Adam Smith's Lectures on Jurisprudence, that The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations were parts of a grand system. Nonetheless, TMS and WN are not tightly linked. This paper pursues the following strategy: knowing that Smith wrote both works, one can go back to westigate Smith's handling of the virtues, and see how that work implicitly defended the acquisitive, commercial society analyzed so thoroughly in WN. In doing so, it will be shown that Smith has a distinctive, key, narrow handling of the virtue justice which is based upon the passion resentment. Smith's treatment of justice explains why there can be no concept of just price in Smith's work. It serves to support market, flexible, or negotiated prices as ethically legitimate because it effectively removes market prices from the domain of government control or responsibility, at least insofar as government is enforcing justice.

scholarly journals Suppresion of women in modern society – socio-economic aspects

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dragana Vilić
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Economic Aspects ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

Along with creating the conditions for progress and emancipation of womenin society, they developed the instruments and methods of preventing theexercise of these conditions. Although it is evident legally equating womenwith men in all spheres of life in modern society there are various forms ofself-suppression of women (psychological, economic, cultural, acceptance ofwomen “without rebellion” of values and rules that are set by men and thelike.). Th e increasing presence of women in the public sphere, their subjugation,discrimination and subordination are moved from private to publicsphere - (in) ability to access public services, employment, wage levels andthe like. Th e causes of this suppression are, usually, in the character of socialrelations - are still rooted in the patriarchal patterns - the imposition of“masculine” principles and rules of everyday life which suppress women fromimportant segments of social relations.

A Reasonable Theory of Morality: (Alexander and Whitehead)

Philosophy ◽  
1950 ◽  
Vol 25 (92) ◽  
pp. 54-67
Author(s):  
Sydney E. Hooper
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
The Body ◽  
Moral Experience ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Late Professor ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Human Conduct

During the later years of his life, the late Professor Alexander devoted much of his time to the study of our aesthetic and moral experience. In regard to the latter, Alexander was impressed by Adam Smith's treatment of the Moral Sentiments and especially with what he considered his sure insight in seeking for the ground of obligation in the causes of conduct, rather than in its effects. These causes were the passions. In this he was in sympathy with his contemporary Hobhouse, who asserted with conviction that action rested on impulse feeling, and that it was useless to look for anything whether it was called Practical Reason or anything else, that stood outside the body of impulse feeling and controlled it. I think it was the considered opinion of Alexander, as it was that of Hobhouse, that if Psychology had anything to teach us bearing upon Morals, it was that the springs of human conduct must be looked for in our inherited tendencies with their associated emotions. Fear, sorrow, joy, repulsion, curiosity, pugnacity, self-assertion, the sex instinct, and (in some species) acquisitiveness and constructiveness, are present, not only in men of all living races, but also in most of the higher animals. These specific tendencies and emotions, with certain complex passions such as admiration, reverence, scorn and the rest; together with one or two general tendencies such as sympathy and imitativeness, arising out of the nature of mental processes, must have played a leading role in the determination of human conduct, both in its lower and higher grades.

Beyond Self-Interest and Altruism: A Reconstruction of Adam Smith's Theory of Human Conduct

1990 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elias L. Khalil
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Moral Autonomy ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Human Conduct ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Public Approval ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Theory Of Moral Sentiments

I attempt a reconstruction of Adam Smith's view of human nature as explicated in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS). Smith's view of human conduct is neither functionalist nor reductionist, but interactionist. The moral autonomy of the individual, conscience, is neither made a function of public approval nor reduced to self-contained impulses of altruism and egoism. Smith does not see human conduct as a blend of independently defined impulses. Rather, conduct is unified, by the underpinning sentiment of sympathy.

Not a Partnership in Pepper, Coffee, Calico, or Tobacco

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Onur Ulas Ince
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Economic Aspects ◽  
Commercial Society ◽  
Liberal Conception ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Anglo Indian

This chapter examines Edmund Burke’s arguments on the Anglo-Indian trade and the British rule in Bengal. In contrast to the culturalist interpretations of Burke’s position on the British Empire, the chapter brings Burke’s political economic writings to bear on his efforts to maintain the empire in India while expunging its illiberal economic aspects. Behind Burke’s attempt to reform the Indian administration and impeach Warren Hastings, it is argued, was the East India Company’s systematic violation of the liberal economic principles that defined the British character as a commercial society. Burke openly castigated the illiberal extractive policies being used in India and sequestered them from the essentially liberal conception of British commercial society. His condemnation of Company policies in India can therefore be understood as an attempt to shore up the increasingly blurred distinctions between civilized commerce and unabashed pillage, between enlightened self-interest and unbridled rapacity, and between “imperial commerce” and “imperious commerce.”

Professional, Social, Geographical, Religious and Economic Aspects of Jewish Medical Practitioners

2021 ◽  
pp. 277-446
Author(s):  
Efraim Lev
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Medical Practice ◽  
Professional Education ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Economic Aspects ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
High Ranking ◽  
Conversion To Islam ◽  
Religious Aspects

The fourth chapter is a discussion based on the total number of biographies, and the medieval as well as the contemporary literature available. It discusses professional, social, geographical, religious and economic aspects of the Jewish medical practitioners (mainly physicians); places of medical practice, the practitioners’ professional education, intellectual workshops (i.e. libraries), and their professional roles, mainly that of ‘Head of the Physicians’. It also deals with everyday life and activity of Jewish practitioners, moral aspects, fees and the ‘Geniza’ patients, as well as religious and inter-religious aspects of Jewish practitioners, the high-ranking positions Jewish practitioners held, conversion to Islam, and famous Jewish scholars, authors, poets and diplomats who were simultaneously practitioners. A few more insights are related to community affairs, socio-economic position of Jewish practitioners, their role in the leadership, their share in charity activities, and the inter-community posts they held. The last section of this chapter endorses aspects such as: Karaite and Samaritan practitioners and geographical aspects (Jewish practitioners in Andalusia, north Africa, Sicily, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Azerbaijan).

Coding Cow Clicker: The Work of Algorithms

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ed Finn
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Mechanical Turk ◽  
High Tech ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Historical Figure ◽  
New Models ◽  
Warehouse Workers ◽  
Algorithmic Thinking

Chapter 4 begins with Ian Bogost’s satirical Facebook game Cow Clicker and its send-up of the “gamification” movement to add quantification and algorithmic thinking to many facets of everyday life. Such games trouble the boundaries between work and play, as do much more serious forms of gamification like Uber and the high-tech warehouse workers whose every second and step are measured for efficiency. Taken together, these new models of work herald a novel form of alienated labor for the algorithmic age. In our science fiction present, humans are processors handling simple tasks assigned by an algorithmic apparatus. Drawing on the historical figure of the automaton, a remarkable collection of Mechanical Turk-powered poetry titled Of the Subcontract, and Adam Smith’s conception of empathy in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, the chapter explores the consequences of computational capitalism on politics, empathy, and social value.

Conversation and Moderate Virtue in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments

1992 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry C. Clark
Keyword(s):  
Classical Tradition ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Commercial Society ◽  
Public Benefits ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
Bernard Mandeville

Adam Smith's adaptation of the classical tradition of moral philosophy constitutes an important attempt to shape the language of the virtues to the conditions of commercial society. An overlooked avenue to understanding his enterprise is his analysis of the practice of daily conversation, both as a medium of moral knowledge and as a source of the sorts of virtues possible in commercial society. In his attempt to answer the challenge of egoistic, “licentious” philosophers such as Bernard Mandeville—whose notion of “private vices, public benefits” typified the then-fashionable argument that modern society is held together not by virtues, but by the mutual satisfaction of interests—Smith drew on a combination of natural law theory and Scottish sociology to fashion a conception of moderate virtue that could harmonize prudence and benevolence, as well as the “masculine” virtues of self-command and the “feminine” virtues of humanity, in ways consonant with the character of daily interactions in a modern society.

Moral reasoning is the process of asking moral questions and answering them

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Alfano
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Dependent Process ◽  
Asking Questions ◽  
Path Dependent ◽  
Path Dependent Process ◽  
Moral Questions

Abstract Reasoning is the iterative, path-dependent process of asking questions and answering them. Moral reasoning is a species of such reasoning, so it is a matter of asking and answering moral questions, which requires both creativity and curiosity. As such, interventions and practices that help people ask more and better moral questions promise to improve moral reasoning.

Thriving in Academia: Understanding and Managing the Complexities of Faculty Work

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ketevan Mamiseishvili
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Education Research ◽  
Community Engagement ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Work Setting ◽  
Higher Education Research ◽  
Faculty Work ◽  
College And University ◽  
Teaching Research ◽  
University Settings

In this paper, I will illustrate the changing nature and complexity of faculty employment in college and university settings. I will use existing higher education research to describe changes in faculty demographics, the escalating demands placed on faculty in the work setting, and challenges that confront professors seeking tenure or administrative advancement. Boyer’s (1990) framework for bringing traditionally marginalized and neglected functions of teaching, service, and community engagement into scholarship is examined as a model for balancing not only teaching, research, and service, but also work with everyday life.

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