Coetzee and Eros

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen John
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Sexual Desire ◽  
Moral Motivation ◽  
The Self ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Transformative Power ◽  
Good Action ◽  
Form Part

In Chapter 7, Eileen John uses Coetzee’s exploration of sexual desire to pose questions about the normative claims of moral philosophy. She argues that Coetzee’s fiction complicates Thomas Nagel’s conception of altruism by its insistence that desire must form part of any account of apparently moral motivation, of how we are moved by the suffering of others, and moved more broadly by the good. Coetzee responds in complex ways to Plato’s model of eros, granting its transformative power, while portraying it as too deeply interwoven with aggressive and self-absorbed drives to constitute an unequivocal path to the purely ‘good’ action. Coetzee’s treatment of the self relating to itself further engages with Nagel’s and Hannah Arendt’s ideas about the moral significance of solipsism. John argues that Coetzee’s fiction explores the limits of moral philosophy, and attunes readers to the elements of risk within moral life.

scholarly journals CAPACITY, MORAL RESPONSIBILITY AND THE CRIMINAL LAW

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-68
Author(s):  
James Slater
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Control Theory ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Capacity Theory ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Complete Account

This article is concerned with the conflict between two theories of moral responsibility for wrongdoing, one of which I shall term the shallow capacity theory and the other the self-control theory. This conflict is of interest for two reasons. First, and fundamentally, it is important from the perspective of moral philosophy: in this regard, I will argue that the shallow capacity theory is incomplete, and as a result inferior to the self-control theory, which offers a complete account of moral responsibility for wrongdoing. Secondly, given the criminal law’s interest in moral responsibility and blame, I will argue that the self-control theory offers two important insights for the criminal law, insights that the shallow capacity theory does not provide. First, it offers the most accurate understanding of the moral significance of killing under provocation, and thus the best framework for understanding the partial defence of provocation. Secondly, it demonstrates that there is a need in the criminal law for a defence based on radical impairment of an agent’s capacity for self-control, and in so doing offers a vital insight into the notion of a partial denial of moral responsibility. It should be noted that these insights for the criminal law emerge from those features of the self-control theory that make it superior to the shallow capacity theory as a theory of moral responsibility.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Moral Experience ◽  
Object Relations Theory ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Ideological Criticism ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Psychological Dimensions

Although it is widely observed that a consequential “turn to ethics” took place in the field of literary criticism beginning in the late 1980s, this book argues that a broader cultural privileging of psychological and therapeutic frameworks has led to a displacement of the importance of moral reflection and moral judgment in the literary field. Between the pervasive influence of psychology on intellectual paradigms and cultural life, and the critique of morality within ideological criticism, key elements of the moral life, and of moral experience within the time of a life, have been lost to view. This introduction maps out the recent work on ethics in literary studies, introduces the moral significance of British object relations theory (an outlier among the psychological frameworks under analysis), and concludes by discussing Kant and Nietzsche’s divergent understandings of the psychological dimensions of moral life.

Sexual Desire: A Moral Philosophy of the Erotic. Roger Scruton

Ethics ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 97 (4) ◽  
pp. 881-882
Author(s):  
Carole Pateman
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Sexual Desire ◽  
Roger Scruton ◽  
The Erotic

Telling a poormanhe can become rich: Reparative therapy in contemporary Poland

Sexualities ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 44-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Mikulak
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Desire ◽  
The Self ◽  
Reparative Therapy ◽  
Sexual Reorientation ◽  
Reorientation Therapy ◽  
Individual Effort

This article investigates the practice of sexual reorientation therapy, or reparative therapy (RT), in contemporary Poland. Focusing on three groups – Odwaga (Courage), Pomoc 2002 (Help 2002) and Pascha (Passover) – and informed by interviews with their past participants, it examines the ways in which RT in Poland is gendered, as well as investigating the individualizing and self-responsibilizing understandings of the self it rests on. This article then demonstrates how the neoliberal ideas of selfhood permeate the practice of RT, mobilizing the tropes of individual effort and responsibility for the reorientation of one’s sexual desire, obscuring the inherent inequality on which the practice is based.

‘The Organized Selfishness of Empire’

2019 ◽  
pp. 13-28
Author(s):  
Sandra den Otter
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Political System ◽  
The Self ◽  
Civilizing Mission ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Welfare State

This essay examines T. H. Green’s evolving ideas on empire. Professor of moral philosophy in Oxford until his death in 1882, Green was the most prominent and respected philosophical idealist in Victorian Britain. The influence of his personal example and of his ideas has been traced by Jose Harris and other historians of the welfare state down to the 1940s. Initially enthusiastic for the civilizing mission of empire, Green came to see that any political system or relationship imposed by force, or dependent on coercion or control, was intrinsically incompatible with the ideals of citizenship, voluntarism, and solidarity that define the good community and make possible the self-realization of individuals within it. The essay opens up a new field for discussion and research: the relationship between idealist welfare thinking and imperialism. It argues that empire had a major impact on idealist notions of social welfare.

The Etiquette of Eating

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Stohr
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Moral Community ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Binding Force ◽  
The People ◽  
The Way

This chapter explores and defends the idea that the etiquette conventions governing dinner parties, whether formal or informal, have moral significance. Their significance derives from the way that they foster and facilitate shared moral aims. I draw on literary and philosophical sources to make this claim, beginning with Isak Dineson’s short story, “Babette’s Feast.” I employ the concept of ritual from Confucius and Xunzi, as well as Immanuel Kant’s detailed discussion of dinner parties in the Anthropology. Kant’s account, in particular, helps illuminate how properly conducted dinners can enhance our understanding and promote moral community among the people who attend. I conclude that dinner parties play an important role in the moral life, and that the etiquette conventions governing them derive their binding force from their contribution to that role.

Needs, Moral Demands and Moral Theory

Utilitas ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
SORAN READER ◽  
GILLIAN BROCK
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Moral Practice ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Moral Theories ◽  
Moral Demandingness ◽  
Moral Demands

In this article we argue that the concept of need is as vital for moral theory as it is for moral life. In II we analyse need and its normativity in public and private moral practice. In III we describe simple cases which exemplify the moral demandingness of needs, and argue that the significance of simple cases for moral theory is obscured by the emphasis in moral philosophy on unusual cases. In IV we argue that moral theories are inadequate if they cannot describe simple needs-meeting cases. We argue that the elimination or reduction of need to other concepts such as value, duty, virtue or care is unsatisfactory, in which case moral theories that make those concepts fundamental will have to be revised. In conclusion, we suggest that if moral theories cannot be revised to accommodate needs, they may have to be replaced with a fully needs-based theory.

Hare's Universal Prescriptivism

Dialogue ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-198
Author(s):  
C. D. MacNiven
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Substantial Role ◽  
Modern Moral Philosophy

R.M. Hare's new book, Freedom and Reason, is a welcome contribution to modern moral philosophy and should be read with care by anyone who believes that ethics should be relevant to the moral life, and that reason should have a substantial role to play in that life. Freedom and Reason, though not simply a sequel to Hare's earlier work, The Language of Morals, should be read with the earlier work in mind. This is important, not only because it presupposes some of the conclusions of that work, but also because of the strong criticism which the earlier work provoked, and which Freedom and Reason to a large extent answers.

The Self-Absorption Objection and Neo-Aristotelian Virtue Ethics

2018 ◽  
Vol 92 (4) ◽  
pp. 641-668 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff D’Souza ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Motivation ◽  
The Self ◽  
Virtuous Agent ◽  
Good For ◽  
The Way

This paper examines one of the central objections levied against neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics: the self-absorption objection. Proponents of this objection state that the main problem with neo-Aristotelian accounts of moral motivation is that they prescribe that our ultimate reason for acting virtuously is that doing so is for the sake of and/or is constitutive of our own eudaimonia. In this paper, I provide an overview of the various attempts made by neo-Aristotelian virtue ethicists to address the self-absorption objection and argue that they all fall short for one reason or another. I contend that the way forward for neo-Aristotelian virtue ethicists is to reject the view that the virtuous agent ought to organize her life in a way that is ultimately good for her, and instead adopt a more expansive conception of her ultimate end, one in which no special preference is given to her own good.

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