Mandeville and the Construction of Morality

2019 ◽  
pp. 118-148
Author(s):  
Tim Stuart-Buttle
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Moral Conduct ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Original Narrative ◽  
Meaningful Role

Once considered primarily as a satirist, recent scholarship has drawn attention to the importance and originality of Bernard Mandeville’s moral philosophy and theory of sociability—and its influence on later philosophers including Rousseau, Hume, and Adam Smith. Mandeville’s close engagement with Epicurean writings, ancient and modern, is clear; less recognized is the extent to which he drew upon them to develop a naturalistic moral theory which could respond directly to Shaftesbury’s Stoic moral philosophy (and, less directly, to Locke’s Christian moral theology). In such a theory, God’s design, will, and sanctions played no meaningful role; but this did not preclude Mandeville from offering his own, strikingly original narrative of the intertwined histories of moral philosophy and moral theology. As had Locke, Mandeville drew particular attention to the individual’s craving for esteem and its importance in their habituation, in society, into norms of moral conduct to which they subsequently feel beholden.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Tim Stuart-Buttle
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
David Hume ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Historical Relationship ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter introduces the key themes and questions to be explored in the work. In particular, it discusses the tendency of much recent scholarship on early-modern philosophy to emphasize the importance of two late Hellenistic philosophical traditions: the Stoic and the Epicurean. It indicates that three important British writers—John Locke, Conyers Middleton, and David Hume—deliberately and explicitly aligned their approaches with Cicero, as the representative of an alternative philosophical tradition: academic scepticism. This, they argued, offered the conceptual resources more satisfactorily to address a question that contemporaries recognized to be particularly pressing: the relationship between moral theology and moral philosophy. It further yielded highly distinctive narratives of the historical relationship between classical moral philosophy and the Christian moral theology which had appropriated and displaced it. These narratives were in turn challenged by Shaftesbury and Mandeville, who placed themselves (respectively) within the Stoic and Epicurean traditions.

scholarly journals Blackstone's Science of Legislation

1988 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lieberman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
The North ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Social ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
Law And Legislation ◽  
The University

In 1795, Dugald Stewart, the professor of moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and reigning Athenian of the North, observed in a famous estimate of the career of Adam Smith that “the most celebrated works produced in the different countries of Europe during the last thirty years” had “aimed at the improvement of society” by “enlightening the policy of actual legislators.” Among such celebrated productions Stewart included the publications of François Quesnay, Anne-Robert Jacques Turgot, Pedro Campomanes, and Cesare Beccaria and, above all, the writings of Smith himself, whose Wealth of Nations “unquestionably” represented “the most comprehensive and perfect work that has yet appeared on the general principles of any branch of legislation.” One of the more striking achievements of recent scholarship on eighteenth-century social thought has been to make sense of this description of Smith's Inquiry and to enable us better to appreciate why Smith chose to describe his system of political economy as a contribution to the “science of a legislator.” In a cultural setting in which, as J. G. A. Pocock has put it, “jurisprudence” was “the social science of the eighteenth century,” law and legislation further featured, in J. H. Burns's formula, as “the great applied science among the sciences of man.” Moralists and jurists of the period, echoing earlier political conventions, may readily have acknowledged with Rousseau that “it would take gods to give men laws.” Nevertheless, even in Rousseau's program for perfecting “the conditions of civil association”—“men being taken as they are and laws as they might be”—a mortal “legislator” appeared plainly “necessary.”

The Place of Cicero in Locke’s Moral Theology

2019 ◽  
pp. 19-88
Author(s):  
Tim Stuart-Buttle
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Unpublished Works

Locke’s published and unpublished works disclose a marked contempt for classical moral philosophy, with one signal exception: Cicero. This chapter reconstructs Locke’s interpretation of Cicero, to explain why he was held to be an exception to Locke’s more general disdain for ancient ethical theories. This approach also illuminates our understanding of the relationship between Locke’s moral theory, political philosophy, writings of Christian apologetic, and theory of toleration. It suggests that Locke’s moral philosophy is decidedly more complex, and richer, than is often recognized: pregnant with naturalistic impulses that were nonetheless subordinated to a grounding of morality in the authority, will, and command of a divine legislator. These aspects of Locke’s moral theory proved to be immensely stimulating to later British philosophers such as Hume, even if they sought systematically to decouple moral philosophy from Christian theology.

From Moral Theology to Moral Philosophy

2019 ◽  
pp. 179-222
Author(s):  
Tim Stuart-Buttle
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Human Tendency ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cause Of Error ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Empirical Methodology ◽  
Civil Societies

Hume gave more attention, and wrote more extensively, on the relationship between moral theology and moral philosophy than on any other issue. In doing so, he made clear the importance of Cicero—when interpreted as an academic sceptic—to the explanations he formulated. Hume quite explicitly identified his own variant of sceptical philosophy with Cicero’s, and argued that it alone was consistent with the empirical methodology upon which the ‘science of man’ had to be constructed. In contrast to Locke—with whose moral theory he engaged more closely than scholars have recognized—Hume argued that Cicero justified a complete conceptual separation between the realms of morality and religion. This informed Hume’s narrative of the history of philosophy, which identified the pathological human tendency to demand certainty and to avoid doubt as the greatest cause of error and disruptive of the ties which held people together in civil societies.

Adam Ferguson and the Idea of Civil Society

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Smith
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Commercial Society ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
The University

Adam Ferguson was a Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and a leading member of the Scottish Enlightenment. A friend of David Hume and Adam Smith, Ferguson was among the leading exponents of the Scottish Enlightenment’s attempts to develop a science of man and was among the first in the English speaking world to make use of the terms civilization, civil society, and political science. This book challenges many of the prevailing assumptions about Ferguson’s thinking. It explores how Ferguson sought to create a methodology for moral science that combined empirically based social theory with normative moralising with a view to supporting the virtuous education of the British elite. The Ferguson that emerges is far from the stereotyped image of a nostalgic republican sceptical about modernity, and instead is one much closer to the mainstream Scottish Enlightenment’s defence of eighteenth century British commercial society.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Subramanian Rangan
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Market Power ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Economic Paradigm ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
Great Output

Our quest for prosperity has produced great output (i.e. performance) but not always great outcomes (i.e. progress). Despite mounting regulation when it comes to fairness, well-being, and the scope of our humanity, the modern economic system still leaves much to be desired. If practice is to evolve substantively and systematically, then we must help evolve an economic paradigm where mutuality is more systematically complemented by morality. The bases of this morality must rest, beyond the sympathetic sentiments envisaged by Adam Smith, on an expanded and intentional moral reasoning. Moral philosophy has a natural role in informing and influencing such a turn in our thinking, especially when education is the preferred vehicle of transformation. Indeed, rather than just regulate market power we must also better educate market power.

scholarly journals The Moral Philosophy of Maria Montessori

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
PATRICK FRIERSON
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Social Solidarity ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Moral Concepts ◽  
Maria Montessori ◽  
Individual Character ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
Shared Agency

Abstract This paper lays out the moral theory of philosopher and educator Maria Montessori (1870–1952). Based on a moral epistemology wherein moral concepts are grounded in a well-cultivated moral sense, Montessori develops a threefold account of moral life. She starts with an account of character as an ideal of individual self-perfection through concentrated attention on effortful work. She shows how respect for others grows from and supplements individual character, and she further develops a notion of social solidarity that goes beyond cooperation toward shared agency. Partly because she attends to children's ethical lives, Montessori highlights how character, respect, and solidarity all appear first as prereflective, embodied orientations of agency. Full moral virtue takes up prereflective orientations reflectively and extends them through moral concepts. Overall, Montessori's ethic improves on features similar to some in Nietzschean, Kantian, Hegelian, or Aristotelian ethical theories while situating these within a developmental and perfectionist ethics.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document