The Measure of Greatness

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Moral Nature ◽  
Complex Trajectory ◽  
The Many ◽  
Human Excellence ◽  
Ethical Perspectives

Magnanimity is a virtue that has led many lives. Foregrounded early on by Plato as the philosophical virtue par excellence, it became one of the crown jewels in Aristotle’s account of human excellence and was accorded an equally salient place by other ancient thinkers. One of the most distinctive elements of the ancient tradition to filter into the medieval Islamic and Christian worlds, it sparked important intellectual engagements there and went on to carve deep tracks through several later philosophies that inherited from this tradition. Under changing names, under reworked forms, it continued to breathe in the thought of Descartes and Hume, Kant and Nietzsche, and their successors. Its many lives have been joined by important continuities. Yet they have also been fragmented by discontinuities—discontinuities reflecting larger shifts in ethical perspectives and competing answers to questions about the nature of the good life, the moral nature of human beings, and their relationship to the social and natural world they inhabit. They have also been punctuated by moments of controversy in which the greatness of this vision of human greatness has itself been called into doubt. This volume provides a window to the complex trajectory of a virtue whose glitter has at times been as heady as it has been divisive. By exploring the many lives it has lived, we will be in a better position to decide whether and why this is a virtue we might still want to make central to our own ethical lives.

scholarly journals The Modernity of Aristotle’s Ethics

MANUSYA ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-38
Author(s):  
Charles Freeland
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Philosophical Discourse ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
Aristotle's Ethics ◽  
The Many ◽  
Theoretical Science

Aristotle understood ethics to be a practical rather than a theoretical science. It is a pragmatics, if you will, concerned with bringing about a good life . But the problem and the question from which Aristotle’s ethics begins arid to which it constantly returns concerns the relation of the theoretical to the practical: his concern is for the type or mode of discourse one could use in providing an account of the good life (Eudaimonia). Is this a propositional, apophantic discourse, a discourse claiming to represent the truth and what is true and from which one could then go on to prescribe a course of action, or, and this may be closer to Aristotle, is the philosophical discourse on ethics rather a descriptive one which takes humankind for what it is, not what it ought to be? This relation between theory and practice, between description and prescription, between science and action, is a question and a problem for Aristotle. It is my purpose to take up this question in connection with Aristotle’s texts on Eudaimonia. Another question shall be raised here: What is the relevance of Aristotle’s treatment of Eudaimonia to our contemporary, “modern” concern for ethics and the good life? I would assume, naively perhaps, that even today we are not indifferent to this question of what is a good life, and that we are not indifferent to the many ways in which the “good life” has been described. It would seem, then, that Aristotle’s texts have a particularly striking importance for us today insofar as we prolong the philosophical questioning of the possibilities for ethical and political discourse today and continue to ask who and what we are as human beings.

Virtues and Practices

1984 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Miller
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Moral Pluralism ◽  
Important Distinction ◽  
The Social ◽  
Narrative Unity

AbstractMaclntyre presents an account of the virtues first in terms of practices and then in terms of the narrative unity of a person’s life. He fails, however, to observe an important distinction between self-contained and purposive practices; if the virtues are to be understood by reference to practices, they must be of the latter kind. By the same token, a defence of the virtues must refer to the social purposes which practices serve rather than to the goods internal to practices. An appeal to the idea of narrative unity does not save the position in the absence of any concrete specification of the good life for man. Maclntyre’s attempt to reconstitute the virtues falls foul of the moral pluralism that he has earlier diagnosed so acutely.

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.

Introduction

Good Lives ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Samuel Clark
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Father And Son

Reasoning with autobiography is a way to self-knowledge. We can learn about ourselves, as human beings and as individuals, by reading, thinking through, and arguing about this distinctive kind of text. Reasoning with Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son is a way of learning about the nature of the good life and the roles that pleasure and self-expression can play in it. Reasoning with Siegfried Sassoon’s ...

scholarly journals Youth Experiences with Social Norms Feedback: Qualitative Findings from The Drug Prevention Trial the GOOD Life

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (9) ◽  
pp. 3200
Author(s):  
Christiane Stock ◽  
Satayesh Lavasani Kjær ◽  
Birthe Rasmussen ◽  
Lotte Vallentin-Holbech
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Intervention Strategy ◽  
Drug Prevention ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Normative Feedback ◽  
Web Based ◽  
The Social ◽  
Prevention Programmes ◽  
Group Interviews

Background: Normative feedback is an intervention strategy commonly used in drug prevention programmes. This study collected process evaluation data about how programme recipients engage with social norms (SN) feedback in The GOOD Life intervention and how they experience it. Methods: Eight focus group interviews were conducted with a total of 44 adolescents (pupils aged 14–16 years) who have participated in the social-norms-based intervention The GOOD Life. The interviews focused on three topics: (1) interest in and impact of the intervention; (2) perception of the intervention elements; and (3) suggestions for improvement of The GOOD Life. They were transcribed and analysed with content analysis. Results: The analysis revealed that The GOOD Life motivated pupils to re-evaluate their own drug use behaviour and overall met their interest regarding receiving engaging and non-moral forms of drug prevention programmes. While pupils perceived the normative feedback session in the classroom and the posters with SN messages as positive, stimulating and surprising, the web-based application with SN feedback was rarely used and less positively evaluated. Anonymity and confidentiality were regarded as essential to provide honest answers in the poll. The pupils suggested even more variety in ways to engage them and to use more gaming elements. Conclusions: SN feedback was well perceived by adolescents. The intervention met their interest and needs and was able to achieve the intended impact of challenging norm perceptions. Anonymity and confidentiality are key in order to build trust and engage adolescents in the intervention.

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.

What’s good about the good life? Action theory, virtue ethics and modern morality

2020 ◽  
pp. 019145372094837
Author(s):  
Frédéric Vandenberghe
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Right

The article explores the scope and the limits of virtue ethics from the perspective of critical theory (Habermas) and critical realism (Bhaskar). Based on new research in moral sociology and anthropology, it ponders how the self-realization of each can be combined with the self-determination of all. The article adopts an action-theoretical perspective on morality and defends the priority of the right over the good. It suggests that in plural and polarized societies, there no longer exists a consensus on any version of the good life. It therefore limits the scope of virtue ethics to personal life and pleads for a minima moralia at the social and political level.

Nationalism in Rabindranath Tagore Plays

IJOHMN ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 8-45
Author(s):  
G. Sankar
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Group ◽  
Rabindranath Tagore ◽  
Foreign Companies ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Creative Art ◽  
Indian Contribution

History reveals that institutions or artifacts produced by human beings can lead to the exploitation or the loss of freedom of other human beings. Thus the celebration of the good life of an Athenian citizen in Plato‟s time can hide the wretchedness of vast numbers of slaves whose labor made it possible for the few free citizens to enjoy that good life. Our criteria then must apply to all, or at least the vast majority of the vast of the human group concerned, if they are to lay claim to universality. Amiya Kumar Bagchi, Perilous Passage1 The story of Indo-Anglican literature is the story of yesterday, of a little more than a century, and today. One of the natural results of the British rule in India is the rise and development of literature. The term “Indo-Anglican” was first used in 1883 when a book published in Calcutta that bore the title Indo-Anglian Literature. After the publication of two books by Dr.K.R.Srinivasa Iyengar, the term “Indo-Anglian” has not only acquired considerable currency, but also has come to stay as a familiar and accepted term applied to Indian contribution to literature in English. This has come to be known as Indo-Anglian writing and has been quite an active school of didactic and creative art for at least a century. The first theatre offering English language drama in 1776, Indian drama in English has never achieved the same status as Indian fiction and poetry in English. As in other colonies such as Canada, the Indian theatrical scene was dominated by foreign companies, touring plays drawn mainly from

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