scholarly journals Pinocchios hjerte: En kantiansk lesning av historien om tredukken som ville bli et ekte menneske

2020 ◽  
pp. 65-94
Author(s):  
Jon Vegard Hugaas
Keyword(s):  
Moral Development ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Agent ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Good Agent ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter offers a closer reading of Collodi’s Pinocchio (2002) through the lens of Kant’s moral philosophy. It explores how the story thematizes important moral aspects of growing up, and it considers the story’s suitability in moral education. The first parts offer an analysis of Pinocchio against the backdrop of a short outline of central ideas in Kant’s account of the human condition. This shows how Collodi’s story evolves around two central questions: What is required in order to be a moral agent, and how does one become a morally good agent? The next part shows that Collodi’s own answers to these two questions support the claim that Pinocchio is a “Bildungsroman” and that the conception of moral development in the story is Kantian. The final parts address the challenge of the moral paradox to the possibility of moral education and argues the suitability of Pinocchio in moral education as a basis for interpretation of life from a child’s perspective.

The Next Metaphysical Mutation

2020 ◽  
pp. 555-575
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Howard
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Michel Houellebecq ◽  
French Author ◽  
The Will ◽  
Sexual Impulse ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter explores the influence of Schopenhauer on the contemporary French author Michel Houellebecq. After surveying some biographical similarities between the two authors, it considers the significance of Schopenhauer’s thought, both his metaphysics of the Will and his moral philosophy, for Houellebecq’s literature. It is shown how Houellebecq reaffirms Schopenhauer’s Buddhistic diagnosis of “life as suffering,” but goes further to imagine possible worlds where the human condition has been overcome by techno-scientific interventions. In doing so, Houellebecq carries out a devastating critique of the present age from the standpoint of various post-human futures. Another theme explored is the omnipresence of desire and the sexual impulse with which both Schopenhauer and Houellebecq are deeply preoccupied.

The Reasonable Heart: Mary Wollstonecraft's View of the Relation Between Reason and Feeling in Morality, Moral Psychology, and Moral Development

Hypatia ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Khin Zaw
Keyword(s):  
Moral Development ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Development Failure

Wollstonecraft's early works express a coherent view of moral psychology, moral education and moral philosophy which guides the construction of her early fiction and educational works. It includes a valuable account of the relation between reason and feeling in moral development. Failure to recognize the complexity and coherence of the view and unhistorical readings have led to mistaken criticisms of Wollstonecraft's position. Part I answers these criticisms; Part II describes and textually supports her view.

scholarly journals ExperiencingForce Majeure

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-298
Author(s):  
Christopher Falzon
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Moral Agent ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Broad Sense ◽  
Moral Self ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Philosophical Text ◽  
Force Majeure ◽  
The Human Condition

This article looks at the 2014 Swedish comedy-drama Force Majeure as a kind of moral thought experiment, but also insofar as it might not fit such a model. The idea of a cinematic ethics, of cinema as providing an avenue for thinking through ethics and exploring ethical questions, finds at least one expression in the idea of film as experimental in this sense. At the same time, simply subsuming film to the philosophical thought experiment risks forgetting what film itself brings to the proceedings; and how the cinematic medium might allow for an experimentation that goes beyond what can be done within the philosophical text. As experimental in a broad sense, Force Majeure evokes an experience, the extraordinary event beyond one's control, capable of putting a moral agent to the test, challenging one's sense of who one is and what one stands for. The film unfolds as a reflection on the results of this encounter with experience, and on the kind of moral self this experiment brings to light; and in the course of this reflection, it suggests some general conclusions about the human condition.

Twenty-First-Century Magnanimity

2019 ◽  
pp. 266-291
Author(s):  
Kristján Kristjánsson
Keyword(s):  
Moral Development ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Well Being ◽  
First Century ◽  
Subjective Well Being ◽  
Self Transcendence ◽  
The Relationship

Aristotelianism is all the rage in contemporary virtue ethics. Yet given how anachronistic Aristotle’s account of the meta-virtue of megalopsychia seems to be, there is a tendency to pass over it in silence. This chapter argues against such a move and maintain that Aristotle’s ideal can help illuminate a number of contemporary debates. In moral psychology, megalopsychia helps mediate between realist and anti-realist conceptions of selfhood. In moral education, megalopsychia casts light on the levels of moral development to which we can aspire through the cultivation of character, as well as the necessary individualization of education in virtue. In moral philosophy, megalopsychia helps crystallize debates about role moralities and the demands of noblesse oblige; the relationship between objective and subjective well-being; and to what extent contemplation and self-transcendence enter into well-being. This chapter provides a whistle-stop tour of those topics and explains the lessons Aristotle’s account of megalopsychia can teach us about them.

Human, All Too Human: Thomas Berger's Crazy in Berlin

2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 172-196
Author(s):  
WILLIAM HEATH
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Aesthetic Evaluation ◽  
Distinguished Career ◽  
Political Novels ◽  
German American ◽  
The Human Condition ◽  
American Army

Thomas Berger is best known for his western, Little Big Man, made into a film starring Dustin Hoffman, yet his Reinhart tetralogy is at least as important an achievement. Crazy in Berlin (1958), the first volume and the author's first novel, is a very ambitious work that captures postwar Berlin in telling detail. Based on Berger's experiences in the American Army during the occupation, the book displays his tragicomic vision of the human condition. The opening sections of the essay provide information about Berger's German American background while growing up in Cincinnati, a discussion of how Berger studied the political novels of his time to shape his craft, and a succinct account of the harrowing situation in postwar Berlin that Berger witnessed firsthand. Having established the most relevant contexts, the latter half of the essay provides an interpretation of the novel's central themes as well as an aesthetic evaluation of its merits as a work of fiction. While Crazy in Berlin is not without significant flaws, it is in the last analysis an impressively accomplished work, distinguished both by its memorable characters and by the author's philosophical depth. It deserves to be much better known as one of the most challenging works of his distinguished career.

Environmental Conflict

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Schmidtz
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Real World ◽  
Environmental Conflict ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Real ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Human Condition

A philosopher might presume that principles of justice somehow are more fundamental than principles of conflict resolution. But moral philosophy done well is neither as autonomous as that, nor as naïve. Moral philosophy done well tracks truth about the human condition, which means it tracks truth about what it actually takes in the real world for people to live in peace. Accordingly, the relationship between justice and conflict resolution is an evolving process of mutual specification, anchored to facts about what helps people get along and make progress. If we want to understand what people have reason to expect from each other and to regard as their due, we would do well to start by learning how people avoid and resolve conflict.

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