Being and Goodness

Being and Goodness PDF Author: Scott Charles MacDonald
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801497797
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
In exploring this tradition of philosophical reflection on the nature of goodness, the twelve essays in this book (all but two published here for the first time) present some of the best recent historical scholarship in...

Being and Goodness

Being and Goodness PDF Author: Scott Charles MacDonald
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801497797
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
In exploring this tradition of philosophical reflection on the nature of goodness, the twelve essays in this book (all but two published here for the first time) present some of the best recent historical scholarship in...

Metaphysics of Goodness

Metaphysics of Goodness PDF Author: Robert Cummings Neville
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438477449
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
In Metaphysics of Goodness, Robert Cummings Neville extends Alfred North Whitehead's project of cultural studies, which was based on a new metaphysics that Whitehead developed in Adventures of Ideas. Neville's focus is value or goodness in many modes. The metaphysics treated in this book derive from the Platonic and Confucian traditions, with significant modifications of Whitehead, Peirce, Dewey, Confucius, Xunzi, and Zhou Dunyi. Part one develops a theory of form based on a metaphysics of harmony. Part two elaborates a theory of art based on a metaphysics of beauty. Part three sketches a theory of personhood based on a metaphysics of obligation. Part four discusses civilization in a systematic way based on a metaphysics of flourishing. Throughout the book, Neville elaborates a theory of interpretation that is inspired by Peirce, Dewey, and Xunzi but is not limited to their ideas. While the reasoning of the book is concise, it employs methodologies from many kinds of philosophy, art criticism, ethics, and cultural studies, and sees philosophy as needing to learn from all these disciplines.

Sense and Goodness Without God

Sense and Goodness Without God PDF Author: Richard Carrier
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1452059268
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 446

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Book Description
If God does not exist, then what does? Is there good and evil, and should we care? How do we know what’s true anyway? And can we make any sense of this universe, or our own lives? Sense and Goodness answers all these questions in lavish detail, without complex jargon. A complete worldview is presented and defended, covering every subject from knowledge to art, from metaphysics to morality, from theology to politics. Topics include free will, the nature of the universe, the meaning of life, and much more, arguing from scientific evidence that there is only a physical, natural world without gods or spirits, but that we can still live a life of love, meaning, and joy.

The Metaphysics of Good and Evil

The Metaphysics of Good and Evil PDF Author: David S. Oderberg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000712508
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
The Metaphysics of Good and Evil is the first, full-length contemporary defence, from the perspective of analytic philosophy, of the Scholastic theory of good and evil – the theory of Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and most medieval and Thomistic philosophers. Goodness is analysed as obedience to nature. Evil is analysed as the privation of goodness. Goodness, surprisingly, is found in the non-living world, but in the living world it takes on a special character. The book analyses various kinds of goodness, showing how they fit into the Scholastic theory. The privation theory of evil is given its most comprehensive contemporary defence, including an account of truthmakers for truths of privation and an analysis of how causation by privation should be understood. In the end, all evil is deviance – a departure from the goodness prescribed by a thing’s essential nature. Key Features: Offers a comprehensive defence of a venerable metaphysical theory, conducted using the concepts and methods of analytic philosophy. Revives a much neglected approach to the question of good and evil in their most general nature. Shows how Aristotelian-Thomistic theory has more than historical relevance to a fundamental philosophical issue, but can be applied in a way that is both defensible and yet accessible to the modern philosopher. Provides what, for the Scholastic philosopher, is arguably the only solid metaphysical foundation for a separate treatment of the origins of morality.

Aquinas on Being, Goodness, and God

Aquinas on Being, Goodness, and God PDF Author: Christopher Hughes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134279892
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 1103

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Book Description
Thomas Aquinas is one of the most important figures in the history of philosophy and philosophical theology. Relying on a deep understanding of Aristotle, Aquinas developed a metaphysical framework that is comprehensive, detailed, and flexible. Within that framework, he formulated a range of strikingly original and carefully explicated views in areas including natural theology, philosophy of mind, philosophical psychology, and ethics. In this book, Christopher Hughes focuses on Aquinas’s thought from an analytic philosophical perspective. After an overview of Aquinas’s life and works, Hughes discusses Aquinas’s metaphysics, including his conception of substance, matter, and form, and his account of essence and existence; and his theory of the nature of human beings, including his critique of a substance dualism that Aquinas attributes to Plato, but is usually associated with Descartes. In the final chapters, Hughes discusses Aquinas’s account of the existence and nature of God, and his treatment of the problem of evil, as well as his ideas about the relation of goodness to being, choice, and happiness. Aquinas on Being, Goodness, and God is essential reading for students and scholars of Aquinas, and anyone interested in philosophy of religion or the history of medieval philosophy.

Being is Better Than Not Being

Being is Better Than Not Being PDF Author: Christopher V. Mirus
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 0813235464
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
In his contemplative works on nature, Aristotle twice appeals to the general principle that being is better than not being. Taking his cue from this claim, Christopher V. Mirus offers an extended, systematic account of how Aristotle understands being itself to be good. Mirus begins with the human, examining Aristotle’s well-known claim that the end of a human life is the good of the human substance as such—which turns out to be the good of the human capacity for thought. Human thought, however, is not concerned with human affairs alone. It is also contemplative, and contemplation is oriented toward the beauty of its objects. In each of the three branches of contemplative thought—mathematics, natural science, and theology—the intelligibility of being renders it beautiful to thought. Both in nature and in human life, moreover, the being that is beautiful through its intelligibility serves also as an end of motion and of action; hence it counts not only as beautiful (kalon), but also as good (agathon). The persistent concern of thought with the beautiful reveals what is at stake for human beings in Aristotle’s larger metaphysics of the good: in the connection between goodness and actuality that structures his natural science and metaphysics, in his explicit claim that being is better than not being, and in his concepts of order and determinacy, which help connect being with goodness. These in turn shed light on his concepts of the complete and the self-sufficient, on his teleological understanding of the four elements, and on the curious role of the honorable in his natural science and metaphysics.

Boston Confucianism

Boston Confucianism PDF Author: Robert C. Neville
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791447178
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Argues that Confucianism can be important to the contemporary, global conversation of philosophy and should not be confined to an East Asian context.

Iris Murdoch and the Search for Human Goodness

Iris Murdoch and the Search for Human Goodness PDF Author: Maria Antonaccio
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226021126
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
A HISTORY AND CRITIQUE OF THE WRITINGS OF IRIS MURDOCH.

Goodness and Justice

Goodness and Justice PDF Author: Joseph Mendola
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139455087
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
In Goodness and Justice, Joseph Mendola develops a unified moral theory that defends the hedonism of classical utilitarianism, while evading utilitarianism's familiar difficulties by adopting two modifications. His theory incorporates a developed form of consequentialism. When, as is common, someone is engaged in conflicting group acts, it requires that one perform one's role in that group act that is most beneficent. The theory also holds that overall value is distribution-sensitive, ceding maximum weight to the well-being of the worst-off sections of sentient lives. It is properly congruent with commonsense intuition and required by the true metaphysics of value, by the unconstituted natural good found in our world.

Evil in Aristotle

Evil in Aristotle PDF Author: Pavlos Kontos
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107161975
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Provides the first full study of Aristotle's notion of evil and sheds light on its content, potential, and influence.