Self-love, Egoism and the Selfish Hypothesis

Self-love, Egoism and the Selfish Hypothesis PDF Author: Christian Maurer
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474413382
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Do people only act out of self-interest? Or is there a less pessimistic explanation for human behaviour? Maurer delves into early-Enlightenment debates on self-love from both famous and lesser known A01s, including Lord Shaftesbury, Bernard Mandeville, Francis Hutcheson, Joseph Butler, Archibald Campbell, David Hume and Adam Smith.

Self-love, Egoism and the Selfish Hypothesis

Self-love, Egoism and the Selfish Hypothesis PDF Author: Christian Maurer
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474413382
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Do people only act out of self-interest? Or is there a less pessimistic explanation for human behaviour? Maurer delves into early-Enlightenment debates on self-love from both famous and lesser known A01s, including Lord Shaftesbury, Bernard Mandeville, Francis Hutcheson, Joseph Butler, Archibald Campbell, David Hume and Adam Smith.

Self-love, Egoism and the Selfish Hypothesis

Self-love, Egoism and the Selfish Hypothesis PDF Author: Maurer Christian Maurer
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474413390
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
The dawn of the Enlightenment saw heated debates on self-love. Do people only act out of self-interest? Or is there a less pessimistic explanation for human behaviour? Maurer delves into the contributions to these debates from both famous and lesser known authors, including Lord Shaftesbury, Bernard Mandeville, Francis Hutcheson, Joseph Butler, Archibald Campbell, David Hume and Adam Smith, and puts them in their philosophical, theological and economic context. Maurer identifies five distinct conceptions of self-love and looks at their role within theories of human psychology and morality while drawing attention to the heuristic limits of our contemporary notion of egoism. He compares the central arguments and the different strategies intended to morally rehabilitate human nature and self-love before and during the Enlightenment.

Self-Interest and Social Order in Classical Liberalism

Self-Interest and Social Order in Classical Liberalism PDF Author: George H. Smith
Publisher: Cato Institute
ISBN: 1944424407
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
There is a well-worn image and phrase for libertarianism: ?atomized individualism.? This hobgoblin has spread so thoroughly that even some libertarians think their philosophy unreservedly supports private persons, whatever the situation, whatever their behavior. Smith?s Self-Interest and Social Order in Classical Liberalism, corrects this misrepresentation with careful intellectual surveys of Hume, Smith, Hobbes, Butler, Mandeville, and Hutcheson and their respective contributions to political philosophy.

The Selfish Gene

The Selfish Gene PDF Author: Richard Dawkins
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780192860927
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Science need not be dull and bogged down by jargon, as Richard Dawkins proves in this entertaining look at evolution. The themes he takes up are the concepts of altruistic and selfish behaviour; the genetical definition of selfish interest; the evolution of aggressive behaviour; kinshiptheory; sex ratio theory; reciprocal altruism; deceit; and the natural selection of sex differences. 'Should be read, can be read by almost anyone. It describes with great skill a new face of the theory of evolution.' W.D. Hamilton, Science

David Hume and the Culture of Scottish Newtonianism

David Hume and the Culture of Scottish Newtonianism PDF Author: Tamás Demeter
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004327320
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
David Hume has a canonical place in the context of moral philosophy, but his insights are less frequently discussed in relation to natural philosophy. David Hume and the Culture of Scottish Newtonianism offers a discussion of Hume’s methodological and ideological commitments in matters of knowledge as reflected in his language and outlook. Tamás Demeter argues that several aspects of Hume’s moral philosophy reflect post-Newtonian tendencies in the aftermath of the Opticks, and show affinities with Newton-inspired Scottish physiology and chemistry. Consequently, when Hume describes his project as an 'anatomy of the mind' he uses a metaphor that expresses his commitment to study human cognitive and affective functioning on analogy with active and organic nature, and not with the Principia’s world of inert matter.

Sacrifice Regained

Sacrifice Regained PDF Author: Roger Crisp
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019257695X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
Does being virtuous make you happy? Roger Crisp examines the answers to this ancient question provided by the so-called 'British Moralists', from Thomas Hobbes, around 1650, for the next two hundred years, until Jeremy Bentham. This involves elucidating their views on happiness (self-interest, or well-being) and on virtue (or morality), in order to bring out the relation of each to the other. Themes ran through many of these writers: psychological egoism, evaluative hedonism, and—after Hobbes—the acceptance of self-standing moral reasons. But there are exceptions, and even those taking the standard views adopt them for very different reasons and express them in various ways. As the ancients tended to believe that virtue and happiness largely coincide, so these modern authors are inclined to accept posthumous reward and punishment. Both positions sit uneasily with the common-sense idea that a person can truly sacrifice their own good for the sake of morality or for others. This book shows that David Hume—a hedonist whose ethics made no appeal to the afterlife—was the first major British moralist to allow for, indeed to recommend, such self-sacrifice. Morality and well-being of course remain central to modern ethics, and Crisp demonstrates how much there is to learn from this remarkable group of philosophers.

Moral Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Moral Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Britain PDF Author: Colin Heydt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108421091
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
A new account of a vital period in the history of ethics, focusing on the content of morality.

The Methods of Ethics

The Methods of Ethics PDF Author: Henry Sidgwick
Publisher: Gale and the British Library
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 508

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Book Description


From Moral Theology to Moral Philosophy

From Moral Theology to Moral Philosophy PDF Author: Tim Stuart-Buttle
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198835582
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Tim Stuart-Buttle offers a fresh view of British moral philosophy in the 17th and early 18th centuries. In this period of remarkable innovation, philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke, and Hume combined critique of the role of Christianity in moral thought with reconsideration of the legacy of the classical tradition of academic scepticism.

Beyond Self-Interest

Beyond Self-Interest PDF Author: Jane J. Mansbridge
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226503607
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
A dramatic transformation has begun in the way scholars think about human nature. Political scientists, psychologists, economists, and evolutionary biologists are beginning to reject the view that human affairs are shaped almost exclusively by self-interest—a view that came to dominate social science in the last three decades. In Beyond Self-Interest, leading social scientists argue for a view of individuals behavior and social organization that takes into account the powerful motivations of duty, love, and malevolence. Economists who go beyond "economic man," psychologists who go beyond stimulus-response, evolutionary biologists who go beyond the "selfish gene," and political scientists who go beyond the quest for power come together in this provocative and important manifesto. The essays trace, from the ancient Greeks to the present, the use of self-interest to explain political life. They investigate the differences between self-interest and the motivations of duty and love, showing how these motivations affect behavior in "prisoners' dilemma" interactions. They generate evolutionary models that explain how altruistic motivations escape extinction. They suggest ways to model within one individual the separate motivations of public spirit and self-interest, investigate public spirit and self-interest, investigate public spirit in citizen and legislative behavior, and demonstrate that the view of democracy in existing Constitutional interpretations is not based on self-interest. They advance both human evil and mothering as alternatives to self-interest, this last in a penetrating feminist critique of the "contract" model of human interaction.