Confronting Aristotle's Ethics
eBook - PDF

Confronting Aristotle's Ethics

Ancient and Modern Morality

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Confronting Aristotle's Ethics

Ancient and Modern Morality

About this book

What is the good life? Posing this question today would likely elicit very different answers. Some might say that the good life means doing good—improving one's community and the lives of others. Others might respond that it means doing well—cultivating one's own abilities in a meaningful way. But for Aristotle these two distinct ideas—doing good and doing well—were one and the same and could be realized in a single life. In Confronting Aristotle's Ethics, Eugene Garver examines how we can draw this conclusion from Aristotle's works, while also studying how this conception of the good life relates to contemporary ideas of morality.

The key to Aristotle's views on ethics, argues Garver, lies in the Metaphysics or, more specifically, in his thoughts on activities, actions, and capacities. For Aristotle, Garver shows, it is only possible to be truly active when acting for the common good, and it is only possible to be truly happy when active to the extent of one's own powers. But does this mean we should aspire to Aristotle's impossibly demanding vision of the good life? In a word, no. Garver stresses the enormous gap between life in Aristotle's time and ours. As a result, this bookwill be a welcome rumination on not only Aristotle, but the relationship between the individual and society in everyday life.
 

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Yes, you can access Confronting Aristotle's Ethics by Eugene Garver in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Philosophy & Ancient & Classical Philosophy. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. List of Abbreviations of Aristotle's Works
  4. Introduction
  5. 1. What Aristotle's Rhetoric Can Tell Us about the Rationality of Virtue
  6. 2. Decision, Rational Powers, and Irrational Powers
  7. 3. The Varieties of Moral Failure
  8. 4. Passion and the Two Sides of Virtue
  9. 5. Aristotle's Ethical Virtues Are Political Virtues
  10. 6. The Ethical Dimensions of Aristotle's Metaphysics
  11. 7. Living Politically and Living Rationally: Choosing Ends and Choosing Lives
  12. Notes
  13. Name Index
  14. Index of Passages in Aristotle's Works