Natural Citizens
eBook - PDF

Natural Citizens

Ethical Formation as Biological Development

  1. 263 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Natural Citizens

Ethical Formation as Biological Development

About this book

Natural Citizens: Ethical Formation as Biological Development presents a novel view, "naturalist humanism," that applies recent scientific work challenging dichotomous views of biological development. Rather than being a passive victim of its evolutionary fate, the developing organism is an active participant, partly constructing its own ecological niche from internal and external resources. The human developmental environment, our ecological niche, has a distinctive socio-cultural character. Richard Paul Hamilton proposes that we understand the development of moral character as an integral part of biological development with the virtues construed as refinements of mundane social intelligence.
Drawing on work in 4E Cognition, Hamilton revisits the traditional idea of ethical understanding as quasi-perceptual but argues that this can only be made intelligible by taking a non-representationalist view of perception. The virtuous person has learned how to focus her attention on what enables her to live a fully human life, individually and communally. Given that not all societies are equally conducive to fully human lives, the concluding sections explore how contemporary capitalist society distorts our attention and what obstacles it places in the way of virtue. Natural Citizens highlights the unsustainable state of current social and economic relations and the urgent need for radical alternatives.

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Yes, you can access Natural Citizens by Richard Paul Hamilton in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Philosophy & Ethics & Moral Philosophy. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Preface
  3. Introduction: Naturalist Humanism
  4. 1. Why Should We Be Naturalists?
  5. 2. Standard Naturalism, The Placement Problem, and Companion in Guilt Arguments
  6. 3. Is the Natural Goodness Approach of Philippa Foot and Michael Thompson a Suitable Candidate for LiberalNaturalism?
  7. 4. The Possibility of a Transcendental Naturalism
  8. 5. The Myth of the Biological Given and the Developmentalist Turn
  9. 6. Virtues as Powers and Perfections
  10. 7. Culture as Our Ecological Niche
  11. 8. Virtue as Skilled Perception
  12. 9. The Burdens of Attentiveness
  13. 10. Can There Be Bourgeois Virtues?
  14. Conclusion: Radical Hope and Revolutionary Virtue
  15. Bibliography
  16. Index
  17. About the Author