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Ethics for beginners 52 "big ideas" from 32 great minds

"This is not a typical ethics textbook. Most ethics textbooks are anthologies of articles by contemporary philosophers, or a whole book by one contemporary philosopher, about ethical puzzles to be solved by logical analysis. This is good mental exercise but it will not change your life, and you...

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Main Author: Kreeft, Peter (Author)
Format: Books Print Book
Language: English
Published: South Bend, Indiana : St. Augustine's Press, [2019]
Subjects:
Ethics.
Table of Contents:
  • One universal anonymous sage : the Rta/Tao/Logos
  • Four sages from the East. The Hindu tradition : the four wants of man
  • Buddha : Nirvana
  • Confucius : social harmony
  • Lao Tzu : nature's way
  • Three sages from the West. Moses : divine law
  • Jesus : agape love
  • Muhammad : "Islam"
  • Three classic Greek founders of philosophy. Socrates : the primacy of wisdom ("Virtue is knowledge")
  • Plato: No double standard : ethics and politics ; Platonic Ideas : the objective reality of goodness ; Justice as health of soul and therefore always profitable
  • Aristotle: Happiness as the end, the greatest good ; Virtue as the road to happiness ; The good as teleological ; The golden mean as the key to virtue ; Ethics as dependent on metaphysics ; The (later) idea of "natural law"
  • Three lesser but more popular ancient philosophers. Protagoras
  • Epicurus: Hedonism
  • Epicurus: Stoicism
  • Three medieval Christian saints. St. Augustine: Love as gravity ; Only two kinds of people ; The restless heart
  • St. Anselm : the good greater than which nothing can be thought
  • Thomas Aquinas: The role of faith and reason ; Four kinds of law ; The four cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues ; Eight candidates for happiness
  • Three modern political philosophers. Machiavelli : the good as the practical
  • Hobbes : the good as power
  • Rousseau : the good as feeling
  • Three classic modern ethical alternatives. Hume : the good as subjective
  • Kant: The good as goodwill ; Goodwill as duty ; Duty as the "categorical imperative"
  • Mill : utilitarianism : the good as maximally happy consequences
  • Three Existentialists. Kierkegaard : aesthetics, ethics, and religion
  • Nietzsche: The genealogy of morals as resentment ; The Superman : "beyond good and evil" ; "The will to power"
  • Sartre: God vs. freedom ; Love vs. freedom
  • Two Personalists. Marcel: Being as value ; Mysteries vs. problems ; "Creative fidelity"
  • Von Hildebrand: Three kinds of value ; The ethics of the heart
  • Three analytic philosophers. Ayer : the good as meaningless
  • Moore : the good as indefinable
  • Wittgenstein : the good as "mystical"
  • Is ethics dead? MacIntyre "After Virtue" vs. Aquinas.

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