Happiness and Benevolence

by Robert Spaemann

Takes the reader on a quest for the fundamental principle of ethics. Drawing both on ancient and modern philosophy, from Aristotle, Plato and Aquinas to Kant and Hegel, this book discovers the intimate relationship between ethics and ontology - the science of being.

Genres: Philosophy

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 5, 1999

About the author

Robert Spaemann wurde 1927 in Berlin geboren. Er promovierte 1952 in Münster, war dann vier Jahre lang als Verlagslektor tätig. 1962 habilitierte er in den Fächern Philosophie und Pädagogik und war bis 1992 ordentlicher Professor an den Universitäten Stuttgart, Heidelberg und München.

Reviews

[Kian Zwo Drei · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me (I'm a philosophy teacher at High School) a must-read it if you want to take a closer look at ethics. A brilliant work of great depth and intellectual acuity. It really grabbed me and didn't let go - how often did I hear myself say, "That's it!" - but you can rarely put it that way yourself.
Admittedly, a very critical draft against modern ethical drafts - and precisely for that reason exciting and challenging. Utilitarianism, discourse ethics and system theory all come off badly - at the end of the day, Spaemann's ethics are based on a Christian-Aristotelian world view. But: This judgement can surely only be at the end of the reading, it should not be at the beginning. For if there is one thing Spaemann's arguments are not, it is flat or biased.