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Morality and Self-Interest
Ever since "Know Thyself" was inscribed at Delphi, Western philosophers have struggled to understand the relations between morality and self-interest. This edited volume of essays pushes forward one of the oldest and most important debates in philosophy. Is morality a check on self-interest or is it in one's self interest to be moral? Can morality and self-interest be understood independently of each other? Christopher Morris, The Trouble With Justice Mathias Risse, Nietzsche on Selfishness, Justice, and the Duties of the Higher Men Richard Joyce, Morality, Schmorality David Schmidtz, Because It's Right Thomas Nagel, The Value of Inviolability Samuel Scheffler, Potential Congruence Stephen Finlay, Too Much Morality Terence Irwin Scotus and the Possibility of Moral Motivation Ralph Wedgwood, Butler on Virtue, Self Interest, and Human Nature Julia Annas, Virtue Ethics and the Charge of EgoismW.D. Falk, Morality, Self, and Others Paul Bloomfield, Why It's Bad To Be Bad Joel Kupperman, Classical and Sour Forms of Virtue Michael Stocker, Shame and Guilt; Self Interest and Morality
- GenresPhilosophyPsychology
333 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 1, 2007
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June 12, 2016
This is a fairly good introduction to the topic.
Like most edited volumes on a topic this book is not systematic, and many of the writers have a tendency to shoe-horn in some tenuously related topics. But it does do a fairly good job of mapping the semantic landscape, and probably in some sense benefits from having such varied perspectives on the matter.
There's a fair amount of interpretative texts, which goes some way to giving an account of how the ideas evolved, T. H. Irwin's account of the links from Augustine to Butler is particularly good in this respect.
Other highlights include Richard Joyce's intelligent account of how much of what is often taken to be morality is not strictly speaking morality, but probably the most important of all the essays is W. D. Falk's. Falk does a very good job of gathering together the various different things that are meant by morality and tracing how the various idea overlap and where they diverge, this essay in particular is worth reading for anyone interested in theorising about morality on a general level.
Like most edited volumes on a topic this book is not systematic, and many of the writers have a tendency to shoe-horn in some tenuously related topics. But it does do a fairly good job of mapping the semantic landscape, and probably in some sense benefits from having such varied perspectives on the matter.
There's a fair amount of interpretative texts, which goes some way to giving an account of how the ideas evolved, T. H. Irwin's account of the links from Augustine to Butler is particularly good in this respect.
Other highlights include Richard Joyce's intelligent account of how much of what is often taken to be morality is not strictly speaking morality, but probably the most important of all the essays is W. D. Falk's. Falk does a very good job of gathering together the various different things that are meant by morality and tracing how the various idea overlap and where they diverge, this essay in particular is worth reading for anyone interested in theorising about morality on a general level.
Displaying 1 of 1 review