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Knowing What To Do: Imagination, Virtue, and Platonism in Ethics


Knowing What To Do: Imagination, Virtue, and Platonism in Ethics

Hardback by Chappell, Sophie Grace (The Open University, UK)

Knowing What To Do: Imagination, Virtue, and Platonism in Ethics

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ISBN:
9780199684854
Publication Date:
27 Mar 2014
Language:
English
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Pages:
350 pages
Format:
Hardback
For delivery:
Estimated despatch 24 - 29 May 2024
Knowing What To Do: Imagination, Virtue, and Platonism in Ethics

Description

Sophie Grace Chappell develops a picture of what philosophical ethics can be like, once set aside from the idealising and reductive pressures of conventional moral theory. His question is 'How are we to know what to do?', and the answer he defends is 'By developing our moral imaginations'. The series of studies presented in Knowing What To Do contribute to the case that the moral imagination is a key part of human excellence or virtue by showing that it plays a wide variety of roles in our practical and evaluative lives. There is no short-cut or formulaic way of knowing what to do; but the longer and more painstaking approach is more rewarding anyway. This approach involves developing our repertoire of natural human capacities for imagination, open deliberation, and contemplative attention to the world, the people, and the reality of value around us.

Contents

Introduction ; 1. What makes a good decision? ; 2. Three kinds of moral imagination ; 3. Intuition, system, and the 'paradox' of deontology ; 4. Impartial benevolence and partial love ; 5. Internal reasons and the heart's desire ; 6. On the very idea of criteria for personhood ; 7. Glory as an ethical idea ; 8. Nobility and beauty in ethics ; 9. Moral certainties ; 10. Why ethics is hard ; 11. The varieties of knowledge in Plato and Aristotle ; 12. Platonistic virtue ethics ; Bibliography

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