Combining Texts

Ideas for 'The Social Contract (tr Cress)', 'Iteration Again' and 'The Therapy of Desire'

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2 ideas

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / g. Moral responsibility
Without freedom of will actions lack moral significance [Rousseau]
     Full Idea: If you take away all freedom of the will, you strip a man's actions of all moral significance.
     From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.4)
     A reaction: Rousseau is (in the context) guilty of the basic error of confusing freedom of action with freedom of the will. If the will has scope to act, it has freedom of action; if the will is not contrained in its decision by prior causes, it has freedom of will.
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 2. Happiness / b. Eudaimonia
Philosophers after Aristotle endorsed the medical analogy for eudaimonia [Nussbaum, by Flanagan]
     Full Idea: Nussbaum says the post-Aristotelian philosophers did much more than simply advancing and refining Aristotle's ethics. They advanced eudaimonics by explicitly endorsing the medical analogy.
     From: report of Martha Nussbaum (The Therapy of Desire [1994]) by Owen Flanagan - The Really Hard Problem 4 'Eudaimoncs'
     A reaction: Since Aristotle is all about the successful functioning of the psuche, this idea is obviously implicit in his original texts. It needs a positive concept of mental health, and not a mere absence of mental illness. See the Mindapples campaign.