Ethics and Philosophical Critique in William James

✍ Scribed by Sarin Marchetti

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 305
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

In Ethics and Philosophical Critique in William James Marchetti invites the reader to radically rethink James's seminal contribution to moral philosophy. Contrary to the standard interpretation of his work as a moral philosopher, Marchetti argues that James was not interested in defending a moral theory but rather aimed at problematizing the very methods and goals of a philosophical investigation of ethics. By giving prominence to this metaphilosophical feature of James's writings - grounded in his distinctive pragmatic mode of philosophizing aimed at the clarification, rather than at the foundation, of our human activities - Marchetti presents James's moral thought as an ambitious and imaginative attempt to set moral philosophy on different reflective rails. Against the attempt to advance disengaged meta-ethical accounts of what morality consists in and normative prescriptions about how to best implement it, James rethinks ethics as the critical elucidation of our ways of thinking and conducting ourselves in the midst of our ordinary practices for the sake of their amelioration.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction William James, the Moral Philosopher
1. Pragmatism, Therapy, and the Moral Life
2. Questioning Moral Theory and the Shape of Ethics
3. The Life of the Mind and the Practices of the Self
4. Truth, Experience, and the World Re-Enchanted
5. Ethical Conduct and Political Activity
Conclusion The Seeds of a Revolution in Moral Philosophy
Notes
Bibliography
Index

✦ Subjects

Ethics Morality Philosophy Politics Social Sciences Pragmatism Movements Political Humanities New Used Rental Textbooks Specialty Boutique