The Moral Life: Essays in Honour of John Cottingham

281 Pages·2008·0.852 MB·English

by  Nafsika Athanassoulis, Samantha Vice (eds.)

The Moral Life
Essays in Honour of John Cottingham
Edited by
Nafsika Athanassoulis and Samantha Vice
The Moral Life
Also by Nafsika Athanassoulis
MORALITY, MORAL LUCK AND RESPONSIBILITY: FORTUNE’S WEB
PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS ON MEDICAL ETHICS (editor)
Also by Samantha Vice
ETHICS IN FILM (co-editorwith Ward E. Jones)
The Moral Life
Essays in Honour of John Cottingham
Edited by
Nafsika Athanassoulis
Keele University, UK
and
Samantha Vice
Rhodes University, South Africa
Editorial matter and selection © Nafsika Athanassoulis and
Samantha Vice 2008
Chapters © their individual authors 2008
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2008 978-0-230-52756-0
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The moral life :essays in honour of John Cottingham / edited by
Nafsika Athanassoulis and Samantha Vice.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Cottingham,John,1943– 2. Ethics.3. Religious ethics. I.
Cottingham,John,1943– II.Athanassoulis,Nafsika,1973– III.
Vice,Samantha,1973–
BJ604.C683M67 2008
170—dc22 2008011739
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08
Contents
Notes on Contributors vi
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
Nafsika Athanassoulis and Samantha Vice
Part I Partiality, Spirituality and Character
1 The Insignificance of the Self: Partiality and Spirituality 9
Samantha Vice
2 Contempt and Integrity 31
Maximilian de Gaynesford
3 Self-Love, Love of Neighbour, and Impartiality 58
David S. Oderberg
Part II The Emotions and the Good Life
4 Akrasiaand the Emotions 87
Nafsika Athanassoulis
5 The Inner Life of the ‘Dear Self’ 111
Seiriol Morgan
6 What Reason Can’t Do 139
Michael Lacewing
Part III The Meaning of Life
7 Meaning, Morality, and Religion 167
Roger Crisp
8 The Meaning of Life: Subjectivism, Objectivism,
and Divine Support 184
Brad Hooker
9 God, Morality and the Meaning of Life 201
Thaddeus Metz
Part IV Replies and Reflections
10 The Self, the Good Life and the Transcendent 231
John Cottingham
Index 275
v
Notes on Contributors
Nafsika Athanassoulis is Lecturer in Ethics at Keele University. Her
work focuses on normative theories and in particular virtue ethics. She
is the author of Morality, Moral Luck and Responsibility: Fortune’s Web
(Palgrave, 2005) and editor of Philosophical Reflections on Medical Ethics
(Palgrave, 2005).
John Cottingham is a well-known authority on the philosophy of
Descartes and seventeenth-century rationalism, and has written numer-
ous books and articles on the history of philosophy, with special refer-
ence to the early-modern period. He has also published extensively in
the field of moral philosophy and philosophy of religion, with special
reference to the theory of the good life and the relation between
philosophy and spirituality. He is currently Professor of Philosophy at
the University of Reading, where he holds an Established Chair of
Philosophy. He is also an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford.
He has held the Radcliffe Research Fellowship in Philosophy and has
served as Chairman of the British Society for the History of Philosophy,
as President of the Mind Association, and as President of the Aristotelian
Society. He is (since 1993) Editor of RATIO, the international journal of
analytic philosophy. In 2002–4 he was Stanton Lecturer in the
Philosophy of Religion at Cambridge University, and in 2008 he was
elected President of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion.
John Cottingham is co-translator of the standard three-volume
Cambridge edition of The Philosophical Writings of Descartes(Cambridge,
1985–91). His other books include Descartes (Blackwell, 1986), The
Rationalists (Oxford University Press, 1988), Reason, Will and Sensation
(OUP, 1994), Western Philosophy: an anthology(Blackwell, 1996, augmen-
ted 2nd edn 2007), Descartes's Philosophy of Mind (Orion, 1997),
Philosophy and the good life: reason and the Passions in Greek, Cartesian and
psychoanalytic ethics (Cambridge, 1998), On the Meaning of Life
(Routledge, 2003), and The Spiritual Dimension(Cambridge, 2005). He is
editor of The Cambridge Companion to Descartes (1992) and the Oxford
Readings volume on Descartes(1998), and is general editor of the Oxford
PhilosophicalTexts series.
Roger Crisp is Uehiro Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at St Anne’s
College, Oxford. He is the author of Mill on Utilitarianism (1998) and
vi
Notes on Contributors vii
Reasons and the Good(2000), and has translated Aristotle’s Nicomachean
Ethicsfor Cambridge University Press.
Maximilian de Gaynesfordis Reader in Philosophy at the University of
Reading. He was formerly Fellow and Tutor at Lincoln College Oxford,
Humboldt Research Fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin, and Associate
Professor at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. He is the
author of I: The Meaning of the First Person Term (OUP, 2006), Hilary
Putnam(McGill-Queen’s, 2006) and John McDowell(Polity, 2004) as well
as of papers on the philosophy of mind and language, epistemology,
metaphysics and moral psychology.
Brad Hooker has been at the University of Reading since 1993. His
bookIdeal Code, Real Worldwas published by Oxford University Press in
2000.
Michael Lacewingis Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Heythrop College,
University of London, and researches in the philosophy of psychoanaly-
sis. He has published in Ratio, Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology and
Philosophical Psychology.
Thaddeus Metz’s research focuses on the meaning of life and on respect-
based approaches to ethics, politics and law. His work has appeared in
journals such as Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs, The Journal of Political
Philosophy, Law and Philosophy, The Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, APQ and
Religious Studies. Metz is Professor of Philosophy and Directror of the Wits
Centre for Ethics at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Seiriol Morgan is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of
Bristol. He works primarily in moral philosophy, and has interests in
metaethics, moral theory and various areas of applied ethics, particu-
larly sexual morality. He has published in Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, Philosophical Review, Ethical Theory and Moral
Practiceand the Journal of Applied Philosophy.
David S. Oderberg is Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Reading, England. Among other books, he is the author of Moral Theory:
A Non-Consequentialist Approach (Blackwell, 2000) and Applied Ethics:
ANon-Consequentialist Approach (Blackwell, 2000), as well as co-editor,
with Jacqueline A. Laing, of Human Lives: Critical Essays on Non-
Consequentialist Bioethics(Macmillan/St. Martin’ s Press, 1997) and, with
Timothy Chappell, of Human Values: New Essays on Ethics and Natural
Law (Palgrave, 2004). His latest book, Real Essentialism, appeared with
Routledge in 2007.
viii Notes on Contributors
Samantha Vice is Lecturer in Philosophy at Rhodes University, South
Africa. She is co-editor, with Ward E. Jones, of Ethics in Film,forthcoming
for Oxford University Press, and has published papers on the self, good-
ness, self-judgement and the work of Iris Murdoch.
Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to all the authors in this volume who so enthusi-
astically responded to our call for contributions in honour of John
Cottingham. We are particularly grateful to Brad Hooker, the source, it
seems, of all good ideas, for suggesting this project in the first place, and
of course to John Cottingham, whose work has provided the inspiration
for everything that followed.
A big thank you is also due to both our families for their love and support
while we worked on this project.
ix