Morals from Motives

by Michael Slote

Overview

Morals from Motives develops a virtue ethics inspired more by Hume and Hutcheson's moral sentimentalism than by recently-influential Aristotelianism. It argues that a reconfigured and expanded "morality of caring" can offer a general account of right and wrong action as well as social justice. Expanding the frontiers of ethics, it goes on to show how a motive-based "pure" virtue theory can also help us to understand the nature of human well-being and practical reason.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190207939
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/15/2001
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	765 KB

Table of Contents

PART I: MORALITY AND JUSTICE
ONE: Agent-Based Virtue Ethics
1. Virtue Ethics
2. Objections to Agent-Basing
3. Morality as Inner Strength
4. Morality as Universal Benevolence
5. Morality as Caring and Further Aspects of Agent-Basing
TWO: Morality and the Practical
1. Is Agent-basing Practical?
2. The Value of Conscientousness
3. Moral Conflict
THREE: The Structure of Caring
1. Caring and Love
2. Balanced Caring
3. Balanced Caring versus Aggregative Partialism
4. Self-Concern
5. Sentimentalist Deontology
6. Caring versus the Philosophers
FOUR: The Justice of Caring
1. From the Personal to the Political
2. Social Justice
3. Laws and Their Applications
4. Conclusion
FIVE: Universal Benevolence versus Caring
1. Universal Benevolence and Universal Love
2. The Justice of Universal Benevolence
3. Humanitarianism and Religious Belief
4. Humanitarianism and Intolerance
5. The Choice between Caring and Universal Benevolence
PART II: PRACTICAL RATIONALITY AND HUMAN GOOD
SIX: The Virtue in Self-Interest
1. Unification in Utilitarianism
2. Elevation versus Reduction
3. Is Elevation Viable?
4. Aristotelian Elevationism
5. Platonic Elevationism
6. Conclusion
SEVEN: Agent-Based Practical Reason
1. Conceptions of Practical Reason
2. Agent-Based Rationality
3. Practical Reason and Self-Interest
4. The Rational Requiements of Morality
5. Conclusion
EIGHT: Extending the Approach
1. Hyper-Agent-Basing
2. General Conclusion
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Contemporary virtue ethics has had a decidedly Aristotelian look to it, at least until now. Michael Slote offers an interesting alternative in his new book Morals from Motives. Slote here develops a sentimentalist approach to virtue ethics, one that is inspired by the Humean rather than the Aristotelian tradition in ethics...This book should be required reading for those interested in virtue ethics and understanding how it compares to other moral theories."—Julia Driver, Journal of Ethics

"Revivals of virtue ethics usually take their cue from Aristotle and the Stoics. Not so Michael Slote's stimulating new book Morals from Motives, which instead develops virtue ethics approaches inspired, respectively, by the British sentimentalism of Hutcheson and the feminist ethics of care...[A]n ambitious and ground-breaking approach...surprising if this book did not generate significant interest in agent-based forms of virtue ethics."—Michael Brady, Philosophical Quarterly

"The purest and most interesting virtue-ethical theory yet developed. The publication of this book should change the way virtue ethics is understood."—Thomas Hurka, University of Toronto

"[Slote's] project is an attractively shaped one. It is also ambitious, encompassing discussions of political morality and practical rationality."—Times Literary Supplement, November 22, 2002

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