Principles and Persons: An Ethical Interpretation of Existentialism

by Frederick Olafson

Overview

Originally published in 1967. Many critics have claimed that existentialism has not produced any ethics, as distinct from the moralistic assertions of its individual proponents. Challenging this view, Professor Olafson demonstrates that Sartre, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty indeed worked out a powerful ethical theory and that their positions must be understood as deriving from a voluntarist concept of moral autonomy that can be traced beyond Nietzsche and Kant to certain tendencies in late-medieval thought. He demonstrates that a broad parallelism exists between developments in ethical theory among Continental philosophers of the phenomenological persuasion and the more analytically inclined philosophers of the English-speaking world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421430546
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	12/01/2019
Pages:	278
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Frederick A. Olafson was a professor of education and philosophy in the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I. Historical
Chapter 1.The Intellectualistic Tradition
Chapter 2. Theological Voluntarism
Chapter 3. Philosophical Voluntarism: From Kant to Nietzsche
Chapter 4. The Emergence of Existentialism
Chapter 5. An Interpretation of Existentialism
Part II. Critical
Chapter 6. Action and Value
Chapter 7. Freedom and Choice
Chapter 8. Authenticity and Obligation
Chapter 9. The Significance of Existentialism