 | Ethics and Self-Cultivation: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives Subjects: Humanities; Classical Studies; Philosophy; Ancient Philosophy; Ancient Philosophy; Ethics Philosophy; History of Philosophy; Modern Philosophy (16th Century-18th Century); 19th Century Philosophy; The aim of Ethics and Self-Cultivation is to establish and explore a new 'cultivation of the self' strand within contemporary moral philosophy. Although the revival of virtue ethics has helped reintroduce the eudaimonic tradition into mainstream philosophical debates, it has by and large been a revival of Aristotelian ethics combined with a modern preoccupation with standards for the moral rightness of actions. The essays comprising this volume offer a fresh approach to the eudaimonic tradition: instead of conditions for rightness of actions, it focuses on conceptions of human life that are best for the one living it. The first section of essays looks at the Hellenistic schools and the way they influenced modern thinkers like Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche, Hadot, and Foucault in their thinking about self-cultivation. The second section offers contemporary perspectives on ethical self-cultivation by drawing on work in moral psychology, epistemology of self-knowledge, philosophy of mind, and meta-ethics. Matthew Dennis is a doctoral researcher on the joint-PhD programme of the universities of Warwick (UK) and Monash (Australia), specialising in philosophical accounts of character-development and self-cultivation. His current work draws on French and German philosophy, exploring how these traditions have the resources to contribute to debates in Anglophone ethics. He has published on Nietzsche, Kant, and virtue theory, and is currently writing on the philosophy of technology. Sander Werkhoven is an Assistant Professor of Ethics at the Department of Philosophy at Utrecht University and a member of the Ethics Institute. His main research areas are the philosophy of medicine and psychiatry, normative ethics, and meta-ethics. He has published on theories of health and well-being in international journals, and has papers forthcoming on Nietzsche, Canguilhem, and Foucault. |
