The British Moralists on Human Nature and the Birth of Secular Ethics

Zusammenfassung Uncovering the historical roots of naturalistic, secular contemporary ethics, this volume shows how the British moralists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries completed a Copernican revolution in moral philosophy, effecting a shift from considering morality as independent of human nature to considering it as part of human nature itself.

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This volume uncovers the historical roots of naturalistic, secular contemporary ethics.

Contenu

Introduction; Part I. Whichcote and cudworth: 1. The negative answer of English Calvinism; 2. Whichcote and Cudworth's positive answer; 3 Whichcote and Cudworth on religious liberty; 4. Rationalism, sentimentalism, and Ralph Cudworth; 5. The emergence of non-Christian ethics; Part II. Shaftesbury: 6. Shaftesbury and the Cambridge Platonists; 7. Shaftesbury's Inquiry: a misanthropic faith in human nature; 8. The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody; 9. A philosophical faultline; Part III. Hutcheson: 10. Early influences on Francis Hutcheson; 11. Hutcheson's attack on egoism; 12. Hutcheson's attack on moral rationalism; 13. A Copernican positive answer, an attenuated moral realism; 14. Explaining away vice; Part IV. Hume: 15. David Hume's new 'science of man'; 16. Hume's arguments against moral rationalism; 17. Hume's associative moral sentiments; 18. Hume's progressive view of human nature; 19. Comparison and contingency in Hume's moral account; 20. What is a Humean account, and what difference does it make?