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Print Price: $38.50

Format:
Paperback
320 pp.
5.5" x 8.25"

ISBN-13:
9780199316571

Publication date:
July 2016

Imprint: OUP US

Moral Motivation

A History

Edited by Iakovos Vasiliou

Series : Oxford Philosophical Concepts

Moral Motivation presents a history of the concept of moral motivation. The book consists of ten chapters by eminent scholars in the history of philosophy, covering Plato, Aristotle, later Peripatetic philosophy, medieval philosophy, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Kant, Fichte and Hegel, and the consequentialist tradition. In addition, four interdisciplinary "Reflections" discuss how the topic of moral motivation arises in epic poetry, Cicero, early opera, and Theodore Dreiser.

Most contemporary philosophical discussions of moral motivation focus on whether and how moral beliefs by themselves motivate an agent (at least to some degree) to act. In much of the history of the concept, especially before Hume, the focus is rather on how to motivate people to act morally as well as on what sort of motivation a person must act from (or what end an agents acts for) in order to be a genuinely ethical person or even to have done a genuinely ethical action. The book shows the complexity of the historical treatment of moral motivation and, moreover, how intertwined moral motivation is with central aspects of ethical theory.

Readership : Academic philosophers, historians of ideas, classicists, and graduate students.

Acknowledgements
Contributors
Introduction, Iakovos Vasiliou
1. Plato and Moral Motivation, Iakovos Vasiliou
Reflection: Moral Motivation: Achilles and Homer's Iliad, Nancy Worman
2. Aristotle on Moral Motivation, Susan Sauvé Meyer
3. A Later (and Non-Standard) Aristotelian Account of Moral Motivation, Brad Inwood
Reflection: Cicero on Moral Motivation and Seeing (How) To Be Good, Joy Connolly
4. Moral Motivation in Medieval Philosophy, Jonathan Jacobs
5. Act and Moral Motivation in Spinoza, Steven Nadler
Reflection: Moral Motivation and Music as Moral Judge, Chadwick Jenkins
6. Locke on Pleasure, Law, and Moral Motivation, Phillip Mitsis
7. Hume on Moral Motivation, Jacqueline Taylor
8. Kant and Moral Motivation: The Value of Free Rational Willing, Jennifer Uleman
9. Moral Motivation in Post-Kantian Philosophy: Fichte and Hegel, Angelica Nuzzo
Reflection: Moral Motivation and the Limits of Moral Agency in Literary Naturalism: Dreiser's Sister Carrie, Anne Diebel
10. Consequentialism, Moral Motivation, and the Deontic Relevance of Motives, Steven Sverdlik
Bibliography
Index

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Iakovos Vasiliou is currently Professor of Philosophy at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. He has published a number of articles on Plato and Aristotle, and is the author of Aiming at Virtue in Plato (Cambridge University Press, 2008). He has also taught at Brooklyn College, Georgia State University, and Johns Hopkins University.

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Special Features

Covers over 2500 years in the history of philosophy.
Includes interdisciplinary "Reflections" on how moral motivation arises in epic poetry, Cicero, early opera, and Dreiser.