Moral Science; a Compendium of Ethics eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 487 pages of information about Moral Science; a Compendium of Ethics.

Moral Science; a Compendium of Ethics eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 487 pages of information about Moral Science; a Compendium of Ethics.

Book Third.  The Voluntary and Involuntary.  Deliberate Preference.  Virtue and vice are voluntary.  The virtues in detail:—­Courage [Self-sacrifice implied in Courage].  Temperance.

Book Fourth.  Liberality.  Magnificence.  Magnanimity.  Mildness.  Good-breeding.  Modesty.

Book Fifth.  Justice:—­Universal Justice includes all virtue.  Particular Justice is of two kinds, Distributive and Corrective.

Book Sixth.  Intellectual Excellences, or Virtues of the Intellect.  The Rational part of the Soul embraces the Scientific and the Deliberative functions.  Science deals with the necessary.  Prudence or the Practical Reason; its aims and requisites.  In virtue, good dispositions must be accompanied with Prudence.

Book Seventh.  Gradations of moral strength and moral weakness.  Continence and Incontinence.

Books Eighth and Ninth.  Friendship:—­Grounds of Friendship.  Varieties of Friendship, corresponding to different objects of liking.  Friendship between the virtuous is alone perfect.  A settled habit, not a mere passion.  Equality in friendship.  Political friendships.  Explanation of the family affections.  Rule of reciprocity of services.  Conflicting obligations.  Cessation of friendships.  Goodwill.  Love felt by benefactors.  Self-love.  Does the happy man need friends?

Book Tenth.  Pleasure:—­Theories of Pleasure—­Eudoxus, Speusippus, Plato.  Pleasure is not The Good.  Pleasure defined.  The pleasures of Intellect.  Nature of the Good or Happiness resumed.  Perfect happiness found only in the philosophical life; second to which is the active social life of the good citizen.  Happiness of the gods.  Transition from Ethics to Politics.

THE STOICS.  The succession of Stoical philosophers.  Theological Doctrines of the Stoics:—­The Divine Government; human beings must rise to the comprehension of Universal Law; the soul at death absorbed into the divine essence; argument from Design.  Psychology:—­Theory of Pleasure and Pain; theory of the Will.  Doctrine of Happiness or the Good:—­Pain no evil; discipline of endurance—­Apathy.  Theory of Virtue:—­Subordination of self to the larger interests; their view of active Beneficence; the Stoical paradoxes; the idea of Duty; consciousness of Self-improvement.

EPICURUS.  Life and writings.  His successors.  Virtue and vice referred by him to Pleasures and Pains calculated by Reason.  Freedom from Pain the primary object.  Regulation of desires.  Pleasure good if not leading to pain.  Bodily feeling the foundation of sensibility.  Mental feelings contain memory and hope.  The greatest miseries are from the delusions of hope, and from the torments of fear.  Fear of Death and Fear of the Gods.  Relations with others; Justice and Friendship—­both based on reciprocity.  Virtue and Happiness inseparable.  Epicureanism the type of all systems grounded on enlightened self-interest.

THE NEO-PLATONISTS.  The Moral End to be attained through an intellectual regimen.  The soul being debased by its connection with matter, the aim of human action is to regain the spiritual life.  The first step is the practice of the cardinal virtues:  the next the purifying virtues.  Happiness is the undisturbed life of contemplation.  Correspondence of the Ethical, with the Metaphysical scheme.

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Moral Science; a Compendium of Ethics from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.