Matthew Dennis - Ethics and Self-Cultivation: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

This book makes an important contribution to the growing body of literature on the cultivation of virtue. It focuses on the influence of Hellenistic tradition, with its emphasis on the continued development of the self, on modern philosophy, and also includes a number of contemporary perspectives on moral self-cultivation. The volume will be of interest to scholars and graduate students in moral philosophy, moral psychology, philosophy of mind and epistemology.

Liezl van Zyl, University of Waikato, New Zealand

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, they focus on conceptions of human life that are best for the one living it. The first section 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 and Canguilhem.

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Ethics and Self-Cultivation

Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

Edited by Matthew Dennis and Sander Werkhoven

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

Edited by Matthew Dennis and Sander Werkhoven

First published 2018
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Dennis, Matthew (Doctoral Researcher), editor.

Title: Ethics and self-cultivation : historical and contemporary perspectives / edited by Matthew Dennis and Sander Werkhoven.

Description: 1 [edition]. | New York : Routledge, 2018. | Series: Routledge studies in ethics and moral theory ; 45 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017061296 | ISBN 9781138104372 (hardback : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Ethics. | Virtue. | PhilosophyHistory. | Self (Philosophy)

Classification: LCC BJ21 .E856 2018 | DDC 170dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017061296

ISBN: 978-1-138-10437-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-10226-9 (ebk)

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