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André Comte-Sponville - A small treatise on the great virtues: the uses of philosophy in everyday life

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A small treatise on the great virtues: the uses of philosophy in everyday life
Author:
Andr ComteSponville
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Henry Holt and Company
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Books / Religion
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2013;2011
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New York
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An utterly original exploration of the timeless human virtues and how they apply to the way we live now, from a bold and dynamic French writer. In this graceful, incisive book, writer-philosopher Andre Comte-Sponville reexamines the classic human virtues to help us under-stand what we should do, who we should be, and how we should live. In the process, he gives us an entirely new perspective on the value, the relevance, and even the charm of the Western ethical tradition. Drawing on thinkers from Aristotle to Simone Weil, by way of Aquinas, Kant, Rilke, Nietzsche, Spinoza, and Rawls, among others, Comte-Sponville elaborates on the qualities that constitute the essence and excellence of humankind. Starting with politeness -- almost a virtue -- and ing with love -- which transcs all morality -- A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues takes us on a tour of the eighteen essential virtues: fidelity, prudence, temperance, courage, justice, generosity, compassion, mercy, gratitude, humility, simplicity, tolerance, purity, gentleness, good faith, and even, surprisingly, humor. Sophisticated and lucid, full of wit and vivacity, this modestly titled yet immensely important work provides an indispensable guide to finding what is right and good in everyday life.

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Table of Contents

I wish to thank the editors of the journal Autrement, in which chapters 1, 2 , 11, and 14 of this book first appeared in a somewhat different form. In particular, my thanks to Nicole Czechowski for allowing me to use these essays here. I would also like to thank my colleagues and friends Laurent Bove, Monique Canto-Sperber, and Marcel Conche, who were kind enough to read the manuscript and share their critical remarks with me. Needless to say, they are not responsible for any of the opinions expressed here or for any of the books flaws, for which I alone am responsible.

Andr Comte-Sponville is one of the most important of the new wave of young French philosophers. He teaches at the Sorbonne and is the author of five highly acclaimed scholarly books of classical philosophy as well as the hugely popular A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues, which is being translated into nineteen languages. Comte-Sponville lives in Paris.

PROLOGUE

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics , I, 6, 1097b22-1098a20, in The Basic Works of Aristotle , ed. Richard McKeon, Random House, 1941.

Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Montaigne , trans. George B. Ives, Harvard University Press, 1925, vol. 4, book 3, ch. 13, p. 350.

Benedict de Spinoza, The Ethics , IV, D8, in A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works , ed. and trans. Edwin Curley, Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 201.

The Essays of Montaigne, book 2, ch. 36, and Spinoza, The Ethics , IV, prop. 50, schol.

See, in particular, my Vivre , vol. 2 of Trait du dsespoir et de la batitude , PUF, 1988, ch. 4 (Les labyrinthes de la morale), and Valeur et vrit, PUF, 1994.

The formulation is Aristotles, of course, in the Nicomachean Ethics, II, 4-9, 1105b-1109b, and Eudemian Ethics , II, 3, 1220b-1221b. The concept is sometimes called the golden mean, which is not mediocrity but its opposite: Hence in respect of its substance and the definition which states its essence virtue is a mean, with regard to what is best and right an extreme (Nicomachean Ethics, II, 6, 1107a-5-7, p. 959. See also my discussion in Vivre, ch. 4, pp. 116-18).

1. POLITENESS

Immanuel Kant, Education , trans. Annette Churton, University of Michigan Press, 1966, pp. 2, 6.

Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View , trans. Victor Lyle Dowdell, Southern Illinois University Press, 1978, 14, p. 39.

Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue (part 2 of The Metaphysics of Morals ), trans. James W. Ellington, Library of Liberal Arts, Bobbs-Merrill, 1964, 48, p. 140.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, II, 1, 1103a33, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon, Random House, 1941, p. 952.

Ibid., 1103b1, p. 952.

Kant, Education, pp. 2-3.

Jean de la Bruyre, The Characters of Jean de la Bruyre, trans. Henri van Laun, Brentanos, 1929, 32, p. 114.

Kant, Education, p. 105.

Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, 14, p. 35.

Immanuel Kant, The Discipline of Pure Reason in Polemics, 2, AK. 3, in Critique of Pure Reason , trans. J. M. D. Meiklejohn, Prometheus Books, 1990, p. 420.

Ibid.

Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, 14, p. 39.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics , II, 1, 1103b21, p. 953.

Alain, Definitions, in Les arts et les dieux, Bibliothque de la Pliade, p. 1080 (definition of politeness).

Alain, Quatre-vingt-un chapitres sur lesprit et les passions, in Les passions et la sagesse , Bibliothque de la Pliade, p. 1243.

2. FIDELITY

Augustine, Confessions , trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin, Penguin Books, 1961, book II, esp. ch. 20, p. 269.

Friedrich Nietzsche, History in the Service and Disservice of Life, trans. Gary Brown, in Unmodern Observations, ed. William Arrowsmith, Yale University Press, 1990, p. 90.

Franois George, Dun critre nouveau en philosophie, Lme et le corps , ed. M. P. Haroche, Plon, 1990.

Vladimir Janklvitch, Limprescriptible, Seuil, 1986, p. 55.

Aristotle, Ethica Eudemia , VII, 2, 1237b37-40; Nicomachean Ethics, IX, 3, 1165b32-36, in The Basic Works of Aristotle , ed. Richard McKeon, Random House,1941, p. 1081.

Vladimir Janklvitch, Les vertus et lamour, vol. 2 of Trait des vertus, Champs-Flammarion, 1986, p. 140.

Ibid., pp. 140-42.

Ibid., pp. 142-43. In fidelity, Janklvitch notes in the same passage, the Stoics would have recognized the Constantia sapientis (the constancy of the sage).

Ibid., p. 141.

Blaise Pascal, Penses, trans. W. F. Trotter, Modern Library, 1941, no. 123, p. 45.

Marcel Conche, Montaigne et la philosophie , Mgare, 1987, pp. 118-19. See also Michel de Montaigne, Apology for Rayrraond Sebond, in The Essays of Montaigne , trans. George B. Ives, Harvard University Press, 1925, vol. 2, book 2, ch. 12, pp. 401-02.

Janklvitch, Les vertus et lamour , p. 154. For Janklvitch, this is fidelity par excellence.

Janklvitch, Limprescriptible , p. 60.

Marcel Conche, Orientation philosophique, PUF, 1990, p. 106.

Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, trans. E. Ashley Audra and Cloudesley Brereton, University of Notre Dame, 1977, p. 281.

Jean Cavaills, Education morale et lacit, Foi et vie , no. 2 (Jan. 1928), p. 8. See also my essay Jean Cavaills ou lhrosme dc la raison, Une ducation philosophique, PUF, 1989, pp. 287-308.

Benedict de Spinoza, The Ethics , III, 27, exp., in A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley, Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 192.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power , book 3, 498.

3. PRUDENCE

The others are courage. (or fortitude), temperance, and justice. This classification (in which prudence is sometimes called practical wisdom ) seems to date back to the sixth century B.c. We find it in Plato, or at least something close to it (see, for example, The Republic, IV, 427e, and Laws , I, 631c), and then in its Classical form in Stoicism (see, for example, Diogenes Laertius, VII, 126). It later turns up in Christian thought (via Cicero primarily), especially in Ambrose, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas. See Pierre Aubenque, La prudence chez Aristote , PUF, 1970, pp. 35-36; G. RodisLewis, La morale stocienne, PUF, 1970, pp. 72-86; and Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica , Ia-IIae, quest. 61, The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas , trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, R. & T Washbourne, 1915. See also Alain, Propos du 19 janvier 1935 ( Propos , Bibliothque dc la Pliade, vol. 1, pp. 1245-47), as well as the beautiful definition of virtue ( Dfinitions, in Les arts et les dieux , Bibliothque de la Pliade, p. 1098).

See, for example, Emmanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals , in Kants Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics , trans. Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Longmans, Green, 1948, p. 33. See also Critique of Practical Reason , 1, 1, ch. 1, schol. 2; Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone , II; and The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue. See also Pierre Aubenque, La prudence chez Kant, Revue de mtaphysique et de morale (1975), pp. 156-82.

Immanuel Kant, On a Supposed Right to Tell Lies from Benevolent Motives , in Kants Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics , pp. 361-66.

See Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics , VI, 5, 1140a-b, in The Basic Works of Aristotle , ed. Richard McKeon, Random House, 1941, p. 1026.

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