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From Thomas Hobbes to Jeremy Bentham, 'British Moralists' have questioned whether being virtuous makes you happy. Roger Crisp elucidates their views on happiness and virtue, self-interest and sacrifice, and well-being and morality, and highlights key themes such as psychological egoism, evaluative hedonism, and moral reason in their thought.
List of contents
- 1: Introduction: The Morality Question
- 2: Hobbes: The Return of Gyges
- 3: More: An Enthusiasm for Virtue
- 4: Cumberland: Divine Utilitarianism
- 5: Locke: The Sanctions of God
- 6: Mandeville: Morality After the Fall
- 7: Shaftesbury: Stoicism and the Art of Virtue
- 8: Butler: The Supremacy of Conscience
- 9: Hutcheson: Impartial Pleasures
- 10: Clarke: Virtue and the Life Hereafter
- 11: Reid: The Goodness of Virtue, and its Limits
- 12: Hume: Morality as Utility
- 13: Smith: The Delusions of Self-Love
- 14: Price: Morality as God
- 15: Gay, Tucker, Paley, and Bentham: Variations on the Theme of Happiness
About the author
Roger Crisp is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford and Uehiro Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at St Anne's College, Oxford. He is the author of Reasons and the Good (Oxford 2006) and The Cosmos of Duty: Henry Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics (Oxford 2015), co-editor of Well-Being and Morality: Essays in Honour of James Griffin (with Brad Hooker; Clarendon Press 2000), and editor of The Oxford Handbook of the History of Ethics (Oxford 2013) and Griffin on Human Rights (Oxford 2014).
Summary
From Thomas Hobbes to Jeremy Bentham, 'British Moralists' have questioned whether being virtuous makes you happy. Roger Crisp elucidates their views on happiness and virtue, self-interest and sacrifice, and well-being and morality, and highlights key themes such as psychological egoism, evaluative hedonism, and moral reason in their thought.
Additional text
Roger Crisp gives a fresh perspective on the debates of the British Moralists in this book that will be essential reading for anyone interested in the British Moralists or in the historical background of utilitarianism, theories of well-being, or the weight of moral reasons. Crisp uses foundational and precise contemporary conceptual distinctions to tease apart interesting differences in these historical texts. Crisp compellingly argues that this period of thought crucially advances the idea that genuine self-sacrifice for the sake of moral reasons is possible. A stimulating and informative read on its own, and it would also be useful as a companion to both Raphael's British Moralists volumes and other recent books on these figures.
