(P/B) THE FRAGILITY OF GOODNESS

Παρουσίαση

This book is a study of ancient views about "moral luck." It examines the fundamental ethical problem that many of the valued constituents of a well-lived life are vulnerable to factors outside a person's control and asks how this affects our appraisal of persons and their lives. The Greeks made a profound contribution to these questions, yet neither the problems nor the Greek views of them have received the attention they deserve. This book thus recovers a central dimension of Greek thought and addresses major issues in contemporary ethical theory. One of its most original aspects is its interrelated treatment of both literary and philosophical texts.
The Fragility of Goodness has proven to be important reading for philosophers and classicists, and its nontechnical style makes it accessible to any educated person interested in the difficult problems it tackles. This new edition features an entirely new preface by Martha Nussbaum.
Martha Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. (From the publisher)

"This is an immensely rich and stimulating book. This is partly because the author combines to a rare degree qualities not often found together: a scholar's understanding of the text -with rigour of argument, and these together with an imaginative grasp of moral questions. But it is also because she has chosen to write a very ambitious book, to grapple with some fundamental, perennial issues... And unlike most philosophy books, it is a delight to read. It should change the tenour of debate in more than one field." (Charles Taylor in Canadian Journal of Philosophy)

"... intellectually demanding and richly rewarding... required reading for anyone interested in Greek philosophy or literature..." (Bernard Knox in The New York Review of Books)

"The Fragility of Goodness is a marvelous book. It is alert to the fabric of human ethical experience in a way that is rare in our contemporary philosophical tradition. It is a gifted reaffirmation of the truth that there is, in our Greek inheritance, a quality of ethical reflection that is unsurpassed, and which is itself richly responsive to sensitive exploration of the kind which Nussbaum provides... No one with an interest in Greek ethics can afford to miss this book, and no one who pursues moral philosophy will fail to profit from it... a powerfully persuasive book." (Derek Browne in Australasian Journal of Philosophy)

"This is an engrossing account and an important book. Its scope is very wide, in a world where it has become sadly unusual for a scholar to tackle both tragedy and philosophy in a single work." (Jasper Griffin in The Times Literary Supplement)

"There are not many books which leave the reader with the sense of having had his perception of the subject altered. This is one of them." (Christopher Taylor in Mind)

Περιεχόμενα

Preface to the revised edition
Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Luck and ethnics
Tragedy: fragility and ambition
Aeschylus and practical conflict
Sophocles Antigone: conflict, vision, and simplification
Conclusion to Part I
Plato: goodness without fragility?
Introduction
The Protagoras: a science of practical reasoning
Interlude I: Plato's anti-tragic theater
The Republic: true value and the standpoint of perfection
The speech of Alcibiades: a reading of the Symposium
"This story isn't true": madness, reason, and recantation in the Phaedrus
Aristotle: the fragility of the good human life
Introduction
Saving Aristotle's appearances
Rational animals and the explanation of action
Non-scientific deliberation
The vulnerability of the good human life: activity disaster
The vulnerability of the good human life: relational goods
Human and divine
Luck and the tragic emotions
Tragedy
The betrayal of convention: a reading of Euripide's Hecuba
Notes
Bibliography
General index
Index of passages