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This chapter discusses two of the three Aristotelian Ethics, which are the Eudemian Ethics and the Nicomachean Ethics. The Nicomachean Ethics have been considered as the ethics of Aristotle for many centuries, while the Eudemian Ethics were once regarded as false by scholars in the 19th century. Several ancient writers and their respective quotations and commentaries of the Ethics of Aristotle are discussed in detail in the final sections of this chapter.

This chapter examines what Émile Durkheim could have meant by his statement that sociology is a “moral science” and whether the project it implied is a defensible one. Durkheim's goal was not only to study morality scientifically; he also proposed to put morality on a scientific footing—a goal that most contemporary sociologists would be uncomfortable with. This chapter argues that Durkheim's vision of “moral science” was inspired primarily by Aristotelian ethics and that it anticipated many of the ideas of virtue ethics and related schools of thought and research. It considers a number of reasons why there is a connection between Durkheim and Aristotle and why that connection has received so little attention. Finally, it explains why Aristotelian ethics was much better suited to Durkheim's purposes than was Kantianism or utilitarianism.

Contemporary philosophers have grown increasingly skeptical towards both morality and moral theory. The skepticism concerning morality stems from the argument that moral considerations are not always the most important considerations and that it is not always good to be morally better. The skepticism concerning moral theory stems from the argument that moral theory is a radically misguided enterprise—one that does not illuminate moral practice and fulfills no useful functions. The succeeding chapters provide a response to the arguments of both “antimorality” and “antitheory” skeptics. The aim is to defuse such skepticism by putting forward alternative conceptions of morality and moral theory—conceptions that owe more to central texts within the canon of Western philosophical ethics (particularly Kantian and Aristotelian) than to sheer conceptual virtuosity.

Chapter 2 elaborates what is entailed in a first-person version of virtue ethics in an explicitly debating style. It argues that it is important to look at the contrasts between a first-person virtue ethics and a third-person discursive one inspired especially by Foucault. It examines ways that these positions challenge rather than support one another, despite their many areas of overlap. It particularly highlights conceptual divides regarding the status of the “self.” Although the chapter pays special attention to anthropological voices, the question raised—why we need a first-person version of virtue ethics—speaks to a much broader interdisciplinary conversation.

This chapter concerns whether the best account of virtue will involve the idea that an agent can ‘go beyond’ duty in a morally praiseworthy way. The chapter begins by outlining Henry Sidgwick’s view that supererogation involves an immoral paradox, since it seems to allow a morally blameless agent to do less morally than she might. The conditions of supererogatory action are set out, and the origins of the idea in Christian doctrine are explained. An Aristotelian account of virtue, relating duty to ‘fittingness’, is set out, and claimed to be preferable to an account allowing for supererogation. The chapter closes with responses to Urmson’s arguments in favour of supererogation in his famous paper ‘Saints and Heroes’.

This chapter sets out the parameters of the book as a whole, proposing a first-person virtue ethics as a way to understand the moral projects of African American parents caring for children with severe and chronic illnesses and disabilities. It opens with an “experimental” soccer game in which a boy in a wheelchair has been included in a children’s neighborhood soccer league. Drawing upon this example, the chapter outlines the key claims of a virtue ethics framework in which parents struggle over how to provide their children a “best good life” and the dilemmas and tragedies that entail their efforts to care for these “intimate others.” The first-person framework that is offered draws both upon philosophical virtue ethics and hermeneutic phenomenology.

The Introduction outlines the aims, the object of the research, the methodology, the scope, and the limit of the book. The aims of the book are to propose a methodological framework for an ethical reading of Old Testament narrative and to demonstrate the benefits and the validity of such a framework by providing exemplary readings. When ethics is understood within the Aristotelian tradition, narrative can play a crucial role in Old Testament ethics. The critical methodology employed is synchronic literary criticism anchored in discourse analysis. With this methodology, the objectivity of literary criticism can be enhanced because it can be built upon linguistic observations. This book is about neither ethics of reading (a pragmatic reflection regarding the ethical responsibility of the reader) nor discourse ethics (as proposed by Habermas).

This chapter discusses happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics, the Eudemian Ethics, and the Aristotelian Ethics. While the references to happiness in the Aristotelian Ethics are brief and at times cryptic, happiness is treated and presented differently in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Eudemian Ethics.

This essay explores the role of the two aspects of mindfulness (smṛti and samprajanya) in ethical discipline. It argues that mindfulness understood as the union of these two attitudes is essential to the kind of perception and attention necessary for spontaneous moral engagement with the world. The essay first discusses why mindfulness is so important in Buddhist ethics. It then turns to the importance of spontaneity, first in the Aristotelian and then in the Zen tradition. It closes by showing why spontaneity can be understood as desirable only if infused by the kind of mindfulness philosophers such as Śāntideva recommend, and why mindfulness can be morally efficacious only if it suffuses our perception and action so as to render them spontaneous.