Search Results

 Sol

Michael Ward

in Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis

Sol, the most metallurgical of the planets, in Lewis's scholarship, poetry and That Hideous Strength. Sol's association with gold, liberality, and light symbolizing philosophical and theological ... More

Sol, the most metallurgical of the planets, in Lewis's scholarship, poetry and That Hideous Strength. Sol's association with gold, liberality, and light symbolizing philosophical and theological wisdom. The donegality of The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’, the story of a journey towards the rising sun. Apollo Sauroctonus, the lizard‐slaying sun‐god. A transcendent and universal Christology.Less

Retrieving Cosmos: Gilbert Murray's Thought on International Relations

Peter Wilson

in Gilbert Murray Reassessed: Hellenism, Theatre, and International Politics

This chapter takes a retrospective look at the international political thought of Gilbert Murray, ninety years after his first substantial work on the subject was published (1915), and nearly sixty ... More

This chapter takes a retrospective look at the international political thought of Gilbert Murray, ninety years after his first substantial work on the subject was published (1915), and nearly sixty years after his last (1948). The disciplinary tradition of International Relations (IR) is used to draw up a balance sheet of achievement and failure. It is shown that while Murray played an important role in the establishment of IR, and while he worked closely with several early IR professors, he was not an IR professor himself, and certainly no theorist in today's sense.Less

Liberality and Benevolence (NE IV.1)

Howard J. Curzer

in Aristotle and the Virtues

Contrary to popular belief, liberality does not concern all aspects of money-management: it concerns only the making of donations to others. Accepting gifts, earning, and spending are governed by ... More

Contrary to popular belief, liberality does not concern all aspects of money-management: it concerns only the making of donations to others. Accepting gifts, earning, and spending are governed by liberality only insofar as they contribute to gift-giving. The sphere of liberality comprehends only situations in which helping others economically is an issue. Just as courage requires feeling and thinking appropriately about both fear and confidence, so liberality requires not only a proper valuation of, and desire for monetary goods, but also a proper understanding of, and desire to help other people.Less

Magnificence and Heroic Virtue (NE IV.2)

Howard J. Curzer

in Aristotle and the Virtues

Magnificence is usually thought to be large-scale liberality; its sphere is great wealth while liberality’s sphere is moderate wealth. But magnificence is better understood as heroic liberality. It ... More

Magnificence is usually thought to be large-scale liberality; its sphere is great wealth while liberality’s sphere is moderate wealth. But magnificence is better understood as heroic liberality. It is the version of liberality possessed by heroically virtuous people. In addition to solving various interpretative problems, taking magnificence to be heroic liberality captures an important moral intuition: the intuition that, within limits, the more generous a person is, the better.Less

Liberality: ‘The Wife of Bath's Prologue’ and ‘Tale’ and ‘The Franklin's Tale’

Alcuin Blamires

in Chaucer, Ethics, and Gender

To be content with ‘enough’ was one kind of virtue; to be liberal with surplus was another. Chaucer found liberality applauded in Boccaccio’s writings. But the classical concept of cautious ... More

To be content with ‘enough’ was one kind of virtue; to be liberal with surplus was another. Chaucer found liberality applauded in Boccaccio’s writings. But the classical concept of cautious liberality transmitted through Cicero had undergone a strained assimilation into Christian ‘largenesse’ and charity, and as Chaucer shows through figures such as Dido and Dorigen, its gendering was also complicated. It is argued that the Wife of Bath’s Prologue offers a beguiling model of generosity through female sexuality, and that her Tale, in which women cannot hold back the answers to the knight’s predicament, further explores generosity as a gendered virtue of unlocked speech.Less

Virtues and Vices

Jonathan Barnes and Anthony Kenny (eds)

in Aristotle's Ethics: Writings from the Complete Works

In this English translation of Virtues and Vices, the discussion offers definitions of the virtues and the vices, their characteristics and concomitants, and their general effect. The author begins ... More

In this English translation of Virtues and Vices, the discussion offers definitions of the virtues and the vices, their characteristics and concomitants, and their general effect. The author begins with the statement that what is noble is praiseworthy, what is ignoble blameworthy. At the head of what is noble stand the virtues, at the head of what is ignoble the vices. The text also reflects on wisdom, which it calls a virtue of the calculative part which provides what conduces to happiness; good temper, a virtue of the passionate part through which men become difficult to stir to anger; and courage, a virtue of the passionate part through which men are undismayed by fears of death. Other virtues addressed in the text include temperance, continence, justice, and liberality.Less

Joy, Love, and Liberality

Norman Kretzmann

in The Metaphysics of Theism: Aquinas's Natural Theology in Summa contra gentiles I

There can be no passions of any sort in God because, for instance, passions are associated with the sensory part of the human soul. If the having of intellective attitudes, however, is simply a ... More

There can be no passions of any sort in God because, for instance, passions are associated with the sensory part of the human soul. If the having of intellective attitudes, however, is simply a corollary of the having of intellect and will, then Aquinas's relational method mandates attributing joy and pleasure to God. Patterned on the attribution of pleasure and joy, active divine love is a corollary of intellective appetite in God. Aquinas approaches the associative aspect of God's love when he takes as primary what appears to be God's volition of union with other things, and then uses that as the basis for one of his arguments for the thesis that God loves himself and other things. Aquinas argues that some virtues, such as truthfulness, justice, and liberality, which are sources of activities devoid of passion, are divine attributes. Liberality is the virtue most pertinent to the subject matter of this chapter because liberality is the one that is indispensable to love.Less

Conclusion

Steven A. Long

in Natura Pura: On the Recovery of Nature in the Doctrine of Grace

This book has articulated how central will be our understanding of the relation of nature and grace for the proper contemplation and living of Christian life, and for the ... More

This book has articulated how central will be our understanding of the relation of nature and grace for the proper contemplation and living of Christian life, and for the Christian's participation in cultural and public life. It has considered the implications of the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas that there is indeed a proximate and natural end, distinct from the supernatural end, and from which the human species is derived. With no injustice, God could have created man merely with this order, in puris naturalibus, but from the divine goodness, love, and liberality instead created man in sanctifying grace. Yet even given one's creation in grace, the baneful effects of the Fall, and one's restoration and elevation in grace, the intelligible impress of the proximate natural finality remains in man.Less

Giving and spending

Erica Benner

in Machiavelli's Prince: A New Reading

Since princes are praised for liberality in giving and spending, it is generally desirable to be held liberal. But policies that many people ‘hold’ virtuously liberal involve extravagance that ruins ... More

Since princes are praised for liberality in giving and spending, it is generally desirable to be held liberal. But policies that many people ‘hold’ virtuously liberal involve extravagance that ruins one’s state. It is therefore better, Machiavelli says, to be ‘held’ miserly while preserving the state – even though misero is the name of a vice. The idea here seems to be that princes should sometimes ignore traditional standards of virtue, since they may call for state-harming actions. Yet on closer scrutiny, Machiavelli is not dispensing with traditional virtues, but suggesting that people may be mistaken about their proper content. What they call liberality is really sumptuous excess; what they call miserly should be called ‘parsimony’ – a traditional virtue praised by Aristotle, Sallust, and Tacitus. His examples of Louis XII, Caesar, and Cyrus challenge readers to spot the subtle differences between properly virtuous and excessive or deficient spending.Less

What Aristotle's Rhetoric Can Tell Us about the Rationality of Virtue

in Confronting Aristotle's Ethics: Ancient and Modern Morality

This chapter exploits the comparison between rhetoric and virtue. The Rhetoric shows that the art of rhetoric aims at more than practical success because it is limited to rational persuasion. This ... More

This chapter exploits the comparison between rhetoric and virtue. The Rhetoric shows that the art of rhetoric aims at more than practical success because it is limited to rational persuasion. This limitation comes from developing an art of persuasion and not from some external moral considerations. The emergence of actions that are their own end out of actions initially chosen to achieve some end distinct from themselves is what is called the sociological dimension of practical rationality. Even in rhetoric, there are values not reducible to success, and so intimations of actions that are their own end. The Ethics finds in the virtues the same development of internal ends and actions chosen for their own sakes out of actions initially valued because of the external ends they achieve. For example, helping friends is a good. The virtue of liberality is a habit of choosing for its own sake to do what we can to help our friends. We choose to practice this virtue for its own sake. Where the external end is good, engaging in the internal end is noble. Aiming at the noble, we do not stop aiming at the useful. Virtuous actions have both internal and external ends, and the internal ends, such as engaging in the noble practice of helping friends financially, internalize the external and given end of our friends being helped. A comparison to the Rhetoric shows that ends become more rational as they become more practical, more within what the agent can do. Rationality and practicality grow together. The active life is the rational life.Less

Virtues and Vices

in Aristotle's Dialogue with Socrates: On the "Nicomachean Ethics"

According to the ergon argument of Book I of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, the distinctive human function is “some practice (praktikē) of that which has logos”, hence the virtue that enables one to ... More

According to the ergon argument of Book I of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, the distinctive human function is “some practice (praktikē) of that which has logos”, hence the virtue that enables one to perform it well should be phronēsis. In Book II, the original conception of virtue—as a disposition aiming at a mean determined by logos as the phronimos would determine it—was replaced by a plurality of virtues, each understood to constitute, in regard to some particular passion, a mean state between two extreme states, which count as vices. The manifold of passions, which together make up the desiring part of the soul, is the source of that manifold of virtues and vices that now furnishes the subject matter of Books III and IV. The seemingly casual selection of virtuous dispositions, which covers such a broad range in Ethics III and IV, stands out by contrast with the standard set of four virtues that typically appear in the Platonic dialogues: liberality, magnificence, courage, and moderation.Less

Stumbling on Theological Secularism

Ajay Skaria

in Unconditional Equality: Gandhi's Religion of Resistance

In 1907, Gandhi begins translating William Salter’s Ethical Religion, but eventually abandons the task. The chapter argues that this abandonment is symptomatic of Gandhi’s inadvertent break from ... More

In 1907, Gandhi begins translating William Salter’s Ethical Religion, but eventually abandons the task. The chapter argues that this abandonment is symptomatic of Gandhi’s inadvertent break from liberal concepts of equality and civil disobedience. The religion that Gandhi affirms instead, the chapter suggests, has strange resonances with Derrida’s “religion.”Less

Ciphering the Satyagrahi

Ajay Skaria

in Unconditional Equality: Gandhi's Religion of Resistance

Gandhi implicitly contrasts the liberal principle and the conservative vow. But since vows can be profoundly violent (for example, the warrior), Gandhi also asks: what is the vow proper to ... More

Gandhi implicitly contrasts the liberal principle and the conservative vow. But since vows can be profoundly violent (for example, the warrior), Gandhi also asks: what is the vow proper to satyagraha? This chapter explores his answer: that satyagrahis should “live as ciphers,” or so discipline themselves as to act automatically rather than willingly (as a willed act).Less

Gratitude and Liberality

David Konstan

in In the Orbit of Love: Affection in Ancient Greece and Rome

It has become common wisdom that gift-giving is predicated on reciprocity; as an eminent scholar wrote over a century ago, “To requite a benefit, or to be grateful to him who bestows it, is probably ... More

It has become common wisdom that gift-giving is predicated on reciprocity; as an eminent scholar wrote over a century ago, “To requite a benefit, or to be grateful to him who bestows it, is probably everywhere, at least under certain circumstances, regarded as a duty.” Is it possible, then, to bestow a gift freely, without expectation of compensation; or, to put it differently, is gratitude obligatory? This chapter explores ancient conceptions of liberality as a virtue, freely granted favors, and gratitude, as discussed by Cicero, Seneca, and Aristotle, and argues that gratitude is not a response to generosity as such but rather to the love that is manifested in the act of giving.Less

Moral Reasons and the Limitations of Liberty

Jeffrie G. Murphy

in Punishment and the Moral Emotions: Essays in Law, Morality, and Religion

This chapter provides a reading of Professor Dworkin's ideals of liberality, even Kantian liberality—the principles of autonomy and equal respect for all. The author focuses on the final section of ... More

This chapter provides a reading of Professor Dworkin's ideals of liberality, even Kantian liberality—the principles of autonomy and equal respect for all. The author focuses on the final section of Dworkin's essay, which deals with the fact that the liberal position is better served by reflecting on particular judgments on immorality, what they mean, and how rational they are. A case in point for this paper is the issue of homosexuality as morally wrong. Dworkin claims that our thinking about issues such as homosexuality requires a plausible account of what is involved in the making of moral judgments, and the claim that the reason that homosexual conduct ought not to be criminalized is that there is nothing immoral in such activity.Less

Avarice and Liberality

Andrew Pinsent

in Virtues and Their Vices

Although avarice is associated with many notorious evils, there is a peculiar ambiguity about its matter, specification and even aspects of its moral status. Assuming that the essential mark of ... More

Although avarice is associated with many notorious evils, there is a peculiar ambiguity about its matter, specification and even aspects of its moral status. Assuming that the essential mark of avarice is an excessive desire for money or monetary value, its virtuous counterpart might appear to consist in a straightforward path of moderation. This chapter argues that attempts to define this moderation as a rational mean cannot succeed, however, not only because of the complexities of monetary flow, accumulation and dissipation, but because the true root of what makes avarice a vice is its moral prosopagnosia, the way it disposes someone to inhibit, crush or betray second-person relatedness. The antidote is the liberality by which one gains freedom by subsuming one’s stance towards money into a broader framework of second-person relatedness, the flourishing of which is incommensurate with financial value and which promotes light-heartedness, generosity and even humor about possessions.Less