Accueil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Annas
https://books.google.fr/books?id=KRfwSjk3fBcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Julia+Annas&cd=1&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
"To us, the question, What should my life be like ? may seem too particular to be a properly ethical question. Shouldn't ethics be about duty, or rights, or the good, rather than about my life ? But it may also, oddly, seem too general." (p.27)
"Once i start reflecting on my ends, the thought goes, there is nowhere to stop until i reach the end which my life as a whole is aimed at reaching. The entry point for ethical reflection was thought about my life as a whole and where it is going ; so i cannot stop until i reach a single end, since only this will enable me to reflect effectively on my life as a whole. Modern thinkers have found the notion of a single final end uncompelling (at least without added assumptions about rationality) because they have not taken thoughts about ones' life as a whole to be the starting point for ethical reflection. For the ancients, however, it is unproblematic that the agent thinks of her life as a whole and that, in mature people with the chance to stop and thinks about their lives, ethical thinking begins from this." (p.33)
"My final end involves my activity: it is not a thing or state of affairs that others could bring about for me." (p.36-37)
"Epicureanism, is not consequentialist ; its conception of the kind of pleasure which is our final end does not make that a state of affairs to the achievement of which the nature of our actions in achieving it is irrelevant. This is because Epicurus takes the eudaimonist framework of ancient ethics seriously. More marginal candidates are the theory discussed in Plato's Protagoras, and the Cyrenaics. They are, as we shall see, consequentialist, but just for that reason run into systematic trouble with the basic notions of eudaimonistic ethics." (p.37)
"A person's life is self-sufficient if it lack nothing ; as Aristotle points out, this is compatible with the agent's having a wide range of dependencies and needs that arise from a life embedded in family and state concerns, and the basic idea is not that of being able to go it alone, like Robinson Crusoe, but of being independant of a certain range of pressures and needs, those that can be regarded as external to the kind of life chosen. Thus my life can be self-sufficient, even if as a parent my well-being is dependent on the well-being of my children, if having and caring about children is one of my chosen aims. Dependencies that arise from my chosen projects are not seen as exposing me to the mercy of external factors in the way that i am so exposed by dependencies inflicted on me by things that are not part of my life as that is formed by my chosen projects." (p.41)
"Happiness is thus thought of as active rather than passive, and as something that involves the agent's activity [...] Happiness cannot just be a thing, however good, that someone might present you with." (p.45)
-Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness, Oxford University Press, 1993, 500 pages.
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~jannas/recentarticles.html
"Ethical egoism [is] the theory that holds that my own good is the ethical standard for what it is right for me to do, the dispositions i should have, and so on." (p.205)
"Virtues are character traits which are in some way desirable. But neither are they just desirable character traits ; tidiness and punctuality are nice traits to have, but not yet virtues. A virtus is, a least, a character trait which is admirable, embodying a commitment to some ethical value. [...] Courage, fairness and patience are all virtues. Thet are not just character traits that are desirable to have [...] They are character traits which embody a commitment to some value, in a way which may benefit the agent, but equally may benefit others. [...] They are dispositions to do what has value." (p.206)
"The reason it is worthwhile for me to cultivate the virtues is that they will mak up or constitute my living my life as a whole in a way which it is valuable to live. The notion of "my life as a whole" is crucial here ; the virtues make sense within a conception of living, which takes the life i live to be a unity.
Thus the virtues will contribute to the overall final end i have in living my life as a whole ; this is variously called eudaimonia, following Aristotle, or flourishing, or happiness, thought the latter is always risky because of potential confusion with modern feel-good notions of happiness.
It is at this point that charges of egoism begin to get a grip. The virtues are valuable because they contribute to my final end -but this is my final end, not yours, and so it looks as though it is my good, or interests, or whatever, which is justifying my acquisition of the virtues, and so they owe their ethical justification to their contribution to my good. So we have egoism ?
No. This goes too fast. For the virtues are not just any old dispositions making up my life ; they are courage, generosity, fairness, and so on. How does fairness, for example, contribute to my final end ? The fair person will others what is their due, sometimes to his own disadvantage. [...]
The exercice of the virtues need not benefit me, or contribute to my living a life we would call flourishing. Exercising the virtues is admirable, and we do admire people whose lives are lived in admirable and valuable ways. But these need not lead to flourishing, and in the case some virtues, those which primarily benefit others, they characteristically will not. The virtues, then, will be pursued as part of my whole life, but they need not benefit me or lead to my flourishing. This type of theory faces questions as to what does justifiy the distinct virtues, and why we think that the dispositions on our list are the virtues." (p.207)
"Courage is not a disposition which can be switched off when my own interest are not at stake. The virtues are dispositions embodying a commitment to values, not my self-interest. Thus the thesis that the virtues benefit benefit their possessor cannot be interpreted in such a way that the virtous person act in an egoistic way. Rather, we have to take the virtues as they are, taking into account the point that virtous action may often lead to loss of various kinds on the agent's part, and so is not egoistic." (p.208)
"The claim that an agent's motivation is egoistic merely because she is aiming at her flourishing is not a claim from a neutral ground [...] So it is not an independently powerful objection to the virtue theorist, who can reasonably deny it." (p.209)
"If i were to be virtous with one eye always on my own good, i would not be properly virtous." (p.210)
"Fortunately, the way in which virtue ethics requires self-effacingness is perfectly harmless. First, there is a way in which virtue comes to efface itself from the virtuous person's motivation. A beginner in virtue will have to try explicitly to become a virtuous person, and to do so by doing virtuous actions ; his deliberations will include such thoughts as that so and so is what a virtuous person would do, or what virtue requires. This is, indeed, how he guides his own deliberations. The truly virtuous person, however, will not explicitly think about, for example, being brave or performing a brave action. Rather, he will, as a result of experience, reflection, and habituation, simply respond to the situation, thinking that these people in danger need help, without explicit thoughts of bravery entering his deliberations. Thoughts about bravery, or the virtuous person, are no longer needed. This does not [...] produce a problematic split in the self [like in utilitarism]." (p.212)
"Different theories of [eudaimonism] have different positions as to what is best way to achieve eudaimonia or flourishing. Aristotle says that being virtuous is necessary ; the Stoics, that it is a necessary and sufficient ; and the Epicureans claim that flourishing is being in a state of pleasure." (p.213)
"Flourishing is not a state of myself, as it is for hedonists, nor it is a matter of my good as opposed to yours, as it arguably has to be for Epicurus. For, if i achieve flourishing through being virtuous, my flourishing will be constituted by my virtuous activity, which is focused on others as much as on myself. In this is is unlike a pleasant state of myself, which i might well aim to produce in a way which focuses on me at the expense of others." (p.214)
"Given that i have only one life, i will eventually come up with some very broad conception of my life as a whole, as that to which my actions are at any given point tending. This is my final end. [...] This is a very ordinary way of thinking." (p.216)
"We are used to the idea that happiness might be a local aim in my life, so that i can do my duty and neglect my happiness, whereas the conception of happiness as my final end demands that it be complete, not just one local aim among others for my deliberations. It is, then, problematic for us to use the notion of happiness at this point, and many modern virtue ethicists avoid confusion by talking of flourishing instead."(p.216)
"It is perfectly possible for a eudaimonist theory to be egoistic. Above, i pointed out that a hedonist theory like that of Epicurus does risk becoming egoistic." (p.217)
"Eudaimonia is not a state but the agent's activity in living his or her life." (p.220)
-Julia Annas, 'Virtue Ethics and the Charge of Egoism' in Morality and Self-Interest, edited by Paul Bloomfield, Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 205-221.
vise non le bonheur mais plutôt à mener une vie épanouie. Le but est plutôt une forme qu'un contenu ; une façon d'être, un ethos, un style de vie.
Proche d'une conception morale perfectionniste.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxis_(philosophie)
https://books.google.fr/books?id=KRfwSjk3fBcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Julia+Annas&cd=1&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
"To us, the question, What should my life be like ? may seem too particular to be a properly ethical question. Shouldn't ethics be about duty, or rights, or the good, rather than about my life ? But it may also, oddly, seem too general." (p.27)
"Once i start reflecting on my ends, the thought goes, there is nowhere to stop until i reach the end which my life as a whole is aimed at reaching. The entry point for ethical reflection was thought about my life as a whole and where it is going ; so i cannot stop until i reach a single end, since only this will enable me to reflect effectively on my life as a whole. Modern thinkers have found the notion of a single final end uncompelling (at least without added assumptions about rationality) because they have not taken thoughts about ones' life as a whole to be the starting point for ethical reflection. For the ancients, however, it is unproblematic that the agent thinks of her life as a whole and that, in mature people with the chance to stop and thinks about their lives, ethical thinking begins from this." (p.33)
"My final end involves my activity: it is not a thing or state of affairs that others could bring about for me." (p.36-37)
"Epicureanism, is not consequentialist ; its conception of the kind of pleasure which is our final end does not make that a state of affairs to the achievement of which the nature of our actions in achieving it is irrelevant. This is because Epicurus takes the eudaimonist framework of ancient ethics seriously. More marginal candidates are the theory discussed in Plato's Protagoras, and the Cyrenaics. They are, as we shall see, consequentialist, but just for that reason run into systematic trouble with the basic notions of eudaimonistic ethics." (p.37)
"A person's life is self-sufficient if it lack nothing ; as Aristotle points out, this is compatible with the agent's having a wide range of dependencies and needs that arise from a life embedded in family and state concerns, and the basic idea is not that of being able to go it alone, like Robinson Crusoe, but of being independant of a certain range of pressures and needs, those that can be regarded as external to the kind of life chosen. Thus my life can be self-sufficient, even if as a parent my well-being is dependent on the well-being of my children, if having and caring about children is one of my chosen aims. Dependencies that arise from my chosen projects are not seen as exposing me to the mercy of external factors in the way that i am so exposed by dependencies inflicted on me by things that are not part of my life as that is formed by my chosen projects." (p.41)
"Happiness is thus thought of as active rather than passive, and as something that involves the agent's activity [...] Happiness cannot just be a thing, however good, that someone might present you with." (p.45)
-Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness, Oxford University Press, 1993, 500 pages.
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~jannas/recentarticles.html
"Ethical egoism [is] the theory that holds that my own good is the ethical standard for what it is right for me to do, the dispositions i should have, and so on." (p.205)
"Virtues are character traits which are in some way desirable. But neither are they just desirable character traits ; tidiness and punctuality are nice traits to have, but not yet virtues. A virtus is, a least, a character trait which is admirable, embodying a commitment to some ethical value. [...] Courage, fairness and patience are all virtues. Thet are not just character traits that are desirable to have [...] They are character traits which embody a commitment to some value, in a way which may benefit the agent, but equally may benefit others. [...] They are dispositions to do what has value." (p.206)
"The reason it is worthwhile for me to cultivate the virtues is that they will mak up or constitute my living my life as a whole in a way which it is valuable to live. The notion of "my life as a whole" is crucial here ; the virtues make sense within a conception of living, which takes the life i live to be a unity.
Thus the virtues will contribute to the overall final end i have in living my life as a whole ; this is variously called eudaimonia, following Aristotle, or flourishing, or happiness, thought the latter is always risky because of potential confusion with modern feel-good notions of happiness.
It is at this point that charges of egoism begin to get a grip. The virtues are valuable because they contribute to my final end -but this is my final end, not yours, and so it looks as though it is my good, or interests, or whatever, which is justifying my acquisition of the virtues, and so they owe their ethical justification to their contribution to my good. So we have egoism ?
No. This goes too fast. For the virtues are not just any old dispositions making up my life ; they are courage, generosity, fairness, and so on. How does fairness, for example, contribute to my final end ? The fair person will others what is their due, sometimes to his own disadvantage. [...]
The exercice of the virtues need not benefit me, or contribute to my living a life we would call flourishing. Exercising the virtues is admirable, and we do admire people whose lives are lived in admirable and valuable ways. But these need not lead to flourishing, and in the case some virtues, those which primarily benefit others, they characteristically will not. The virtues, then, will be pursued as part of my whole life, but they need not benefit me or lead to my flourishing. This type of theory faces questions as to what does justifiy the distinct virtues, and why we think that the dispositions on our list are the virtues." (p.207)
"Courage is not a disposition which can be switched off when my own interest are not at stake. The virtues are dispositions embodying a commitment to values, not my self-interest. Thus the thesis that the virtues benefit benefit their possessor cannot be interpreted in such a way that the virtous person act in an egoistic way. Rather, we have to take the virtues as they are, taking into account the point that virtous action may often lead to loss of various kinds on the agent's part, and so is not egoistic." (p.208)
"The claim that an agent's motivation is egoistic merely because she is aiming at her flourishing is not a claim from a neutral ground [...] So it is not an independently powerful objection to the virtue theorist, who can reasonably deny it." (p.209)
"If i were to be virtous with one eye always on my own good, i would not be properly virtous." (p.210)
"Fortunately, the way in which virtue ethics requires self-effacingness is perfectly harmless. First, there is a way in which virtue comes to efface itself from the virtuous person's motivation. A beginner in virtue will have to try explicitly to become a virtuous person, and to do so by doing virtuous actions ; his deliberations will include such thoughts as that so and so is what a virtuous person would do, or what virtue requires. This is, indeed, how he guides his own deliberations. The truly virtuous person, however, will not explicitly think about, for example, being brave or performing a brave action. Rather, he will, as a result of experience, reflection, and habituation, simply respond to the situation, thinking that these people in danger need help, without explicit thoughts of bravery entering his deliberations. Thoughts about bravery, or the virtuous person, are no longer needed. This does not [...] produce a problematic split in the self [like in utilitarism]." (p.212)
"Different theories of [eudaimonism] have different positions as to what is best way to achieve eudaimonia or flourishing. Aristotle says that being virtuous is necessary ; the Stoics, that it is a necessary and sufficient ; and the Epicureans claim that flourishing is being in a state of pleasure." (p.213)
"Flourishing is not a state of myself, as it is for hedonists, nor it is a matter of my good as opposed to yours, as it arguably has to be for Epicurus. For, if i achieve flourishing through being virtuous, my flourishing will be constituted by my virtuous activity, which is focused on others as much as on myself. In this is is unlike a pleasant state of myself, which i might well aim to produce in a way which focuses on me at the expense of others." (p.214)
"Given that i have only one life, i will eventually come up with some very broad conception of my life as a whole, as that to which my actions are at any given point tending. This is my final end. [...] This is a very ordinary way of thinking." (p.216)
"We are used to the idea that happiness might be a local aim in my life, so that i can do my duty and neglect my happiness, whereas the conception of happiness as my final end demands that it be complete, not just one local aim among others for my deliberations. It is, then, problematic for us to use the notion of happiness at this point, and many modern virtue ethicists avoid confusion by talking of flourishing instead."(p.216)
"It is perfectly possible for a eudaimonist theory to be egoistic. Above, i pointed out that a hedonist theory like that of Epicurus does risk becoming egoistic." (p.217)
"Eudaimonia is not a state but the agent's activity in living his or her life." (p.220)
-Julia Annas, 'Virtue Ethics and the Charge of Egoism' in Morality and Self-Interest, edited by Paul Bloomfield, Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 205-221.
vise non le bonheur mais plutôt à mener une vie épanouie. Le but est plutôt une forme qu'un contenu ; une façon d'être, un ethos, un style de vie.
Proche d'une conception morale perfectionniste.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxis_(philosophie)
Dernière édition par Johnathan R. Razorback le Ven 13 Avr - 11:46, édité 2 fois
