Human Goodness: Pragmatic Variations on Platonic Themes

Human Goodness presents an original, pragmatic moral theory that successfully revives and revitalizes the classical Greek concept of happiness. It also includes in-depth discussions of our freedoms, our obligations, and our virtues, as well as adroit comparisons with the moral theories of Kant and Hume. Paul Schollmeier explains that the Greeks define happiness as an activity that we may perform for its own sake. Obvious examples might include telling stories, making music, or dancing. He then demonstrates that we may use the pragmatic method to discover and to define innumerable activities of this kind. Schollmeier’s demonstration rests on the modest assumption that our happiness takes not one ideal form, but many empirical forms.

• Defends the ancient concept of happiness as an action of value for itself against the contemporary concept of desire satisfaction • Shows how the pragmatic method can serve to define intellectual activities of value for themselves • Defends the concept of human happiness as an empirical moral teleology of value against the deontology of Kant and emotivism of Hume

Acknowledgments; Preface; Schema; 1. An apology; 2. The method in question; 3. Human happiness; 4. Moral freedoms; 5. Moral imperatives; 6. A question of cosmology; 7. Human virtue; 8. A symposium; Bibliography.