Thomas Hurka
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 1111990 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Thomas Hurka |
| NOMBRES | Thomas |
| APELLIDO | Hurka |
| FIRMA | HURKA T |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Calgary |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2883-5101 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 47 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 187 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 46 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1982 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2021 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
Against 'Good for'/'Well-Being', for 'Simply Good
This paper challenges the widely held view that 'good for', 'well-being', and related terms express a distinctive evaluative concept of central importance for ethics and separate from 'simply good' as used by G. E. Moore and others. More specifically, it argues that there's no philosophically useful good-for or well-being concept that's neither merely descriptive in the sense of naturalistic nor reducible to 'simply good'. The paper distinguishes…
The Parallel Goods of Knowledge and Achievement
Games, Sports, and Play
This volume contains philosophical essays on the neglected topic, at least in most recent philosophy, of games, sports, and play. Some of the essays address conceptual questions about what games and sports have in common that makes them such and that distinguishes them from other activities. Here many take their start from Bernard Suits’s celebrated analysis of game-playing in his book The Grasshopper , either to elaborate his analysis or to prop…
On ‘Hybrid’ Theories of Personal Good
‘Hybrid’ theories of personal good, defended by e.g. Parfit, Wolf, and Kagan, equate it, not with a subjective state such as pleasure on its own, nor with an objective state such as knowledge on its own, but with a whole that supposedly combines the two. These theories apply Moore's principle of organic unities, which says the value of a whole needn't equal the sum of the values its parts would have by themselves. This allows them, defenders say,…
Objective Goods
This chapter discusses the idea that there are objective human goods, ones that are desirable and worth pursuing independently of how much you desire or would enjoy them. It examines some leading candidates for such goods, principally the nonmoral goods of knowledge and achievement and the moral good of virtue. It argues that the aggregation of objective goods may use different principles than for subjective goods, for example, ones that value va…
Sidgwick on Consequentialism and Deontology
In The Methods of Ethics Henry Sidgwick argued against deontology and for consequentialism. More specifically, he stated four conditions for self-evident moral truth and argued that, whereas no deontological principles satisfy all four conditions, the principles that generate consequentialism do. This article argues that both his critique of deontology and his defence of consequentialism fail, largely for the same reason: that he did not clearly …
Many Faces of Virtue
British Ethical Theorists from Sidgwick to Ewing
The subject of this book is a unified and distinctive school of British ethical theorists active from the 1870s through the 1950s, though its period of greatest influence was the 1920s and 1930s. The book recovers this neglected school's history, showing what its members thought, how they influenced each other, and how their views changed through time; identifies the common assumptions that made it unified and distinctive; and argues for the supe…
Underivative Duty
A team of eminent contemporary philosophers present the first collective study of seminal British moral thinkers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some, like Henry Sidgwick and G.E. Moore, are already recognised as leading philosophers of their day. Others, like Hastings Rashdall and A.C. Ewing, are unjustly neglected.
The Justification of National Partiality
This chapter discusses the ethics of nationalism as a justified partiality toward one's own nation and conationals versus that of those outside the nation. Familial partiality is used as a point of comparison, if only to justify national partiality as distinctly familial. One way to do so is by assessing the special relations each individual has with each other within familial and national groups. On the one hand, family groups have the advantage…
Drawing morals
This volume contains selected essays in moral and political philosophy. The chapters address a wide variety of topics, from the well-rounded life and the value of playing games to proportionality in war and the ethics of nationalism. They also share a common aim: to illuminate the surprising richness and subtlety of our everyday moral thought by revealing its underlying structure, which they often do by representing that structure on graphs.
Underivative Duty British Moral Philosophers From Sidgwick To Ewing
"These ten new essays by leading contemporary philosophers constitute the first collective study of a group of British moral philosophers active between the 1870s and 1950s, including Henry Sidgwick, Hastings Rashdall, G.E. Moore, H.A. Prichard, W.D. Ross, and A.C. Ewing."--Dustjacket
The best things in life
In 'The Best Things in Life', distinguished philosopher Thomas Hurka takes a fresh look at these perennial questions as they arise for us now in the 21st century. Should we value family over career? How do we balance self-interest and serving others? What actives bring us the most joy? While religion, literature, popular psychology, and everyday wisdom all grapple with these questions, philosophy more than anything else uses the tools of reason t…
Morality and Political Violence
Book Review| January 01 2010 Morality and Political Violence C. A. J. Coady, Morality and Political Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xi + 317 pp. Thomas Hurka Thomas Hurka Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Philosophical Review (2010) 119 (1): 115–117. https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-2009-032 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Thomas …
From Thick to Thin
Many philosophers of the last century thought all moral judgments can be expressed using a few basic concepts — what are today called ‘thin’ moral concepts such as ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ ‘right,’ and ‘wrong.’ This was the view, first, of the non-naturalists whose work dominated the early part of the century, including Henry Sidgwick, G.E. Moore, W.D. Ross, and C.D. Broad. Some of them recognized only one basic concept, usually either ‘ought’ or ‘good’; o…
Nietzsche
Nietzsche is often regarded as a paradigmatically anti-theoretical philosopher. Bernard Williams has said that Nietzsche is so far from being a theorist that his text ‘is booby- trapped not only against recovering theory from it, but, in many cases, against any systematic exegesis that assimilates it to theory.’ Many would apply this view especially to Nietzsche’s moral philosophy. They would say that even when he is making positive normative cla…
Liability and Just Cause
This paper is a response to Jeff McMahan‘s “Just Cause for War” ( Ethics & International Affairs 19, 2005). McMahan holds, as many have, that there is a just cause for war against group X only if X have made themselves liable to military force by being responsible for some serious wrong. But he interprets this liability requirement in a very strict way. He insists (1) that one may use force against X for purpose Y only if they are responsible for…
Virtuous act, virtuous dispositions
Journal Article Virtuous act, virtuous dispositions Get access Thomas Hurka Thomas Hurka University of TorontoToronto, Ontario, Canada M5S [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Analysis, Volume 66, Issue 1, January 2006, Pages 69–76, https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/66.1.69 Published: 01 January 2006
Value and Friendship
T. M. Scanlon has cited the value of friendship in arguing against a ‘teleological’ view of value which says that value inheres only in states of affairs and demands only that we promote it. This article argues that, whatever the teleological view's final merits, the case against it cannot be made on the basis of friendship. The view can capture Scanlon's claims about friendship if it holds, as it can consistently with its basic ideas, that (i) f…
Value Theory
This chapter surveys a variety of views about which states of affairs are intrinsically good, that is, in themselves or apart from their consequences. It considers the claims to intrinsic value of such states of individuals as pleasure, the fulfillment of desire, knowledge, achievement, moral virtue, and personal relationships; the different ways such goods can be compared and aggregated both within and across individual lives; and the possibilit…
Proportionality in the Morality of War
Merits and Implications
This chapter defends the recursive account by identifying in turn, attractive features of its two main elements: the recursive characterization of good and evil and the associated definition of virtue and vice. The chapter also discusses the value of personal relationships, whether virtue is found primarily in occurrent attitudes or in dispositions (the latter a view of Aristotle's), whether virtue must be voluntary, and how virtue relates to rig…
Extending the Account
This chapter extends the recursive account by recognizing holistic virtues such as justice, which involve attitudes to holistic objects such as equal distributions or distributions in accordance with desert; agent‐relative virtues, such as loyalty and agent‐regret; and non‐consequentialist virtues, such as conscientiousness and other more specific deontological virtues.
The Recursive Account
This chapter introduces the book's basic account of virtue and vice. This account combines two elements: (1) a recursive characterization of goodness and evil, which makes morally appropriate attitudes to other goods and evils intrinsically good and morally inappropriate attitudes evil, and (2) a definition of virtue and vice that equates them with these good and evil attitudes. The chapter discusses how this recursive account allows consequentia…
Degrees of Virtue and Vice
Discusses degrees of virtue and vice, or what determines how virtuous or vicious a given attitude is; it treats this as an issue of measurement. The chapter discusses both atomistic principles, which assign degrees of value to individual attitudes considered on their own, and holistic principles, which value certain combinations of attitudes as combinations, using Moore's principle of organic unities. Both types of principle favor proportionality…
Proportionality in the Morality of War
Virtue, Vice, and Value
What are virtue and vice, and how do they relate to other moral properties such as goodness and rightness? This book defends a perfectionist account of virtue and vice that gives distinctive answers to these questions. The account treats the virtues as higher‐level intrinsic goods, ones that involve morally appropriate attitudes to other, independent goods and evils. Virtue by itself makes a person's life better, but in a way that depends on the …
From Thick to Thin
Many philosophers of the last century thought all moral judgments can be expressed using a few basic concepts — what are today called ‘thin’ moral concepts such as ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ ‘right,’ and ‘wrong.’ This was the view, first, of the non-naturalists whose work dominated the early part of the century, including Henry Sidgwick, G.E. Moore, W.D. Ross, and C.D. Broad. Some of them recognized only one basic concept, usually either ‘ought’ or ‘good’; o…
British Ethical Theorists from Sidgwick to Ewing
The subject of this book is a unified and distinctive school of British ethical theorists active from the 1870s through the 1950s, though its period of greatest influence was the 1920s and 1930s. The book recovers this neglected school's history, showing what its members thought, how they influenced each other, and how their views changed through time; identifies the common assumptions that made it unified and distinctive; and argues for the supe…
Liability and Just Cause
This paper is a response to Jeff McMahan‘s “Just Cause for War” ( Ethics & International Affairs 19, 2005). McMahan holds, as many have, that there is a just cause for war against group X only if X have made themselves liable to military force by being responsible for some serious wrong. But he interprets this liability requirement in a very strict way. He insists (1) that one may use force against X for purpose Y only if they are responsible for…
Against 'Good for'/'Well-Being', for 'Simply Good
This paper challenges the widely held view that 'good for', 'well-being', and related terms express a distinctive evaluative concept of central importance for ethics and separate from 'simply good' as used by G. E. Moore and others. More specifically, it argues that there's no philosophically useful good-for or well-being concept that's neither merely descriptive in the sense of naturalistic nor reducible to 'simply good'. The paper distinguishes…
How Great a Good is Virtue
Distinguant la conception welfariste ou subjective et la conception perfectionniste ou objective du bien, l'A. souleve la question de la valeur intrinseque de la vertu comparee aux autres biens tels que la connaissance et le plaisir. Defendant une approche recursive du vice et de la vertu, selon laquelle leur valeur est toujours inferieure a celle de leur objet, l'A. definit la valeur comparative du vice et de la vertu en fonction de la caracteri…
Indirect Perfectionism
On ‘Hybrid’ Theories of Personal Good
‘Hybrid’ theories of personal good, defended by e.g. Parfit, Wolf, and Kagan, equate it, not with a subjective state such as pleasure on its own, nor with an objective state such as knowledge on its own, but with a whole that supposedly combines the two. These theories apply Moore's principle of organic unities, which says the value of a whole needn't equal the sum of the values its parts would have by themselves. This allows them, defenders say,…
Many Faces of Virtue
Value and Friendship
T. M. Scanlon has cited the value of friendship in arguing against a ‘teleological’ view of value which says that value inheres only in states of affairs and demands only that we promote it. This article argues that, whatever the teleological view's final merits, the case against it cannot be made on the basis of friendship. The view can capture Scanlon's claims about friendship if it holds, as it can consistently with its basic ideas, that (i) f…
Rights and Capital Punishment
Discussions of the morality of capital punishment, and indeed discussions of the morality of punishment in general, usually assume that there are two possible justifications of punishment, a deterrence justification associated with utilitarianism and other consequentialist moral theories, and a retributive justification associated with deontological moral theories. But now that rights-based theories are attracting the increasing attention of mora…
Vices as Higher-level Evils
This paper sketches an account of the intrinsic goodness of virtue and intrinsic evil of vice that can fit within a consequentialist framework. This ‘recursive account’ treats the virtues and vices as higher-level intrinsic values, ones that consist in, respectively, appropriate and inappropriate attitudes to other, lower-level values. After presenting the main general features of the account, the paper illustrates its strengths by showing how it…
Perfectionism
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Perfectionism. By Thomas Hurka. (Oxford UP: Oxford Ethics Series, 1993. Pp. xi + 222. Price £30.00.) David Carr David Carr Moray House Institute, Heriot-Watt University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 45, Issue 178, January 1995, Pages 115–117, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219860 Published: 01 January 1995
Rights and Capital Punishment
Discussions of the morality of capital punishment, and indeed discussions of the morality of punishment in general, usually assume that there are two possible justifications of punishment, a deterrence justification associated with utilitarianism and other consequentialist moral theories, and a retributive justification associated with deontological moral theories. But now that rights-based theories are attracting the increasing attention of mora…
Value and Population Size
Rights and Punishment—A Reply to McKerlie
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The Rejection of ConsequentialismSamuel Scheffler Don Mills
The Well-Rounded Life
Sur le perfectionnisme : les valeurs qui le fondent| perfectionnisme pratique et theorique chez Aristote| la repartition des perfections dans une vie, en opposition a la specialisation unique| confrontation avec le dilettantisme| repartition des perfections dans un groupe
Why Value Autonomy
Discussion des positions de Humboldt et Mill, qui accusent l'intervention etatique dans les affaires privees de contrevenir a l'autonomie des citoyens. Dans quelle mesure l'autonomie est-elle intrinsequement bonne ? La notion d' agency et de sa valeur| les valeurs de la connaissance et de la qualite. Autonomie et liberalisme
Sumner on Natural Rights
I am pleased to participate in this joint Critical Notice, in part because it is an opportunity to pay a debt of gratitude. Thirteen years ago, as a Toronto undergraduate with interests in things like Hegelian metaphysics, I enrolled in an ethics seminar with Wayne Sumner. I had not done any ethics before, and took this course largely because I thought I ought to. But it turned out to be the best course of my undergraduate career, and permanently…
Indirect Perfectionism
Perfectionism
Perfectionism
Perfectionism
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Perfectionism. By Thomas Hurka. (Oxford UP: Oxford Ethics Series, 1993. Pp. xi + 222. Price £30.00.) David Carr David Carr Moray House Institute, Heriot-Watt University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 45, Issue 178, January 1995, Pages 115–117, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219860 Published: 01 January 1995
Perfectionism
Perfectionism is one of the leading moral views of the Western tradition, defended by Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Leibniz, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Green. Defined broadly, it holds that what is right is whatever most promotes certain objective human goods such as knowledge, achievement, and deep personal relations. Defined more narrowly, it identifies these goods by reference to human nature, so the human good consistsin developing the properti…
The Justification of National Partiality
The moral issues about nationalism arise from the character of nationalism as a form of partiality. Nationalists care more about their own nation and its members than about other nations and their members; in that way nationalists are partial to their own national group. The question, then, is whether this national partiality is morally justified or, on the contrary, whether everyone ought to care impartially about all members of all nations. As …
How Great a Good is Virtue
Distinguant la conception welfariste ou subjective et la conception perfectionniste ou objective du bien, l'A. souleve la question de la valeur intrinseque de la vertu comparee aux autres biens tels que la connaissance et le plaisir. Defendant une approche recursive du vice et de la vertu, selon laquelle leur valeur est toujours inferieure a celle de leur objet, l'A. definit la valeur comparative du vice et de la vertu en fonction de la caracteri…
Merits and Implications
This chapter defends the recursive account by identifying in turn, attractive features of its two main elements: the recursive characterization of good and evil and the associated definition of virtue and vice. The chapter also discusses the value of personal relationships, whether virtue is found primarily in occurrent attitudes or in dispositions (the latter a view of Aristotle's), whether virtue must be voluntary, and how virtue relates to rig…
Extending the Account
This chapter extends the recursive account by recognizing holistic virtues such as justice, which involve attitudes to holistic objects such as equal distributions or distributions in accordance with desert; agent‐relative virtues, such as loyalty and agent‐regret; and non‐consequentialist virtues, such as conscientiousness and other more specific deontological virtues.
The Recursive Account
This chapter introduces the book's basic account of virtue and vice. This account combines two elements: (1) a recursive characterization of goodness and evil, which makes morally appropriate attitudes to other goods and evils intrinsically good and morally inappropriate attitudes evil, and (2) a definition of virtue and vice that equates them with these good and evil attitudes. The chapter discusses how this recursive account allows consequentia…
Degrees of Virtue and Vice
Discusses degrees of virtue and vice, or what determines how virtuous or vicious a given attitude is; it treats this as an issue of measurement. The chapter discusses both atomistic principles, which assign degrees of value to individual attitudes considered on their own, and holistic principles, which value certain combinations of attitudes as combinations, using Moore's principle of organic unities. Both types of principle favor proportionality…
How Great a Good Is Virtue?
If virtue is an intrinsic good, how does its value compare with those of other goods such as pleasure, knowledge, and achievement? Whereas many philosophers hold that virtue is the greatest good, this chapter argues that virtue is a lesser good in the following sense: the value of an attitude to an object is always less than the value of that object, so, for example, the goodness of compassion for another's pain is always less than the evil of th…
Varieties of Virtue and Vice
This chapter shows how the recursive account can illuminate a large number of particular virtues and vices, identifying both, what they have in common that makes them virtues or vices and what distinguishes them from each other. It identifies three main categories of vice, made such by three different elements of the recursive account, and three main categories of virtue. Among the particular vices discussed are malice, callousness, cynicism, sel…
Attitudes, Beliefs, and Love as a Condition of Value
This chapter considers some further issues about the recursive account: how the value of an attitude is affected by the presence of a belief in its object's existence, the morality of fantasy, the relative values of attitudes that do and do not involve beliefs about their objects’ value (these are called intellectualized vs. simply emotional attitudes), and the challenge of a rival view suggested by Mill, Frankena, and Parfit that makes love of a…
Against Virtue Ethics
Having spent its bulk elaborating its own account of virtue, the book closes by arguing for this account's superiority over those defended under the heading of “virtue ethics.” It critically assesses the virtue‐ethical views of Anscombe, Slote, Hursthouse, and others, considering their claims about the relation between virtue and right action, the nature of virtue, especially as related to flourishing or an aretaic concept of admirability, and th…
Value … and What Follows
Value… And What Follows
Book Review| April 01 2001 VALUE... AND WHAT FOLLOWS VALUE... AND WHAT FOLLOWS. By Joel J. Kupperman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. vi, 168. Thomas Hurka Thomas Hurka Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Philosophical Review (2001) 110 (2): 281–283. https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-110-2-281 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Faceb…
Vices as Higher-level Evils
This paper sketches an account of the intrinsic goodness of virtue and intrinsic evil of vice that can fit within a consequentialist framework. This ‘recursive account’ treats the virtues and vices as higher-level intrinsic values, ones that consist in, respectively, appropriate and inappropriate attitudes to other, lower-level values. After presenting the main general features of the account, the paper illustrates its strengths by showing how it…
Epistemology (30 obras) · Philosophy (29 obras) · Philosophical Ethics and Theory (23 obras) · Psychology (21 obras) · Sociology (20 obras) · Political science (19 obras) · Law (18 obras) · Social Psychology (17 obras) · Computer Science (15 obras) · Virtue (14 obras)