Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-v5vhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-05T08:13:33.727Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

34 - Identity and moral agency

from VI - Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2014

Mikko YrjöNsuuri
Affiliation:
University of Jyväskylä
Robert Pasnau
Affiliation:
University of Colorado Boulder
Christina van Dyke
Affiliation:
Calvin College, Michigan
Get access

Summary

As moral agents, people are disposed to act for the sake of what they judge to be morally good. Modern philosophers have often considered such a disposition to be in opposition to another disposition, called “self-interest.” In the Middle Ages, however, moral action was often – or even usually – thought to agree with one’s own genuine best interests. In effect, all medieval thinkers based their theory of action on the fundamentally Aristotelian principle that human beings are rational agents aiming at the fulfillment of their own nature, guided by judgments about what is good for them – a principle that had been generally accepted even in other ancient philosophical schools. In the medieval period, the most philosophically interesting debates concerned different understandings of this principle rather than its validity. Medieval philosophers fundamentally disagreed about what human persons are as moral agents, and thus they also disagreed concerning the nature of self-interest and its relation to morality.

In particular, medieval philosophers recognized that Aristotle’s eudaimonistic principle is philosophically vague in at least two ways. First, the connection between this principle and ethical judgments is in need of an explanation. Does this principle describe the ultimate foundation of morality? Or does it describe individual self-interest as something that is fundamentally distinct from the moral perspective? In other words, is aiming at what is good for oneself the same as aiming at what is good morally, or is there some other (external) ground for moral goodness? Second, the principle looks vague from another direction because it needs to be grounded on a specific theory of the self. What is the self that acts as a moral agent? Is it the bodily human individual, a psychophysical being that needs food and shelter? Is it an incorporeal soul distinct from the body?

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Knuuttila, Simo, Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004) esp. pp. 111–76
Sorabji, Richard, Emotion and Peace of Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) pp. 159–349
Marmura, Michael, “Avicenna’s ‘Flying Man’ in Context,” The Monist 69 (1986) 383–95Google Scholar
Kaukua, Jari, Avicenna on Subjectivity: A Philosophical Study (Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2007) pp. 71ff
Marmura, Michael E., “Avicenna’s Chapter on Universals in the Isagoge of his Shifā᾿,” in Welch, A. T. and Cachia, P. (eds.) Islam: Past Influence and Present Challenge (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1979) 34–56
Arikha, Noga, Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours (New York: Ecco, 2007)
Bynum, Caroline Walker, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995) pp. 37–8, 67, 74–5, 90–1
Van Dyke, Christina, “Metaphysical Amphibians: Aquinas on the Individuation and Identity of Human Beings” (Ph.D. dissertation: Cornell University, 2000)
Pasnau, Robert, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
Chadwick, Henry, “Origen, Celsus, and the Resurrection of the Body,” Harvard Theological Review 41 (1948)Google Scholar
McGrade, A. S. et al., Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Texts, vol. II: Ethics and Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) pp. 271–84 and 301–6;
Kempshall, M. S., The Common Good in Late Medieval Political Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×