A Critique of Freedom and Equality

by John Charvet

• ISBN13: 9780521112260
• ISBN10: 0521112265
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-06-04
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book is about the grounds of ethical life, or the nature and basis of our ethical obligations. It contains an original account of these grounds and shows how this understanding requires specific forms of social and political life. Charvet considers the ideas of the freedom and equality of men in the many forms they have taken and shows that there is a radical incoherence underlying them which consists in the failure to integrate in a coherent way the particular and the moral or communal dimensions of individual life. These two dimensions are separated and opposed to each other. In the final section of the book Charvet develops an original account of the grounds of ethical life which satisfactorily integrates these particular and communal elements of individuality. It is designed to show how the moral claims of individuals are grounded in their associated wills in a community and yet how such a conception preserves the separate individuality of the community's members.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

The equal value of individuals as self-determining beings

A preliminary notice of the difficulties

Authenticity

Egoism

The principle of equal value in some contemporary literature

The motivational structure of morality

Hobbesian egoism

Benevolence and sympathy

Rousseau

Rationalism and Kant

Self-interest, morality and the divided self

Utilitarianism

Subordinate ordering principles

The liberal theory of equal freedom

Egalitarianism

The Rawlsian combination

Hegel

Marx

The relativity of value

The fundamental moral attitude

The possibility of morality

The moral attitude and the rights of individuals

The right to particular satisfaction or welfare

The standpoint of the whole

Ethical criticism

Subjectivity and objectivity in morals

The unity of the human race

Index

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