A Critique of Freedom and Equality Charvet Paperback Cambridge University Press

A Critique of Freedom and Equality

This book is about the grounds of ethical life, or the nature and basis of our ethical obligations.

John Charvet (Author)

9780521112260, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 28 May 2009

216 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.2 cm, 0.28 kg

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.

AcknowledgementsIntroductionPart I: 1. The equal value of individuals as self-determining beings2. A preliminary notice of the difficulties3. Authenticity4. Egoism5. The principle of equal value in some contemporary literature6. The motivational structure of morality7. Hobbesian egoism8. Benevolence and sympathy9. Rousseau10. Rationalism and Kant11. Self-interest, morality and the divided self12. Utilitarianism13. Subordinate ordering principles14. The liberal theory of equal freedom15. Egalitarianism16. The Rawlsian combinationPart II. 17. Hegel18. MarxPart III: 19. The relativity of value20. The fundamental moral attitude21. The possibility of morality22. The moral attitude and the rights of individuals23. The right to particular satisfaction or welfare24. The standpoint of the whole25. Ethical criticism26. Subjectivity and objectivity in morals27. The unity of the human raceIndex.

Subject Areas: Social & political philosophy [HPS]