Comparative Philosophy

Moral Virtue And Inclusive Happiness: From Ancient To Recent In Western And Confucian Traditions, Shirong Luo

What is the relationship between moral virtue and happiness? Does having moral virtues make their possessors happy? Can one be happy without them? Philosophers provide diverging answers to these questions due to their different understandings of the concept of happiness which has multifarious meanings and senses. In this essay, I compare the representative Western theories of happiness with what may be called “a classical Confucian view” informed by recent scholarship on classical Confucianism. I argue that for classical Confucian philosophers, especially Confucius and Mencius, there are two kinds of happiness: exclusive (or unshared) and inclusive (or shared) happiness. I conclude …

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Is Conscientiousness A Virtue? Confucian Responses, Stephen C. Angle

Stephen C. Angle

Among contemporary philosophers sympathetic to the theoretical centrality of virtue, there is little agreement on the status of conscientiousness. Indeed, there is little agreement even on what the word “conscientiousness” means; for the time being, let us take it to mean consciously ensuring that one does one’s duty. Adams and Wallace both take conscientiousness to be a virtue, whereas Roberts calls it a “quasi-virtue” and Slote argues that it is both different from and inferior to virtue.The landscape becomes still more complicated when we add in the vexed concept of “continence,” which we can initially gloss as forcing oneself to …

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Is Conscientiousness A Virtue? Confucian Responses, Stephen C. Angle

Stephen C. Angle

Among contemporary philosophers sympathetic to the theoretical centrality of virtue, there is little agreement on the status of conscientiousness. Indeed, there is little agreement even on what the word “conscientiousness” means; for the time being, let us take it to mean consciously ensuring that one does one’s duty. Adams and Wallace both take conscientiousness to be a virtue, whereas Roberts calls it a “quasi-virtue” and Slote argues that it is both different from and inferior to virtue.The landscape becomes still more complicated when we add in the vexed concept of “continence,” which we can initially gloss as forcing oneself to …

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Dialectic As A Philosophical Method, Pierre Grimes

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Philosophy is the quest for wisdom and hence it may share a common end with religion. Not all philosophies are, however, concerned with this end, nor, again are all religions involved with a quest for wisdom. There may be different techniques and tools employed in the accomplishment of wisdom, but this dissertation is concerned only with the study of the nature and use of reason. In the philosophy of Plato reason is employed in diverse fields including mathematics, myths, and elaborate analogies, but when he turns to reason itself, then it becomes important to this analysis. Reason may be utilized …

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Full-Text Articles in Comparative Philosophy

Moral Virtue And Inclusive Happiness: From Ancient To Recent In Western And Confucian Traditions, Shirong Luo

Comparative Philosophy

Is Conscientiousness A Virtue? Confucian Responses, Stephen C. Angle

Stephen C. Angle

Is Conscientiousness A Virtue? Confucian Responses, Stephen C. Angle

Stephen C. Angle

Dialectic As A Philosophical Method, Pierre Grimes

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations