The British moralists on human nature and the birth of secular ethics / Michael B. Gill.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gill, Michael B., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ethics, Modern--17th century.

Ethics, Modern.

Ethics--Great Britain--History--17th century.

Ethics.

Ethics, Modern--18th century.

Ethics--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 359 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

The British Moralists on Human Nature & the Birth of Secular Ethics

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Uncovering the historical roots of naturalistic, secular contemporary ethics, in this 2006 volume Michael Gill shows how the British moralists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries completed a Copernican revolution in moral philosophy. They effected a shift from thinking of morality as independent of human nature to thinking of it as part of human nature itself. He also shows how the British Moralists - sometimes inadvertently, sometimes by design - disengaged ethical thinking, first from distinctly Christian ideas and then from theistic commitments altogether. Examining in detail the arguments of Whichcote, Cudworth, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson against Calvinist conceptions of original sin and egoistic conceptions of human motivation, Gill also demonstrates how Hume combined the ideas of earlier British moralists with his own insights to produce an account of morality and human nature that undermined some of his predecessors' most deeply held philosophical goals.

Contents:

Whichcote and Cudworth

Shaftesbury

Hutcheson

David Hume.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 341-349) and index.

ISBN:

1-107-16540-7

1-280-54132-6

0-511-22568-7

0-511-22438-9

0-511-22625-X

0-511-32285-2

0-511-49927-2

0-511-22505-9

OCLC:

437171496