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The Ethics of Character: John Stuart Mill on Aesthetic EducationDissertation, Boston University. 2003.In the past, treatments of Mill's ethical views focused on the principle of utility. Recent work has incorporated a wider array of topics but no systematic investigation of Mill's conception of character. That theme and its philosophical importance are addressed in the present dissertation through analysis of aesthetic education understood as the cultivation of dispositions of feeling and imagination. ;Aesthetic education is important in Mill for three reasons. First, aesthetic education occupie…Read more
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7Self-Interest and the Common Good in Early Modern PhilosophyIn Heikki Haara & Juhana Toivanen (eds.), Common Good and Self-Interest in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy, Springer Verlag. pp. 257-273. 2024.In this chapter, I taxonomize early modern modes of relating self-interest and the common good. I discuss Protestant natural law theory, republicanism, utilitarianism, and—my main focus—Scottish social thought from Adam Smith and others. My aim is twofold. First, historically, I lay out the conceptual field for the early modern relation of self-interest and the common good while giving special attention to Scottish innovations. Second, from a philosophical point of view, I argue that the Scottis…Read more
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17The Riddle of Hume's Treatise :Skepticism, naturalism, and irreligion (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 48 (3): 401-402. 2010.Paul Russell begins his book by rightly noting, “almost all commentators over the past two and a half centuries have agreed that Hume’s intentions in the Treatise should be interpreted in terms of two general themes: skepticism and naturalism” (vii). The skeptical reading interprets Hume’s principal aim as showing that “our ‘common sense beliefs’ (e.g. belief in causality, independent existence of bodies, in the self, etc.) lack any foundation in reason” (4). The naturalist reading interprets Hu…Read more
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Moral philosophy : practical and speculativeIn Aaron Garrett & James Anthony Harris (eds.), Scottish Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century, Volume I: Morals, Politics, Art, Religion, Oxford University Press. 2015.
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11Samuel Fleischacker, Being Me Being You: Adam Smith and EmpathyJournal of Scottish Philosophy 19 (2): 165-168. 2021.
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3Moral PhilosophyIn Aaron Garrett & James Anthony Harris (eds.), Scottish Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century, Volume I: Morals, Politics, Art, Religion, Oxford University Press. 2015.This chapter presents a general account of the speculative and practical moral philosophy of eighteenth-century Scotland. It gives particular attention to three topics: the Scottish insistence that moral philosophy is an empirical, or ‘experimental’, science, grounded in what might now be called a phenomenology of the moral life, and intimately connected with the other elements of the ‘science of man’; the project of combining Hutchesonian moral sense theory with a Butlerian faculty of conscienc…Read more
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2Moral Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Britain: God, Self, and OtherCambridge University Press. 2017.The long eighteenth century is a crucial period in the history of ethics, when our moral relations to God, ourselves and others were minutely examined and our duties, rights and virtues systematically and powerfully presented. Colin Heydt charts the history of practical morality - what we ought to do and to be - from the 1670s, when practical ethics arising from Protestant natural law gained an institutional foothold in England, to early British responses to the French Revolution around 1790. He…Read more
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5The Problem of Natural Religion in Smith’s Moral ThoughtJournal of the History of Ideas 78 (1): 73-94. 2017.
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5Utilitarianism - Ed. Heydt (edited book)Broadview Press. 2010.John Stuart Mill’s _Utilitarianism _is a philosophical defense of utilitarianism, a moral theory stating that right actions are those that tend to promote overall happiness. The essay first appeared as a series of articles published in _Fraser’s Magazine_ in 1861; the articles were collected and reprinted as a single book in 1863. Mill discusses utilitarianism in some of his other works, including _On Liberty_ and _The Subjection of Women_, but _Utilitarianism _contains his only sustained defenc…Read more
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5Relations of Literary Form and Philosophical Purpose in Hume's Four Essays on HappinessHume Studies 33 (1): 3-19. 2007.This paper examines Hume's four essays on happiness: the "Epicurean," the "Stoic," the "Platonist," and the "Sceptic." I argue, first, that careful attention to how these essays are written shows that they do not simply argue for one position over others. They also elicit affective and imaginative responses in order to modify the reader's outlook and to improve the reader's understanding in service to moral ends. The analysis offers an improved reading of the essays and highlights the intimate c…Read more
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4"A Delicate and an Accurate Pencil": Adam Smith, Description, and Philosophy as Moral EducationHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 25 (1). 2008.
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6Practical ethicsIn James Anthony Harris (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 369. 2013.Given its initial form by Protestant natural lawyers such as Pufendorf, practical ethics figured prominently in the writings and lectures of university teachers like Hutcheson, Smith, Reid, and Paley, and it provided the most important shared background for philosophical views concerning how we ought to act and what dispositions we should cultivate. The core of practical ethics was a systematic presentation of our duties, rights, and virtues. This chapter analyzes the structure and discusses the…Read more
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3Self-Ownership and Moral Relations to Self in Early Modern BritainHistory of European Ideas 42 (2). 2016.SummaryThis paper scrutinises early modern thinking about our moral relations to ourselves. It begins by reiterating the too-often-ignored point that full self-ownership was not a position defended in Britain—by Locke or anyone else. In fact, the actual early modern positions about the moral relations we have to ourselves have been obscured by our present-day interest in self-ownership. The paper goes on to organise the moral history of the self by examining the reasons available for prohibiting…Read more
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7Henry Home, Lord Kames, Principles of Equity, edited and with an introduction by Michael Lobban. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2014. 603 pp. $24 hb. ISBN 9780865976153 (review)Journal of Scottish Philosophy 13 (2): 175-178. 2015.
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8Narrative, imagination, and the religion of humanity in mill's ethicsJournal of the History of Philosophy 44 (1): 99-115. 2006.: This paper shows how the ethical benefits of Mill's Religion of HumanityÑa life imbued with purpose, an improved regard for others, and greater happiness for oneself from the pleasures of fellow-feelingÑare to be actualized through the imagination's creation of compelling narratives about humanity. Understanding the ethical importance of the Religion of Humanity therefore implies understanding the central role of imagination in Millian ethical life. This investigation serves to articulate a fe…Read more
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6Mill, Bentham and 'internal culture'British Journal for the History of Philosophy 14 (2). 2006.This Article does not have an abstract
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3Hutcheson's "Short Introduction" and the Purposes of Moral PhilosophyHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 26 (3). 2009.
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3Mill, life as art, and problems of self-description in an industrial ageIn Ben Eggleston, Dale Miller & David Weinstein (eds.), John Stuart Mill and the Art of Life, Oxford University Press. pp. 264. 2010.
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17th/18th Century Philosophy |
19th Century Philosophy |