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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Lorraine Besser-Jones

Is compassion a virtue?

20 Sunday Mar 2011

Posted by Amod Lele in Christianity, Compassion, Confucianism, Greek and Roman Tradition, Mahāyāna, Pleasure, Virtue

≈ 39 Comments

Tags

Aristotle, chastened intellectualism, Four Noble Truths, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jesus, Julia Annas, Lorraine Besser-Jones, Martha C. Nussbaum, masochism, Mencius, nonhuman animals, Śāntideva, Seneca, T.R. (Thill) Raghunath

Thill makes an important point in response to my recent post on virtue and pleasure (as well as to a commenter named Bob). The post articulated the view, attributed to Aristotle via Julia Annas and Lorraine Besser-Jones, that the fully virtuous person will take pleasure in virtuous action. Against this position, Thill claims: “Even if you want to kill a dog or a horse in order to put it out of misery and you do it skillfully, it would still be a gross distortion to describe this act as one which gives pleasure to the agent.”

Thill is, I think, getting at an important philosophical debate here: over the value of compassion. Most of us, were we to be faced with the necessity of euthanizing a horse, would feel a painful emotion occasioned by its suffering – that is, compassion. The same would happen if we needed to discipline a child – even if, in either case, we had all the best reasons to believe that this action was the best action to take. But there is still a question: is this feeling a good thing? Continue reading →

The pleasures of virtue

20 Sunday Feb 2011

Posted by Amod Lele in Confucianism, Greek and Roman Tradition, Pleasure, Psychology, Virtue

≈ 37 Comments

Tags

Alasdair MacIntyre, APA, Aristotle, Chenyang Li, Confucius, Julia Annas, Lorraine Besser-Jones, Michael Formichelli, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

What is the connection between virtue and pleasure? The question came up in my discussion with Elisa Freschi on the previous post, and is in some respects a central question in the early history of Western ethics. At December’s Eastern APA conference, Lorraine Besser-Jones gave a really interesting talk on Aristotle’s approach to this connection, informed by some discussions in contemporary psychology. For Aristotle, she claimed, pleasure is an intrinsic part of virtue: nobody would call a man generous who does not enjoy acting generously. Besser-Jones wished to dispute this claim, on the grounds that virtuous activity is often not pleasurable. Continue reading →

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