Books by "Howard J. Curzer"
3 books found
Howard J. Curzer presents a fresh new reading of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which brings each of the virtues alive. He argues that justice and friendship are symbiotic in Aristotle's view; reveals how virtue ethics is not only about being good, but about becoming good; and describes Aristotle's ultimate quest to determine happiness.
In Virtue Ethics for the Real World: Improving Character without Idealization, Howard J. Curzer argues that character ideals seduce virtue ethicists into counterintuitive claims, mislead and psychologically harm people seeking to improve their characters, and sometimes become tools for exploitation. Curzer offers a theory of Aristotelian virtue ethics that eschews idealization and that harmonizes with common sense. To explain the many dilemmas of ordinary life, he allows that different virtues sometimes enjoin incompatible actions and even enjoin actions that conflict with duty. Curzer defends the doctrine of the mean, arguing that idealized traits such as unilateral forgiveness, universal civility, unconditional commitments, and unlimited generosity are not virtues. He shows that the reciprocity of virtues doctrine depends upon idealization and rejects it. When undergirding his theory, Curzer wears several hats. He is a eudaimonist when grounding virtue, a constructivist when grounding value, and a perspectivist (a la Nietzsche) when grounding virtuous action. How can people improve without aiming at an ideal? Curzer offers an individualized approach to character improvement modeled on contemporary medicine. First, diagnose each person’s character flaws. Then tailor treatment plans to each flaw. An important tool is a fine-grained table of the components of character, their failure modes, and corresponding therapies. Curzer provides the beginnings of such a table.
In this book, Howard J. Curzer describes eight virtues that have proven problematic to virtue ethicists. Integrity has been the subject of wildly different accounts. Open-mindedness and forgiveness are described in ways that many endorse, but few seek to practice. Accounts of tolerance and civility generally fit only the privileged. Finally, good timing, ambition, and creativity have attracted almost no attention at all. Curzer offers novel, plausible accounts of all of these eight difficult virtues, and demonstrates that they possess the standard features of Aristotelian virtues (for example, conformity to the Doctrine of the Mean). This enlarges the scope of Aristotelian virtue ethics by enabling it to cover eight additional spheres of human life. Using these difficult virtues as springboards and extrapolating from some of Aristotle’s remarks, Curzer codifies some standard features of Aristotelian virtues, and speculatively suggests additional features to enhance the descriptive and prescriptive power of Aristotelian virtue ethics. Thus, Curzer adds to the standard list of Aristotelian virtues and to the standard list of features that make virtues Aristotelian. Each difficult virtue is different, but certain themes thread through all of them: self-construction, social critique, and significant creation. Curzer’s accounts of these virtues illuminate the ways people forge their own identities, struggle to acquire virtue despite disadvantage, and produce and appreciate novelty.