The Risk of Being: What it Means to be Good and Bad

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Penn State Press, 1997 M01 1 - 169 páginas

The Risk of Being attempts to forge a new language and a new way of reasoning about what it is like to be good and bad by focusing on existential phenomena that reveal what it means to be good and bad. It is thus a work that cannot be located among or compared to the more traditional theories of ethics or morality. What distinguishes this inquiry is not only the use of existential themes, such as outrage, temptation, and corruption, but the reasoning itself in an existential critique, which allows us to consider how and what we think as well as feel about being good and bad&—the logos and pathos of these existential phenomena&—and thus provides an access to the question about the reality of good and bad.

Recognizing that we have done wrong may induce frustrated responses, such as, &"How could I have been so stupid?&" or &"Why was I so weak? &" or even, &"What has become of me? &" These reactions, Gelven argues, point to folly, weakness, and corruption as ways of being bad, which can then be countered in phenomena such as judgment, courage, and integrity of character, as ways of being good. The analyses of these phenomena can reveal a great deal of existential understanding that no mere ethical or moral approach can offer. The emphasis is on understanding that &"good&" and &"bad&" are not mere axiological terms, but can refer to ways of existing.

By careful analysis, these ways can be forced to reveal the truth about goodness and badness. As Gelven's argument proceeds to show not only what it is &"like&" to be good and bad, but also what the reality of being good and bad must be, he offers new and often unorthodox insights into one of the great philosophical issues challenging the thinking mind.

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Contenido

Raising the Question
3
Provoking Phenomena
12
The Three Ways to Be
25
The Foolish and the Silly
40
Temptation
49
Corruption
61
Punishment and Forgiveness
68
Can the Good Do What Is Bad? Transition
76
Moral Strength
104
The Most Troubling Moral Judgment Transition
114
Character
121
CONFRONTING THE GOOD
129
The Pathos of Being Good
131
The Logos of Being Good
144
The Reality of Being Good
156
The Ethics of Being
160

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE GOOD 93 35
93
Judgment
95
The Greatest Good
163
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Michael Gelven is Presidential Research Professor of Philosophy at Northern Illinois University. He has published many books, two of them with Penn State Press, including Truth and Existence (1991) and War and Existence (1994).

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