534 Pages
    by Routledge

    495 Pages
    by Routledge

    Nicolai Hartmann (1882-1950), along with Henri Bergson and Martin Heidegger, was instrumental in restoring metaphysics to the study of philosophy. Unlike his contemporaries, however, Hartmann was clearly influenced by Plato. His tour-de-force, Ethik, published in English in 1932 as Ethics, may be the most outstanding work on moral philosophy produced in the twentieth century.

    In the first part of Ethics (Moral Phenomena), Hartmann was concerned with the structure of ethical phenomena, and criticized utilitarianism, Kantianism, and relativism as misleading approaches. In the second part, Moral Values, the author describes all values as forming a complex and as yet imperfectly known system. The actualization of the non-moral and elementary moral values is a necessary condition for the actualization of the higher values. It is on this account that rudimentary values have a prior claim.

    Hartmann outlines the main features of the chief virtues, and shows that the moral disposition required in any exigency is always a specific synthesis of various and often conflicting values. Specifically describing fundamental moral values-such as goodness, nobility, and vitality-and special moral values-such as justice, wisdom, courage, self-control, trustworthiness, and modesty-Hartmann takes theoretical philosophy and brings it very much into the realm of the practical.

    A compelling and insightful volume, Moral Values remains an essential contribution to the moral and ethical literature of the twentieth century. Hartmann offers a self-contained system of ethics that yet offers a conservative outlook on social life.

    I: General Aspects of the Table Of Values; I (xxvi) 1: The Place of Moral Values Among Values in General; II: Moral Value and the End of Action; III xxviii: The Gradation of Values; IV: The Criteria of the Grade of a Value; V: The Problem of the Supreme Value; II: The Most General Antitheses; VI: The Antinomic of Values; VII: Modal Oppositions; VIII: Relational Opposites; IX: Qualitative and Quantitative Oppositions; III: The Values Which Condition Contents; X: General Character of The Group; XI: Valuational Foundations in the Subject; XII: Goods as Values; IV: Fundamental Moral Values; XIII: Moral Values in General; XIV: The Good; XV: The Noble; XVI: Richness of Experience; XVII: Purity; 5: Special Moral Values (First Group); XVIII: The Virtues in General; XIX: Justice; XX: Wisdom; XXI: Courage; XXII: Self-Control; XXIII: The Aristotelian Virtues; VI: Special Moral Values (Second Group); XXIV: Brotherly Love; XXV: Truthfulness and Uprightness; XXVI: Trustworthiness and Fidelity; XXVII: Trust and Faith; XXVIII: Modesty, Humility, Aloofness; XXIX: The Values of Social Intercourse; VII: Special Moral Values (Third Group); XXX: Love of The Remote; XXXI: Radiant Virtue; XXXII: Personality; XXXIII: Personal Love; VIII: The Order of the Realm of Values; XXXIV: The Lack of Systematic Structure; XXXV: Stratification and the Foundational Relation; XXXVI: Oppositional Relation and the Synthesis of Values; XXXVII: The Complementary Relationship; XXXVIII: The Grade and the Strength of Values; XXXIX: Value and Valuational Indifference

    Biography

    Carol Anne Dwyer