Moral Perfectionism and Virtue

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 332-350
Author(s):  
Piergiorgio Donatelli
Keyword(s):  
Moral Perfectionism

Spiritual Exercises, Improvisation, and Moral Perfectionism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnold Davidson
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Spiritual Exercises ◽  
Ethical Practice ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Spiritual Self ◽  
Experimental Attitude ◽  
Moral Perfectionism

Abstract: Beginning with Pierre Hadot’s idea of spiritual exercises and Stanley Cavell’s conception of moral perfectionism, this essay argues that improvisation can be understood as a practice of spiritual self-transformation. Focusing on the example of Sonny Rollins, the essay investigates the ways in which Rollins’ improvisations embody a series of philosophical concepts and practices: the care of the self, the Stoic exercise of cosmic consciousness, the problem of moral exemplarity, the ideas, found in the later Foucault, of a limit attitude and an experimental attitude, and so on. The underlying claim of the essay is that improvisation is not only an aesthetic exercise, but also a social and ethical practice that can give rise to existential transformations.

scholarly journals Senses of Echo Lake: Michael Palmer, Stanley Cavell, and the Moods of an American Philosophical Tradition

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 98
Author(s):  
Richard Deming
Keyword(s):  
Ralph Waldo Emerson ◽  
Henry David Thoreau ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Stanley Cavell ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
American Philosophy ◽  
Active Reading ◽  
Moral Perfectionism ◽  
The Way

This essay explores a philosophical tradition that Stanley Cavell has traced out and which he emphasizes as being American inasmuch as it is arises out of the thinking of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. It then investigates how the poems of the avant-garde poet Michael Palmer link with, overlap with, this strain of American philosophy in terms of how it enacts an understanding of what we might call “philosophical mood,” on outlook based on the navigation of representation, generative self-consciousness, and doubt that amounts to a form of epistemology. The essay does not trace the influence—direct or otherwise of Cavell and his arguments for philosophy on the poems, despite a biographical connection between Cavell and Palmer, his former student. Instead it brings out the way that one might fruitfully locate Palmer’s work within an American literary/philosophical continuum. The article shows how that context opens up the work to a range of important existential and ethical implications. I endeavor to show that Notes for Echo Lake, Palmer’s most important collection, locates itself, its language, within such a frame so as to provide a place for readerly encounters with the limitations of language. These encounters then are presented as an opportunity for a deeper understanding of subjectivity and for attuning oneself to the role that active reading and interpretation might play in moral perfectionism.

Moral Disengagement: Mediator Between Moral Perfectionism and Machiavellian Behavior Among Undergraduates?

2020 ◽  
pp. 003329412096406
Author(s):  
Abbas Abdollahi ◽  
Fatemeh Hashemi ◽  
Hamid Rezaeian Faraji ◽  
Simin Hosseinian ◽  
Kelly A. Allen
Keyword(s):  
Structural Equation Modeling ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Moral Disengagement ◽  
Structural Model ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Moral Standards ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Moral Perfectionism

To better understand Machiavellian behavior among undergraduate students, the current study examines moral disengagement as a mediator in the relationship between Machiavellian behavior and two dimensions of moral perfectionism (concern over moral mistakes perfectionism and personal moral standards perfectionism). Participants were 210 undergraduate students (64% female) from three universities in Tehran, Iran, aged between 18 and 27 years old. Structural equation modeling revealed that Machiavellian behavior was negatively associated with personal moral standards perfectionism and positively associated with moral disengagement. The results of the structural model showed a non-significant relationship between concern over moral mistakes perfectionism and Machiavellian behavior. However, multi-model analysis provided evidence that moral disengagement partially mediated the relationship between personal moral standards perfectionism and Machiavellian behavior. The findings also showed that there was a relationship between concern over moral mistakes perfectionism and Machiavellian behavior through moral disengagement. The results suggest that while moral perfectionism is often accompanied with moral disengagement, Machiavellian behavior may be an explanation for individuals with these traits.

Moral Perfectionism and Cavell's Romantic Turn

2014 ◽  
pp. 24-34
Author(s):  
Nikolas Kompridis
Keyword(s):  
High Impact ◽  
Being And Time ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Moral Perfectionism

The first book of Stanley Cavell’s that I read is the only book that I ardently wished I had written, The Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Why this book, and not some high impact, world-historical book like Heidegger’s Being and Time or Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations? Well, there are a number of reasons, some of them personal and some of them, well, Cavellian. Most immediately, the book explained to me why I so much enjoyed watching again and again over the course of more than three decades the films which are the objects of Cavell’s interpretations — why, in short, watching these films made me so happy, why they filled me with goofy delight, always ringing a smile to my face, a smile not unlike that smile of Cary Grant’s (from Holiday) reproduced in the pages of The Pursuits of Happiness.

scholarly journals Introduction

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Mayblin ◽  
Diego Malara
Keyword(s):  
Anthropology Of Religion ◽  
Systems Perspective ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
Religious Systems ◽  
Moral Perfectionism

Questions of discipline are, today, no less ubiquitous than when under Foucault’s renowned scrutiny, but what does ‘discipline’ in diverse religious systems actually entail? In this article, we take ‘lenience’ rather than discipline as a starting point and compare its potential, both structural and ideological, in religious contexts where disciplinary flexibility shores up greater encompassing projects of moral perfectionism as opposed to those contexts in which disciplinary flexibility is a defining feature in its own right. We argue that lenience provides religious systems with a vital flexibility that is necessary to their reproduction and adaptation to the world. By taking a ‘systems’ perspective on ethnographic discussions of religious worlds, we proffer fresh observations on recent debates within the anthropology of religion on ‘ethics’, ‘failure’, and the nature of religious subjects.

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