John Cottingham

I examine Bernard Williams’s forceful challenge that evolutionary science has done away with the sort of teleological worldview that is needed in order to make sense of an Aristotelian virtue ethic perspective. I also consider Rosalind Hurshouse’s response to Williams and argue that it is not sufficient. My main task is to show what is needed in order to meet Williams’s challenge. First, I argue that we need a deeper exploration of the first-personal evaluative standpoint from within our human form of life than we find in Hursthouse’s ethical naturalist perspective. In particular, we need to recognize the important role of “strong evaluation” for identifying what is noblest and best about us as human beings, which enables us to address the “mixed bag” problem of human nature. Second, I argue—contra John McDowell’s quietism—that in order to make sense of such a normative account of human nature we must overcome Williams’s tragic cosmic outlook according to which human life is seen as ultimately without meaning and purpose.

This essay seeks to get clear on an important feature of a theistic way of life: namely, the appeal to 'deep desires' as part of an ethical and spiritual life-orientation. My main thesis is that such appeals should primarily be seen as pertaining to our acquired second nature and the space of meaning it makes possible, rather than first nature or innateness. To appeal to the 'depth' of a desire, on this account, is to say something about its normative importance: it is something of profound significance for our human fulfilment about which we ought to be concerned, and it correlates with the normative 'height' of the object of desire. Thus, our deepest desire correlates with what is seen as the highest or most worthy object of our desire (or love), which the theist claims is God. This view is contrasted with subjectivist accounts where desires are seen as 'deep' in that they structure our identity. My account affirms that deep desires structure our identity, but they do so because of their perceived objective normative importance. I also seek to show how we should affirm Alasdair MacIntyre's claim that 'the deepest desire of every [human] being, whether they acknowledge it or not, is to be at one with God'.

In this essay I seek to show the importance of spirituality for a neo-Aristotelian account of “the good life.” First, I lay out my account of spirituality. Second, I discuss why the issue of the place of spirituality in the good life has often either been ignored or explicitly excluded from consideration by neo-Aristotelians. I suggest that a lot turns on how one understands the “ethical naturalism” to which neo-Aristotelians are committed. In the third section, I argue that through a deeper exploration of the evaluative standpoint from within our human form of life as “meaning-seeking animals” we can come to better appreciate the importance of spirituality for human beings throughout recorded history up to the present and why we can be described as homo religiosus. I also discuss the draw to theistic spirituality in particular. In the fourth and final section, I consider and respond to three important objections to giving spirituality, especially theistic spirituality, an important place within an account of the good life: viz., (1) the wholeness objection; (2) the autonomy objection; and (3) the social peace objection.

Schopenhauer's views on how little we understand ourselves are examined with a view to isolating a particular issue: What has he too say about how, when we have reasons both for and against a contemplated action, we decide whether or not to perform it?