Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I THE THEORY OF POLITICAL FREEDOM AND INDIVIDUALITY: SLAVERY, MUTUAL REGARD, AND MODERN EGALITARIANISM
- PART II DEMOCRACY AND INDIVIDUALITY IN MODERN SOCIAL THEORY
- 5 Historical materialism and justice
- 6 Two kinds of historical progress
- 7 The Aristotelian lineage of Marx's eudaemonism
- 8 Radical democracy and individuality
- 9 The Protestant Ethic and Marxian theory
- 10 Nationalism and the dangers of predatory “liberalism”
- 11 Democracy and status
- 12 Bureaucracy, socialism, and a common good
- 13 Levels of ethical disagreement and the controversy between neo-Kantianism and realism
- Conclusion: the project of democratic individuality
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - The Aristotelian lineage of Marx's eudaemonism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I THE THEORY OF POLITICAL FREEDOM AND INDIVIDUALITY: SLAVERY, MUTUAL REGARD, AND MODERN EGALITARIANISM
- PART II DEMOCRACY AND INDIVIDUALITY IN MODERN SOCIAL THEORY
- 5 Historical materialism and justice
- 6 Two kinds of historical progress
- 7 The Aristotelian lineage of Marx's eudaemonism
- 8 Radical democracy and individuality
- 9 The Protestant Ethic and Marxian theory
- 10 Nationalism and the dangers of predatory “liberalism”
- 11 Democracy and status
- 12 Bureaucracy, socialism, and a common good
- 13 Levels of ethical disagreement and the controversy between neo-Kantianism and realism
- Conclusion: the project of democratic individuality
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This book has advanced a moral realist view, based on a transepochal study of leading ethical and political theorists. Although contemporary Anglo-American moral theory has mainly divided between contractarians and utilitarians, my argument appeals to an Aristotelian and Marxian eudaemonism. Yet, a critic might suggest, my conception overemphasizes the interplay, across massive social and theoretical changes, of ancient and modern ethics. Seeing the foregoing argument as too enthusiastic about an ostensible Marxian eudaemonism, even a scientific realist might make this criticism.
Marx himself, however, characterized Aristotle as that “giant thinker” who “first analyzed so many forms of thought, society and nature.” As the critic might insist, Marx's particular views about such issues as justice, slavery, women, and property differ dramatically from Aristotle's. Recalling the argument of Chapter 1, however, if we were to remain at the level of particular disagreements, we would miss profound general similarities of ethical framework that qualify both thinkers as eudaemonists and moral realists.
First, this chapter shows that Aristotelian conceptions underlie three central features of Marx's concept of alienation. Second, it contends that the Aristotelian psychology of self-love and friendship explains important Marxian claims about individuality and foreshadows modern refinements in the theory of the self. We can characterize a eudaemonist ethical theory as one of social or democratic individuality, even though Aristotle did not use these terms. Third, both theorists stress political association and action as especially important goods.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Democratic Individuality , pp. 263 - 304Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990