Departmental Seminars

This week's seminar: 

"Desire and the Guise of the Good"

Chris Megone, University of Leeds

 

15:30, Thursday, July 26

Philosophy Depatrment Seminar Room

 

Chris has provided the following abstract for his talk:

 

In Meno (77a-78c) Socrates appears to hold the view that all desires aim at (the) good, or the appearance of the good (desires are formed ‘sub specie boni’, as it was put by later adherents (Aquinas and Spinoza). Some writers also attribute some form of the view to Plato and Aristotle (Tenenbaum, 2010, p4). Recently this claim has been the subject of considerable discussion once again with writers such as Stocker, Velleman and Setiya rejecting the view, whilst Raz, Tenenbaum and others support it in one version or another.

This discussion intersects with other debates, for example as to the role of desire in the explanation of action, on the one hand, and its justification, on the other, and as to whether reasons for action are internal or external.

In this presentation I will seek to defend a via media between adherents and opponents, and to explain the implications of that approach for some of these other debates.

 

 

Last Modified: Wed, 04 Dec 2019 09:49:02 SAST