Existential Flourishing
A Phenomenology of the Virtues

Argues that 'flourishing' means balancing one's responsiveness to three normative claims: self-fulfilment, moral responsibility, and intersubjective answerability.

Irene McMullin (Author)

9781108458207, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 21 January 2021

256 pages
22.9 x 15.1 x 1.4 cm, 0.387 kg

'Irene McMullin's Existential Flourishing: A Phenomenology of the Virtues is richly layered and deftly argued. The layers include detailed elucidation of practical rationality, references to previous debates in virtue ethics, and proposals plucked out of Levinas, Nietzsche, Kant, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Heidegger, and Husserl. Despite the heaviness of these many materials, McMullin writes with such dexterity as to encourage light and easy reflection right alongside her lapidary precision. Her style can also be warm and wry, as a line about “considering the moral reprobates that many of us count as friends” attests (143). [...] I am very grateful for this book's insights and for how philosophical argumentation is used to open up explanations of what we are doing. I have shared McMullin's definition of patience with an online group of transplant patient caretakers, who expressed great appreciation for it. Is there a better sign than that?' Jennifer Baker, Ethics

This innovative volume argues that flourishing is achieved when individuals successfully balance their responsiveness to three kinds of normative claim: self-fulfilment, moral responsibility, and intersubjective answerability. Applying underutilised resources in existential phenomenology, Irene McMullin reconceives practical reason, addresses traditional problems in virtue ethics, and analyses four virtues: justice, patience, modesty, and courage. Her central argument is that there is an irreducible normative plurality arising from the different practical perspectives we can adopt - the first-, second-, and third-person stances - which each present us with different kinds of normative claim. Flourishing is human excellence within each of these normative domains, achieved in such a way that success in one does not compromise success in another. The individual virtues are solutions to specific existential challenges we face in attempting to do so. This book will be important for anyone working in the fields of moral theory, existential phenomenology, and virtue ethics.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. What is flourishing?
2. Three domains of reason
3. Justice, the virtues, and existential problem-solving
4. Unity, comparison, constraint
5. Called to be oneself: role models and the project of becoming virtuous
6. Corrupting the youth
7. Patience
8. Modesty
9. Courage
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Mind, Body, Spirit [VX], Ethical issues & debates [JFM], Theology [HRLB], Social & political philosophy [HPS], Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ], Philosophy of mind [HPM], Philosophy: metaphysics & ontology [HPJ]