Kindness and the Good Society

William S. Hamrick

Description

Winner of the 2004 Edward Goodwin Ballard Book Prize in Phenomenology presented by the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology with interest from a fund raised from Professor Ballard's family, students, and friends

Kindness and the Good Society utilizes phenomenology and a wide variety of traditional and non-traditional sources to provide the first comprehensive account of kindness in any genre of philosophy. Remarkably rich in descriptive detail and drawing upon a wide range of examples, including literary sources, current affairs, and traditional philosophical texts, Hamrick's book rescues kindness from the purposeful neglect of deontological and utilitarian ethical theories. Beginning with an account of the personal and social areas of ethical and moral comportment, Hamrick addresses what is not intuitively obvious about kindness and its opposite, details a critical kindness that avoids both naiveté as well as popular cynicism, and guides us toward a new notion of aesthetic humanism.
Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I

1. Acts and Omissions

2. Personal Kindness

3. The Agency of Kindness

4. Social Atmospheres, Technology, and Nature

5. Institutions and Community

Part II

6. The Hermeneutic Challenge

7. Ideologies

8. Critical Kindness: Towards an Aesthetic Humanism

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Philosophie de l'esprit
• Éthique et morale
• Ethique et morale
• Epistémologie
• Epistémologie
• Epistémologie

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791489147
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Chapter Title

Kindness and the Good Society

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PA RT T I T L E

SUNY series in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences

Lenore Langsdorf, Editor

Chapter Title

Kindness and the Good Society

Connections of the Heart

William S. Hamrick

State University of New York Press

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Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2002 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207

Production by Michael Haggett Marketing by Michael Campochiaro

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Hamrick, William S. Kindness and the good society : connections of the heart / William S. Hamrick. p. cm. — (SUNY series in the philosophy of the social sciences) Includes bibliographical references and index. 0791452654 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0791452662 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Kindness I. Title. II. Series.

BJ1533.K5 H35 2002 177'.7—dc21

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2001049516

Chapter Title

For my parents, and for Eldora Spiegelberg, the kindest living person I know, who understands intuitively the sense of the question,

“[ W]hat is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is to enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc., & if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life?” —Ludwig Wittgenstein

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I

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.Acts and Omissions

.Personal Kindness





.The Agency of Kindness



.Social Atmospheres, Technology, and Nature

.Institutions and Community

Part II

.The Hermeneutic Challenge

.Ideologies









.Critical Kindness: Towards an Aesthetic Humanism

Notes



Bibliography

Index

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





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PA RT T I T L E

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Acknowledgments

It would be the unkindest cut of all not to express my gratitude to several peo ple and organizations that have helped me in various ways to complete this book. Sincere thanks are due, first, to Professor Wolfe Mays, Editor of the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, for permission to quote short passages from some of my articles published therein. They are listed in the Bibliography. I am also grateful to the Graduate School of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville for a summer research fellowship that provided the time to finally complete the book, and to the National Endowment for the Humanities for awarding me a place in Thomas Pavel’s 1996 summer seminar, “After Poststructuralism: The Individual in Contemporary French Thought,” at Princeton University. The influences of that seminar are present through out the following pages. I am deeply indebted to Professor Pavel and my fel low seminar participants. I am likewise grateful to Eldora Spiegelberg, who has always been a fresh, instructive example of the fact that the life of kindness can mean a life worth living. To her, and to my parents, who both died during the writing of this book, this work is affectionately dedicated. I thank John Compton for his stim ulating discussions of Philip Hallie’s reflections on cruelty and much else. I also am grateful to Ms. Dixie Golden for her expert proofreading. Additionally, I owe a great debt to my family, colleagues, and other friends, especially Michael Barber, Frank Flinn, James Marsh, and Thomas D. Paxson, Jr. They did not let me give up, even when I came close to death myself. They have taught me much about the importance of a community of good people for living a life of kindness, and I hope that they will find their lessons here well learned. While this book was in press, William Desmond’sEthics and the Between(Al bany: State University of New York Press, 2001) appeared. The present book of fers a phenomenology of kindness which is, in several ways, consistent with the ontology of goodness which Desmond’s work provides. I regret that it was im possible to refer here to that book because the careful reader will note in both texts, albeit for different purposes, overlapping and complementary descriptions of human actions and values as well as similar concerns for ambiguity, perplex ity, goodness, evil, and hermeneutical interrogation. Finally, the sad and horrible terrorism of September 11, 2001, which also took place while this book was in production, dramatically showed both the

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