Moral Powers

P.M.S. Hacker is the leading authority on the philosophy of Wittgenstein. He has also written extensively on philosophy of neuroscience and philosophy of language. He is Emeritus Research Fellow at St John’s College, Oxford and holds an Honorary Professorship at University College London’s Institute of Neurology. He has held both British Academy and Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowships and visiting chairs in North America. He is author of more than twenty books and over 160 papers, including the preceding three volumes in the Human Nature tetralogy: Human Nature (2007), The Intellectual Powers (2013), and The Passions (2018).

• Prolegomenon xi1. Philosophical anthropology and the investigation of value xi2. The sinopia for a fresco xviAcknowledgements xxivPart I Of Good and Evil 1Chapter 1 The Roots of Value and the Nature of Morality 31. The place of values in a world of facts 32. Varieties of goodness 83. The framework of moral goodness 174. Morality 245. Individual critical morality 30Chapter 2 The Roots of Morality and the Nature of Moral Goodness 331. Moral goodness 332. The roots of moral value 383. Respect 464. The relative permanence of the virtues 585. Constants in human nature 61Chapter 3 The Roots of Evil 651. The horror! 652. The grammar of evil: preliminary clarification 763. Philosophical problems: does evil exist? 834. Philosophical problems: can evil be explained? 89Chapter 4 Explanations of Evil 1011. The variety of explanations 1012. Reasons and motives for doing evil 1033. Can evil be a motive? 1154. Knowledge of good and evil 1215. Experimental psychology: Milgram’s and Browning’s explanations of evil‐doing 125Chapter 5 Evil and the Death of the Soul 1291. Body, mind, and soul 1292. The death of the soul 1383. Forgiveness and self‐forgiveness 1434. Evil and the unforgivable 1485. From soul to soul: trisecting an angle with compass and rule 152Part II Of Freedom and Responsibility 155Chapter 6 Fatalism and Determinism 1571. Of fate and fortune 1572. Fatalism 1623. Nomological determinism 1694. Flaws in reductive determinism 1735. The random and the determined 177Chapter 7 Neuroscientific Determinism, Freedom, and Responsibility 1791. Neuroscientific determinism 1792. Explanations of human behaviour: a recapitulation 1823. Neuroscientific explanation and its limits 1884. How possible, not why necessary 1925. Varieties of responsibility 1966. Elaboration 2017. Irresistible impulse and temptation 203Part III Of Pleasure and Happiness 207Chapter 8 Pleasure and Enjoyment 2091. Varieties of hedonism 2092. Pleasure, enjoyment, and being pleased 2123. Pleasure, pain, and the pleasures of sensation 2194. Enjoyment and the pleasures of activities 2245. Pleasure, desire, and satisfaction 2296. Comparability and quantification 2317. First‐person judgements of pleasure 2358. The hedonic life 237Chapter 9 Happiness 2431. The linguistic terrain 2432. A distinct idea of happiness 2463. A clear idea of happiness 2504. Preconditions of happiness 2635. The epistemology of happiness 2666. Two philosophical traditions 2697. Happiness and morality 276Chapter 10 The Science of Happiness 2811. From eighteenth‐century crudity and back again 2812. How happiness is understood by happiness scientists 2863. Psychological and epistemological presuppositionsof the science of happiness 2904. Measuring happiness 2945. Some results of the science of happiness 298Part IV Of Meaning and Death 305Chapter 11 The Need for Meaning 3071. Meaning 3072. The primacy of loss of meaning and the sense of meaninglessness 3133. The roots of meaninglessness 3164. Does life have a meaning? 3265. Finding meaning in human life 329Chapter 12 The Place of Death in Human Life 3341. What is death? 3342. An afterlife 3383. The valuelessness of life 3414. The value of life 3445. Living for ever 3496. Thanatophobia – the fear of death 353AppendicesAppendix 1: On Animal Beliefs and Animal Morality 3611. Animal morality 3612. Animal thinking, animal thoughts, and animal memory 3643. Counter‐arguments and their rebuttal 3674. Animal knowledge of other animals’ minds 3785. Animal emotions 384Appendix 2: Diabology: Satan, Lucifer, and the Devil in Western Thought 390Appendix 3: Hannah Arendt and the Banality of Evil 398Appendix 4: The Pictorial Representation of Pleasure in Western Art 407Index 412