Controversies about abortion, the environment, pornography, AIDS, and similar issues naturally lead to the question of whether there are any values that can be ultimately justified, or whether values are simply conventional. John Kekes argues that the present moral and political uncertainties are due to a deep change in our society from a dogmatic to a pluralistic view of values. Dogmatism is committed to there being only one justifiable system of values. Pluralism recognizes many such systems, and yet (...) it avoids a chaotic relativism according to which all values are in the end arbitrary. Maintaining that good lives must be reasonable, but denying that they must conform to one true pattern, Kekes develops and justifies a pluralistic account of good lives and values, and works out its political, moral, and personal implications. (shrink)

In this book, John Kekes discusses the hard questions we all must face in the course of our lives. How should we respond to evil? Do we owe what our country asks of us? Does it make us better to be ashamed of what we have done? Is it always good to be true to who we are? Do good intentions justify bad actions? John Kekes argues that such questions are hard because reasonable answers to them (...) often conflict. He shows how their conflicts can be resolved and how we can best cope with these problems. (shrink)

Liberalism is doomed to failure, John Kekes argues in this penetrating criticism of its basic assumptions. Liberals favor individual autonomy, a wide plurality of choices, and equal rights and resources, seeing them as essential for good lives. They oppose such evils as selfishness, intolerance, cruelty, and greed. Yet the more autonomy, equality, and pluralism there is, Kekes contends, the greater is the scope for evil. According to Kekes, liberalism is inconsistent because the conditions liberals regard as (...) essential for good lives actually foster the very evils liberals want to avoid, and avoiding those evils depends on conditions contrary to the ones liberals favor. Kekes argues further that the liberal conceptions of equality, justice, and pluralism require treating good and evil people with equal respect, distributing resources without regard to what recipients deserve, and restricting choices to those that conform to liberal preconceptions. All these policies are detrimental to good lives. Kekes concludes that liberalism cannot cope with the prevalence of evil, that it is vitiated by inconsistent commitments, and that—contrary to its aim—liberalism is an obstacle to good lives. (shrink)

Uses case studies of evil, the most serious of our moral Problems, to explain why people act with cruelty, greed, prejudice and fanatacism.

Renowned philosopher John Kekes develops and defends a humanistic conception of wisdom as a personal attitude--one that guides how we face adversities and evaluate the often conflicting possibilities and limits of life in the context in which we live. The book is a radical departure from traditional works on wisdom. It stresses the humanistic, pluralistic, and personal aspects of wisdom. The book is a defense of philosophy as a humanistic discipline.

Arguing that the prevalence of evil presents a fundamental problem for our secular sensibility, John Kekes develops a conception of character-morality as a response. He shows that the main sources of evil are habitual, unchosen actions produced by our character defects and that we can increase our control over the evil we cause by cultivating a reflective temper.

This book is a nontechnical yet closely reasoned attempt to provide a contemporary answer to the age-old question of how to live well.

"That the art of life is creative, imaginative, and individual does not mean... that it cannot be taught and learned or that individuals cannot improve their mastery of it. Teaching it proceeds by way of exemplary lives, and learning it consists in coming to appreciate what makes some lives exemplary.... That imitation here is impossible does not mean one cannot learn from examples. The question is, How can that be done reasonably; how can decisions about how one should live escape (...) being arbitrary, if they are left to individual creativity and imagination and are not governed by rules that apply to everyone living in a particular context?"—from The Art of Life The art of life, according to John Kekes, consists in living a life of personal and moral excellence. This art requires continuous creative effort, drawing on one's character, circumstances, experiences, and ideals. Since these conditions vary with times and places, Kekes says, there can be no single blueprint for the achievement of excellence. We must do it ourselves—but we can learn from those who have lived exemplary lives. Reflecting on lives of integrity and honor, Kekes formulates what we can learn from them and what we can do to adapt the ideals they represent to our personal circumstances. Avoiding both the abstractness that characterizes much moral thought and the relativism that recognizes no rational or moral limits, Kekes shows how serious philosophical thinking can be readable and helpful to those who struggle with the perennial problems of human existence. (shrink)

Moral imagination, according to John Kekes, is indispensable to a fulfilling and responsible life.

A well-thought-out project, engaging, enlightening, and highly accessible for the audience it addresses.

The principle, Ought implies can, Has two versions. The strong version expresses a necessary condition for the appropriateness of moral judgments; the weak version expresses a possible ground for excusing wrongdoing. The strong version is presupposed by choice-Morality, While the weak one is presupposed by character-Morality. It is argues that the strong version and choice-Morality are mistaken and that the weak version and character-Morality give a much more plausible account of our moral experience. The general conclusion is that choice is (...) not necessary for the appropriateness of moral disapproval. (shrink)

In his recent book Against Liberalism, philosopher John Kekes argued that liberalism as a political system is doomed to failure by its internal inconsistencies. In this companion volume, he makes a compelling case for conservatism as the best alternative. His is the first systematic description and defense of the basic assumptions underlying conservative thought. Conservatism, Kekes maintains, is concerned with the political arrangements that enable members of a society to live good lives. These political arrangements are based (...) on skepticism about ideologies, pluralism about values, traditionalism about institutions, and pessimism about human perfectibility. The political morality of conservatism requires the protection of universal conditions of all good lives, social conditions that vary with societies, and individual conditions that reflect differences in character and circumstance. Good lives, according to Kekes, depend equally on pursuing possibilities that these conditions establish and on setting limits to their violations. Attempts to make political arrangements reflect these basic tenets of conservatism are unavoidably imperfect. Kekes concludes, however, that they represent a better hope for the future than any other possibility. (shrink)

In this profound and yet accessible book, John Kekes discusses moral wisdom: a virtue essential to living a morally good and personally satisfying life. He advances a broad, nontechnical argument that considers the adversities inherent in the human condition and assists in the achievement of good lives. The possession of moral wisdom, Kekes asserts, is a matter of degree: more of it makes lives better, less makes them worse. Exactly what is moral wisdom, however, and how should (...) it be sought? Ancient Greek and medieval Christian philosophers were centrally concerned with it. By contrast, modern Western sensibility doubts the existence of a moral order in reality; and because we doubt it, and have developed no alternatives, we have grown dubious about the traditional idea of wisdom. Kekes returns to the classical Greek sources of Western philosophy to argue for the contemporary significance of moral wisdom. He develops a proposal that is eudaimonistic—secular, anthropocentric, pluralistic, individualistic, and agonistic. He understands moral wisdom as focusing on the human effort to create many different forms of good lives. Although the approach is Aristotelian, the author concentrates on formulating and defending a contemporary moral ideal. The importance of this ideal, he shows, lies in increasing our ability to cope with life's adversities by improving our judgment. In chapters on moral imagination, self-knowledge, and moral depth, Kekes calls attention to aspects of our inner life that have been neglected because of our cultural inattention to moral wisdom. He discusses these inner processes through the tragedies of Sophocles, which can inspire us with their enduring moral significance and help us to understand the importance of moral wisdom to living a good life. (shrink)

As an initial approximation, pluralism may be understood as the combination of four theses. First, there are many incommensurable values whose realization is required for living a good life. Second, these values often conflict with each other, and, as a result, the realization of some excludes the realization of others. Third, there is no authoritative standard that could be appealed to to resolve such conflicts, because there is also a plurality of standards; consequently, no single standard would be always acceptable (...) to all fully informed and reasonable people. Fourth, there are, nevertheless, reasonable ways of resolving conflicts among incommensurable values. (shrink)

This original and ambitious book aims to change how we think about good lives. The perennial debates about good lives—the disagreements caused by conflicts between scientific, religious, moral, historical, aesthetic, and subjective modes of reflection—typically end in an impasse. This leaves the underlying problems of the meaning of life, the possibility of free action, the place of morality in good lives, the art of life, and human self-understanding as intractable as they have ever been. The way out of this impasse, (...) argues Kekes, is to abandon the assumption shared by the contending parties that the solutions of these problems can be rational only if they apply universally to all lives in all contexts. He believes that solutions may vary with lives and contexts and still be rational. Kekes defends a pluralistic alternative to absolutism and relativism that will, he holds, take philosophy in a new and more productive direction. (shrink)

Three basic problems in contemporary epistemology are discussed. The first is the conflict between foundationalists and fallibilists. The second is the problem of scepticism. The third is the question of what sort of considerations are relevant to justification. The recent literature is surveyed and some original contributions are offered.

John Kekes proposes a new way of understanding the nature of philosophical problems, and defends a pluralist approach towards coping with them. He argues that the recurrence of such problems is not a defect, but a consequence of the richness of our modes of understanding that enlarges the range of possibilities by which we might choose to live.

This paper is an explanation and defence of the combination of three theses. First, Self-Knowledge is a requirement of good lives, But it must include knowledge of our limitations. Second, These limitations are set by certain unavoidable conventions whose observance is another requirement of good lives. Third, Sophocles's "oedipus the king" is a moral text of the highest significance, For it contains a profound account of why self-Knowledge must include knowledge of unavoidable conventions limiting human aspirations. The argument proceeds by (...) analyzing the moral implications of the play. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that American higher education is in a bad state. There is no general agreement, however, about why this is so. The inadequate preparation of students, the poor quality of teaching, the chronic shortage of funds, the deterioration of standards, the tenure system, the politicization of academic life are some among the various explanations that have been proposed. Universities and colleges are complex institutions, they are connected to the larger society of which they are parts in many (...) obvious and unobvious ways, so it is most unlikely that there would be a single explanation of their wretched condition. There is one explanation, however, that must be part of whatever the complete story turns out to be: corruption. American higher education is as poor as it is partly because academics routinely violate the fundamental value which they are obligated by their institutional affiliation to uphold. (shrink)

In an influential paper, Peter Singer claims that affluent people have a strong obligation to relieve famine. If they fail, they allow others to die, and makes them murderers. In responding to this outrageous claim, which has given uneasy conscience to many, I show that Singer is engaged in indefensible moralizing that substitutes bullying for reasoned argument and gives a bad name to morality.

This note is a reply to nagel's "what is it like to be a bat?" I argue that nagel is right in claiming that members of each species have a unique point of view due to physiological differences; no member of another species can have the same experiences. Nagel is wrong, However, In concluding from this truism that no objective account of experiences is possible. Such an account can give everything physicalism needs. What it cannot give, And what it was (...) not meant to give, Is the experience of living through the experience it explains. (shrink)

I physicalism1 and the weak identity theory deny, while physicalism2 and the radical identity theory assert, that raw feels can be accomodated in a purely physicalistic framework. II A way of interpreting the claim of physicalism1 is that raw feels are emergents. III The doctrine of emergence asserts that: (i) there are different levels of existence, (ii) these levels of existence are distinguishable on the basis of the behaviour of entities of that level, and (iii) an adequate scientific explanation of (...) a lower level is inadequate for a higher level. IV The criteria of emergence are novelty and a priori unpredictability. V Either qualities or laws or both may be regarded as emergents. VI If the alleged impossibility of explaining higher level phenomena on the basis of explanation adequate for lower level phenomena is logical, then the impossibility is either trivial or it implies indeterminism. Consideration of theories of emergence: VII Semantic emergence. On this view emergence is theory-bound, analogous to indefinability or indemonstrability. VIII Methodological emergence. On this view what we regard as emergents depends on the theory we construct. IX Nomological emergence. On this view emergence is an empirical problem. Conclusion: if there are emergents, physicalism2 and the radical identity theory probably have to be abandoned. However, unless actual examples of emergents are produced both theories hold. The logical possibility of falsification is not an objection against physicalism2 and the radical identity theory; it is one of their merits. (shrink)

‘Reply to Horton’ gives four reasons why Horton's attack on Kekes ' earlier article fails. In particular Horton fails to make the case that we have a moral obligation to do more than we already do towards relieving poverty through the taxes we already pay.

The proposed justification avoids problems that invalidate the familiar entitlement, utility, and interest-based justifications; interprets private property as necessary for controlling resources we need for our well-being; recognizes that the possession, uses, and limits of private property must be justified differently; and combines the defensible portions of the familiar but unsuccessful attempts at justification with a more complex account that combines the defensible portions of previous justificatory attempts with a new pluralistic approach that treats the right to private property as (...) a conventional, defeasible, but indispensable right. (shrink)