Summary of Peter Catapano & Simon Critchley's Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 A meaningful life is not just valued, but also valuable. It is distinct from a happy life or a morally good one. A meaningful life is worthwhile, and it is felt by the person living it.

#2 A life has a trajectory, and it can be narratively conceived. A life is not an unrelated series of actions or projects or states of being. A life has, we might say, a thickness. It is lived in a temporal thickness.

#3 We must ask ourselves what makes our lives meaningful, and why we should care about them. The answer is that a meaningful life is one that is filled with objects of objective attractiveness. These are rarely the themes of a shopping or investing life.

#4 The activity of philosophy begins with Socrates, who did not write. Plato and others wrote down stories about him, and the center of a vivid philosophical culture is often held by figures who do not write but who exist only through the stories that are told about them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822520028

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Insights on Peter Catapano & Simon Critchley's Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

A meaningful life is not just valued, but also valuable. It is distinct from a happy life or a morally good one. A meaningful life is worthwhile, and it is felt by the person living it.

#2

A life has a trajectory, and it can be narratively conceived. A life is not an unrelated series of actions or projects or states of being. A life has, we might say, a thickness. It is lived in a temporal thickness.

#3

We must ask ourselves what makes our lives meaningful, and why we should care about them. The answer is that a meaningful life is one that is filled with objects of objective attractiveness. These are rarely the themes of a shopping or investing life.

#4

The activity of philosophy begins with Socrates, who did not write. Plato and others wrote down stories about him, and the center of a vivid philosophical culture is often held by figures who do not write but who exist only through the stories that are told about them.

#5

Frank Cioffi was an American professor of philosophy who taught at the University of Essex in the early 1970s. He was a physically large, strong-looking man who never had laces in the work boots he always wore. He was a highly sensitive person who always wore pajamas underneath his clothes.

#6

Frank’s teaching was focused on the relationship between science and the humanities. He believed that our confusions about science and the humanities had wide-ranging and malign societal consequences.

#7

The distinction between explanation and clarification is important in philosophy. We tend to get muddled up when we try to explain something, when in reality, we just need to clarify it.

#8

The mistake of scientism is the belief that nature and society can be completely explained by science. But there is a gap between nature and society, and we must not try to fill it. We must continue to ask the question of life’s meaning.

#9

We don’t need answers to the question of life’s meaning, just as we don’t need a theory of everything. We need multifarious descriptions of many things, which allow us to momentarily clarify and focus the bewilderment that is often our inner life.

#10

The question of where the line is between suffering and happiness is something that has been at the root of the human experience for as long as we have been able to record it. It was the lament of Job, and is asked with no less frequency today in response to circumstances ranging from devastating loss to the typical hardships of a trying job.

#11

Those who live on the sunny side of their misery threshold are called healthy-minded. They see the glass half full, and they have a low tolerance for misery. They are somewhat interesting to James, because they are almost completely foreign to him.

#12

The final stage in this world sickness is pathological melancholy. The person in this stage no longer recognizes