In Satires 1.1 Horace asks the question why people are discontented and praise the fortunes of others, and he gives the answer that they are greedy. The precise connection between question and answer is however far from clear, and some commentators have felt that Horace has combined two separate themes of avarice and discontent without establishing a causal link between them. The great obstacle for critics who argue for thematic unity is to explain how it is that the malcontents (...) of 1–19 are motivated by greed, for Horace is not explicit but merely asserts baldly that it is so , and leaves the reader to work out the logic. The direct method is to identify to some degree praise of the fortunes of others with an envious desire to outstrip them in wealth. In support we may quote two of the most influential recent interpreters of the Satires, to whom all interested in the poems owe a great debt: ‘It is avaritia that is at the bottom of the misguided yearning after other men's lot. All those people would not be prepared to have a change; rather will they, out of greed, put up with any toil or danger.’. (shrink)

This paper aims at looking at Shakespeare’s character Falstaff through the prism of some of the seven deadly sins. The paper doesn’t claim that it explores all the sins present in Falstaff’s personality. The main sins that this paper examines in Falstaff’s personality are the sins of gluttony, lust, avarice, sloth, and pride. The presence of so many sins in the personality of one character that are interconnected is known as concatenation of sins. As Bernard Spivack and David Wiles (...) have explained, in many ways Falstaff serves as the Vice figure from the morality plays tempting Prince Hal. Since in the morality plays the Vice figure stems and is associated mainly to the seven deadly sins, this paper will try to show that the fact that Falstaff possesses so many sins can facilitate the possibility of him being identified as stemming from the Vice figure from the morality plays. I will try to find each of the afore-mentioned sins by analyzing Falstaff actions and inactions and by trying to find characteristics of the sins present in Falstaff’s behavior. This paper will also look at Falstaff’s fate and whether there is any similarity between the fate of the Vice figure in the morality plays and the fate of Falstaff in the second part. (shrink)

This paper takes a historical approach to describing theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s concept of Christian Realism, and its consequences for political thought in America. In the aftermath of World War I many people in America, especially Protestant clergy, became disillusioned with the idea of political intervention, focussing on domestic rather than international disputes. However, as National Socialism gained a foothold in Germany, culminating in the Second World War, the Protestant theology of Social Gospel Liberalism that gained popularity in the 1920’s would (...) not suffice for explaining the conduct of the Nazi party, nor the political action that America should take towards it. Niebuhr’s Christian Realism, emphasizing the inevitability of sin in individuals and social institutions alike, provided a philosophy that emphasized action towards this political power, influencing American conduct and discourse as the war broke out across the Atlantic at the turn of the decade. (shrink)

Cette contribution vise à étudier les effets que l’amour des richesses a sur le caractère moral et les relations sociales, depuis les descriptions qu’en donne Platon au livre VIII de la République à travers le portrait de l’homme oligarchique, jusqu’à la déclinaison des quatre formes de l’avarice dans le traité des Caractères de Théophraste, dans lequel l’argent et les échanges marchands constituent par ailleurs un thème récurrent et structurant. On remonte avec Platon aux sources psychologiques de l’amour des richesses (...) avant d’en développer les conséquences morales, et, avec Théophraste plus particulièrement, les conséquences sur les relations de l’individu aux autres. Classification JEL : B11. (shrink)

In her influential book, The Practice of Moral Judgment, Barbara Herman argues that Kantian ethics requires a “middle theory” applying formal rational constraints on willing to the particular circumstances and nature of human existence. I claim that a promising beginning to such a theory can be found in Kant’s discussion of duties of virtue in The Metaphysics of Morals. I argue that Kant’s distinction between perfect and imperfect duties of virtue should be understood as a distinction between duties concerned with (...) respect for necessary conditions of moral health and moral prosperity in sensibly affected human agents who realize their moral nature only through the development and continuing exercise of inner freedom. Thus understood, perfect duties prohibiting self-deception, miserly avarice, and humility are oriented around concerns with the conditions of rational self-constraint in human agents and are contrasted with imperfect duties requiring the development of our talents and the perfection of our moral disposition concerned with the effective exercise of this kind of inner freedom in choice and action. Generalizing this account, I claim that it allows us to accommodate the range of duties that Kant discusses here including perfect duties owed to others prohibiting arrogance, defamation, and ridicule and imperfect duties enjoining gratitude and beneficence and suggests a much more subtle and promising account of moral duty than those typically associated with Kant’s view. (shrink)

This article examines Machiavelli’s image of humanity. It argues against the prevailing views that characterize it either as pessimistic or optimistic and defends the thesis that the Florentine has a realist image of humanity. Machiavelli is a psychological egoist who conceives of man as a being whose actions are motivated by his drives, appetites, and passions, which lead him often to immoral behavior. Man’s main drives are “ambition” (ambizione) and “avarice” (avarizia). This article also investigates Machiavelli’s concept of nature (...) and shows that, for him, the constancy of human nature is the central premise that makes the scientific analysis of politics possible. Despite the fact that human drives and capabilities are the same at all times, good laws, military training, and religion allow man to be changed and educated toward “virtue” (virtù). To make such changes in man, however, presupposes a good legal and political order. Machiavelli justifies the state because of its capacity to reshape human nature and to improve man. The state is not only a coercive power but a moral institution. This leads to the conclusion that Machiavelli does not separate politics from morality as most scholars claim. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Historical Background Superbia (Pride) Invidia (Envy) Ira (Wrath) Acedia (Sloth) Avaritia (Avarice) Gula (Gluttony) Luxuria (Lust) The Antidote: Righteous Love The Bridge to Salvation.

Grasping. Avarice. Covetousness. Miserliness. Insatiable cupidity. Overreaching ambition. Desire spun out of control. The deadly sin of Greed goes by many names, appears in many guises, and wreaks havoc on individuals and nations alike. In this lively and generous book, Phyllis A. Tickle argues that Greed is "the Matriarch of the Deadly Clan," the ultimate source of Pride, Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, Lust, and Anger. She shows that the major faiths, from Hinduism and Taoism to Buddhism and Christianity regard Greed (...) as the greatest calamity humans can indulge in, engendering further sins and eviscerating all virtues. As the Sikh holy book Adi Granth asks: "Where there is greed, what love can there be?" Tickle takes a long view of Greed, from St. Paul to the present, focusing particularly on changing imaginative representations of Greed in Western literature and art. Looking at such works as the Psychomachia, or "Soul Battle" of the fifth-century poet Aurelius Clemens Prudentius, the paintings of Peter Bruegel and Hieronymous Bosch, the 1987 film Wall Street, and the contemporary Italian artist Mario Donizetti, Tickle shows how our perceptions have evolved from the medieval understanding of Greed as a spiritual enemy to a nineteenth-century sociological construct to an early twentieth-century psychological deficiency, and finally to a new view, powerfully articulated in Donizetti's mystical paintings, of Greed as both tragic and beautiful. Engaging, witty, brilliantly insightful, Greed explores the full range of this deadly sin's subtle, chameleon-like qualities, and the enormous destructive power it wields, evidenced all too clearly in the world today. (shrink)

In this original and rewarding combination of intellectual and political history, Ryan Balot offers a thorough historical and sociological interpretation of classical Athens centered on the notion of greed. Integrating ancient philosophy, poetry, and history, and drawing on modern political thought, the author demonstrates that the Athenian discourse on greed was an essential component of Greek social development and political history. Over time, the Athenians developed sophisticated psychological and political accounts of acquisitiveness and a correspondingly rich vocabulary to describe and (...) condemn it. Greed figures repeatedly as an object of criticism in authors as diverse as Solon, Thucydides, and Plato--all of whom addressed the social disruptions caused by it, as well as the inadequacy of lives focused on it. Because of its ethical significance, greed surfaced frequently in theoretical debates about democracy and oligarchy. Ultimately, critiques of greed--particularly the charge that it is unjust--were built into the robust accounts of justice formulated by many philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle. Such critiques of greed both reflected and were inextricably knitted into economic history and political events, including the coups of 411 and 404 B.C. Balot contrasts ancient Greek thought on distributive justice with later Western traditions, with implications for political and economic history well beyond the classical period. Because the belief that greed is good holds a dominant position in modern justifications of capitalism, this study provides a deep historical context within which such justifications can be reexamined and, perhaps, found wanting. (shrink)

In response to Lawrence Solum's advocacy of a ‘virtue–centred theory of judging’, I argue that there is indeed important work to be done in identifying and characterising those qualities of character that constitute judicial virtues – those qualities that a person needs if she is to judge well (though I criticise Solum's account of one of the five pairs of judicial vices and virtues that he identifies – avarice and temperance). However, Solum's more ambitious claims – that a judge's (...) vice necessarily corrupts her decisions, and that in at least some contexts we must define a legally correct decision as one that would be reached by a virtuous judge – should be rejected: we can undermine the former by attending to the requirements of due process, and the latter by attending to the ways in which a judge would try to justify her decision. (shrink)

The paper begins by exploring whether a “tendency to avarice” exists in most capitalist business organisations. It concludes that it does and that this is problematic. The problem centres on the potential threat to the integrity of human character and the disablement of community.What, then, can be done about it? Building on previous work (Moore, 2002) in which MacIntyre’s notions of practice and institution were explored (MacIntyre, 1985), the paper offers a philosophically based argument in favour of the rediscovery (...) of craftsmanship by those who work in business organisations, and the exercise of craftsmanship in community.The practical implications for individuals of this way of conceptualising business, and the virtues which must then come to the fore, are discussed. (shrink)

The paper begins by exploring whether a “tendency to avarice” exists in most capitalist business organisations. It concludes that it does and that this is problematic. The problem centres on the potential threat to the integrity of human character and the disablement of community.What, then, can be done about it? Building on previous work (Moore, 2002) in which MacIntyre’s notions of practice and institution were explored (MacIntyre, 1985), the paper offers a philosophically based argument in favour of the rediscovery (...) of craftsmanship by those who work in business organisations, and the exercise of craftsmanship in community.The practical implications for individuals of this way of conceptualising business, and the virtues which must then come to the fore, are discussed. (shrink)

When the richest 85 individuals in the world own as much as the poorest 3 billion people, one must ask about equity and social justice. Yet, the problem is not just individual, but also systemic. Just as nations have developed poverty lines to identify people who need help, so too, as this book argues, we need a measure of relative wealth that can guide policy makers, governments, development specialists, and economists. Approaching the question through theological, ethical, and economic analysis, the (...) book probes the dynamics of wealth creation, the effectiveness of national and international policies, and the underlying questions of poverty, wealth, and widening economic disparities. [Subject: Religious Studies, Ethics, Social Justice, Economic Policy]. (shrink)

Gabriele Taylor presents a philosophical investigation of the "ordinary" vices traditionally seen as "death to the soul": sloth, envy, avarice, pride, anger, lust, and gluttony. In the course of a richly detailed discussion of individual and interrelated vices, which complements recent work by moral philosophers on virtue, she shows why these "deadly sins" are correctly so named and grouped together.

The virtue of moral psychology is that it emphasizes what is most human in business, as opposed to the more bloodless conceptsof “obligation,” “duty,” “responsibility” and rights.” The heart of moral psychology is to be found in such concrete phenomena as fear, love, affection, antipathy, loyalty, jealousy, anger, resentment, avarice, ambition, pride, and cowardice. In this essay, I want to explore two of the core virtues of the corporation, conceived of as a community, the “sentiments” of care and compassion. (...) These were taken to be the very core of ethics by Adam Smith. I want to distinguish care and compassion from each other and both from the more principled and rule-bound conceptions of ethics that still dominate philosophy. (shrink)

The virtue of moral psychology is that it emphasizes what is most human in business, as opposed to the more bloodless conceptsof “obligation,” “duty,” “responsibility” and rights.” The heart of moral psychology is to be found in such concrete phenomena as fear, love, affection, antipathy, loyalty, jealousy, anger, resentment, avarice, ambition, pride, and cowardice. In this essay, I want to explore two of the core virtues of the corporation, conceived of as a community, the “sentiments” of care and compassion. (...) These were taken to be the very core of ethics by Adam Smith. I want to distinguish care and compassion from each other and both from the more principled and rule-bound conceptions of ethics that still dominate philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXI, Number 2, November 1995, pp. 275-287 Virtue, Commerce, and Self-Love R. G. FREY Can economic activity be virtuous? Can the pursuit of commerce and profits be moral? Both Hume and Adam Smith are agreed that Britain will live or die as a trading nation, and trade requires the harvesting or production of goods with which to trade. This in turn requires that people be motivated (...) to harvest or to produce these goods, and neither Hume nor Smith give any evidence of believing that people are motivated by a general love of mankind, an extensive sympathy, or a broadly-encompassing benevolence to produce them. Indeed, quite the opposite appears to be the case: both writers think the pursuit of luxury, wealth, and the general riches of life have much more to do with the harvesting and production of goods for trade than does any widespread, general concern for the well-being of others. And this fact leads straightforwardly to the question I want to consider, namely, whether this kind of what I shall call economic motivation is compatible with moral motivation.1 In Smith, our question can be seen as leading to what is sometimes called the "Adam Smith problem" (which on another occasion I should want to argue is a pseudo-problem). The Theory of Moral Sentiments gives an account of moral motivation in which sympathy and/or benevolence plays an integral role, whereas in The Wealth of Nations self-love is very much to the fore. No remark in Smith is better-known than his statement of this latter position: R. G. Frey is at the Department of Philosophy, Bowling Green State University, 305 Shatzel Hall, Bowling Green OH 43403-0222 USA. e-mail: [email protected] 276 R. G. Frey It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.2 Now it has sometimes been suggested that the way to solve this problem is to keep economics and ethics separate, to try to confine economic activity to a domain about which, in essence, we do not ask ethical questions. But to most of us this clearly will not do; the whole point is that we do want to ask ethical questions about economic activity. That is, in pursuing their trades, it must be possible for the butcher, brewer, and baker to be acting morally; otherwise, commerce and virtue will be incompatible, and in enjoining us to take up and to pursue the former vigorously Hume and Smith would be advocating immorality. Again, neither writer gives any evidence of taking himself to be advocating any such thing. It must be possible, then, for motivation by selflove to be moral, if a vibrant, prosperous nation is to result from and to propagate further commerce and trade. If the cost of morality is penury and a life of dreadful unhappiness, then while such a life may recommend itself to one consumed with the monkish virtues, it is far from clear that it would recommend itself to the rest of us. I am interested here in Hume and in one possible way of construing his remarks on self-love in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.3 But first a few words on Mandeville are necessary, since it is he who sets the terms of the debate over the compatibility of moral and economic motivation. In The Fable of the Bees,4 Mandeville praises vice (or the pursuit of selfinterest ) in the cause of national prosperity and castigates virtue as threatening to undermine prosperity. Employing an egoistic account of man's passions and motivation, he argues that individual pursuit of self-interest or vice produces public benefits. Pride, avarice, and the pursuit of enjoyment, luxury, and the fine things of life create economic activity, jobs, and economic and social opportunities, and these in turn benefit society. His point is that growth of (i) mutually beneficial economic activity, (ii) increases in general... (shrink)

Invisible Hand accounts of the operations of the competitive market are often thought to have two implications for morality as it confronts economic life. First, explanations of agents economic activities eschew constitutive appeal to moral notions; and second, such moralism is pernicious insofar as it tends to undermine the operations of a socially valuable social process. This is the Mandevillean Conceit. The Conceit rests on an avarice-only reading of the profit-motive that is mistaken. The avarice-only reading is not (...) the only way of characterising the profit-motive, and there are some positive grounds for thinking the benefits of profit pursuit are better attributed to the "lucrephile", and not the avarice-only "lucrepath". (shrink)

Gold and iron are good To buy iron and gold; All earth’s fleece and food For their like are sold. Boded Merlin wise, Proved Napoleon great, Nor kind nor coinage buys Aught above its rate. Fear, Craft, and Avarice Cannot rear a State. Out of dust to build What is more than dust, Walls Amphion piled Phoebus stablish must. When the Muses nine With the Virtues meet, Find to their design An Atlantic seat, By green orchard boughs Fended from (...) the heat, Where the statesman ploughs Furrow for the wheat; When the Church is social worth, When the state house is the hearth, Then the perfect State is come, The republican at home. (shrink)

When I was eleven, my form teacher, Mr Howard, showed some of my class how to punch. We were waiting for the rest of the class to finish changing after gym, and he took a stance that I would now call shizentai yoi and snapped his right fist forward into a head-level straight punch, pulling his left back to his side at the same time. Then he punched with his left, pulling back on his right. We all lined up in (...) our ties and sensible shoes (this was England) and copied him—left, right, left, right—and afterwards he told us that if we practised in the air with sufficient devotion for three years, then we would be able to use our punches to kill a bull with one blow. I worshipped Mr Howard (though I would sooner have died than told him that) and so, as a skinny, eleven-year-old girl, I came to believe that if I practised, I would be able to kill a bull with one blow by the time I was fourteen. This essay is about epistemic viciousness in the martial arts, and this story is illustrates just that. Though the word ‘viciousness’ normally suggests deliberate cruelty and violence, I will be using it here with the more old-fashioned meaning, possessing of vices. Vices (such as avarice, alcoholism and nail-biting) are common, and most of us struggle with a few, but ‘epistemic’ means ‘having to do with knowledge and the justification of belief’ and so epistemic viciousness is the possession of vices that make one bad at acquiring true beliefs, or give one a tendency to form false ones. My eleven-year-old self possessed the epistemic vice of gullibility and hence showed a streak of epistemic viciousness, which led to the formation of a false belief. Other kinds of epistemic vice can lead to us failing to form true beliefs when we ought to. Consider the internet-surfing karate-sensei who stumbles upon an article claiming that chocolate milk is better than water or sports drinks for promoting recovery after strenuous exercise, and describing an experiment using stationary bikes performed at the University of Indiana, purporting to support this claim.. (shrink)

A horseshoe is regarded as a lucky, perhaps even romantic, symbol of our industrial heritage. Why is it, then, that much of English literature, from Mandeville's ‘Grumbling Hive’ on, portrays business in a murky light? The paper begins with an analysis of this phenomenon and concludes that it is the institutionalisation and legitimisation of avarice and its consequential effects that gives rise to such a portrayal. A horseshoe has also been used as a convenient means of conceptualising an answer (...) to the questions this conclusion raises: ‘Who should control the corporation and for what ends?’ (Mintzberg 1985) and discussing recent developments in corporate social responsibility. Drawing on research evidence the paper demonstrates how corporations are simultaneously under pressure from society and responding to its concerns. The paper concludes that these current developments can at best ameliorate the situation, and that what is necessary is to rediscover the notion of corporate virtue, instead of putting virtue at the service of vice. (shrink)

In the world according to Hume, people are complicated creatures, with convoluted, often contradictory characters. Consider, for example, Hume's controversial assessment of Charles I: "The character of this prince, as that of most men, if not of all men, was mixed .... To consider him in the most favourable light, it may be affirmed, that his dignity was free from pride, his humanity from weakness, his bravery from rashness, his temperance from austerity, his frugality from avarice .... To speak (...) the most harshly of him, we may affirm, that many of his good qualities were attended with some latent frailty, which, though seemingly inconsiderable, was able, when seconded by the extreme malevolence of his fortune, to disappoint them of all their influence: His beneficent disposition was clouded by a manner not very gracious; his virtue was tinctured with superstition; his good sense was disfigured by a deference to persons of a capacity inferior to his own; and his moderate temper exempted him not from hasty and precipitate resolutions." This sketch shows Charles in all his complexities, with his virtues, near virtues, and contradicting virtues. I have quoted it at length because it is hard to summarize without losing the subtleties that lie within it. Hume's moral theory is based fundamentally on judgments of character, 2 so those subtleties are important to his view. The character sketches that pervade the.. (shrink)

Aristote estime qu’une vie consacrée à gagner de l’argent ne mérite pas d’être vécue, dans la mesure où elle est sujette à des contraintes et fondée sur une conception pervertie de la richesse. Cependant, il assigne à l’argent une valeur instrumentale en tant qu’il est indispensable au bonheur, et il reconnaît qu’il y a des tendances naturelles à la richesse en tout agent. Cet article se propose de clarifier les thèses d’Aristote concernant la fonction de la richesse dans son rapport (...) à une vie bonne, concernant ce qui garantit l’usage correct des biens et comment il est possible de promouvoir la pratique de la chrématistique naturelle face à l’extension des formes perverties de recherche du profit. L’article entend ensuite montrer quelles vertus sont liées à la richesse – générosité, magnificence et justice ou équité – et comment elles se rattachent aux vices opposés – c’est-à-dire : prodigalité et avarice, tendance dépensière et pingrerie, et injustice ou inéquité. L’intention de cette étude est d’expliquer pourquoi l’enquête aristotélicienne sur les bonnes et mauvaises habitudes liées à l’usage de la richesse est complémentaire de l’enquête sur la genèse des phénomènes économiques, et pourquoi elle vise à garantir dans la pratique une chrématistique parfaitement intégrée à l’éthique et à la politique. (shrink)

Antti Kauppinen Les philosophes se sont efforcés de montrer que nous devons être vertueux pour être heureux. Mais tant que nous nous en tenons à la compréhension moderne du bonheur comme quelque chose de vécu par un sujet – et je soutiens contre les eudaimonistes contemporains que nous devrions effectivement le faire – il peut au mieux exister un lien de causalité contingent entre la vertu et le bonheur. Néanmoins, nous avons de bonnes raisons de penser qu’être vertueux est non (...) accidentellement propice au bonheur. Pourquoi? Premièrement, le bonheur est, sommairement, la condition expérientielle de jouir d’états phénoménaux affectifs principalement positifs concernant des choses qui sont subjectivement importantes pour nous. Je soutiens que ce sentimentalisme à propos du bonheur a plusieurs avantages par rapport à la conception de Daniel Haybron comme état émotionnel. Deuxièmement, dans la mesure où nous sommes vertueux, nous pouvons identifier correctement ce qui vaut la peine d’être fait dans notre situation particulière et nous la poursuivrons habilement. En même temps, nous ne sommes pas dérangés par des choses qui ne valent pas la peine d’être prises en charge ou de s’inquiéter. Par conséquent, les personnes vertueuses sont susceptibles de profiter d’émotions positives centrales liées au succès et à l’approbation des autres, et d’éviter les émotions négatives communes liées à la comparaison sociale ou à l’avarice. Bien que leur bonheur soit encore en partie une question de chance, il l’est dans une moindre mesure que pour le reste d’entre nous. (shrink)

The twentieth century in Africa, more than elsewhere in the world, has been an era of startling and unprecedented changes. These changes have been most dramatic with respect to the sociopolitical organization of the continent. While at the beginning of the century, most of Africa, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, had hardly emerged from prefeudal or feudal social formations, the advent of European colonialists, whose avarice for conquest and colonial territories was fueled by the blossoming technological capabilities of the Industrial Revolution (...) and the expansionist market demand of a new and burgeoning capitalist economy in Europe, transformed the face of Africa forever. (shrink)

I bring you greetings from the United States, where its citizens have been closely following the events of the past three weeks. There has been a great change in the feelings of common American people towards the Russian people. Many have expressed their sense of identity and solidarity with the people of Moscow and St. Petersburg as they witnessed the resistance for the attempted coup. Americans have enormous respect for constitutional government as well as for democracy, and they saw the (...) coup as unconstitutional from the start. A major factor was the television news service. The major American broadcast networks  NBCD, CBS, ABC  and the cable networks, especially CNN  provided often live coverage throughout the days and nights of events in the streets and squares of Moscow, and later in the halls of the Soviet and Russian Parliaments. We witnessed press conferences, from one with the committee of 8 to one 3 nights ago in which Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev spoke with the American people. We made our individual judgments about events, often listening to debates between experts and scholars on Soviet affairs  some Russian, some Ukrainian, some from the Baltic states  and we spoke frequently and freely with one another  even some of discussions with our friends were televised. We experienced fear and dread as it seemed great military forces were being brought to bear on your White House. We wept with grief and rage as the deaths of Russians confronting tanks were reported. We cheered to see Russian women scolding soldiers in the streets. In the aftermath, there has been much discussion of Russia’s needs and how Americans might help. In that curious mixture of avarice and beneficence that is the way of American business, discussions were held on starting a restaurant, and import service, on how to use rubles to pay for local expenses and hard currency for profit-taking. (shrink)

The present article argues for the non-authenticity of l. 38 in the first Horatian Epistle. Together with the allusions to avarice and pride at ll. 33 and 36, it contains a reference to the cardinal sins, a concept that did not yet exist at the time of Horace. In particular, the sins listed in the line at issue appear to coincide with those discussed by Gregory the Great in his Moralia in Iob (31.45) and eventually adopted by medieval thought. (...) The metrical pattern and a check of the main medieval commentaries support the suspected spuriousness of the line. (shrink)

The New Testament inherits its attitude toward idolatry from the Old Testament and early Judaism. In all three, idolatry is the primal sin and is connected with sexual immorality and avarice. Both Jesus, in his response to the question about tribute, and Paul,* in his treatment of food sacrificed to idols, reflect the conflict between revulsion against idolatry and the need to survive in an idolatrous world. Moreover, Paul and the Johannine literature respond to the Jewish charge that Christianity (...) itself is idolatrous. Appropriation of New Testament attitudes toward idolatry for our own pluralistic society is complicated by their variety and their apparent caricature of pagan religion. (shrink)

This book explores the under-researched sources of the consumerist culture and the environmental damage it has brought about. The book is an outcome of the symposium on “The Ethics of Consumption” organised and hosted by the Las Casas Institute at the Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford as part of its Economics as a Moral Science Programme. It takes on two contemporary problems: the human weakness and capacity for wrong-doing, and the failure of modern economic theory to account for the moral (...) character of human behaviour and its implicit encouragement of gluttonous life-styles. In a time when grand political schemes are proposed to revive sustainability of global economy, the authors of the papers collected in this book highlight the need for moral renewal without which the most revolutionary structural reforms are bound to fail at producing the desired outcome. Topics of the book include the meaning and sources of avarice, the attempt to define what is enough, exploration of philosophical and theological perspectives which can serve as building blocks for the ethics of consumption. This makes the book of great interest to a broad readership of economists, social scientists and philosophers. (shrink)

Invisible Hand accounts of the operations of the competitive market are often thought to have two implications for morality as it confronts economic life. First, explanantions of agents economic activities eschew constitutive appeal to moral notions; and second, such moralism is pernicious insofar as it tends to undermine the operations of a socially valuable social process. This is the Mandevillean Conceit. The Conceit rests on an avarice-only reading of the profit-motive that is mistaken. The avarice-only reading is not (...) the only way of characterising the profit-motive, and there are some positive grounds for thinking the benefits of profit pursuit are better attributed to the “lucrephile”, and not the avarice-only “lucrepath”. (shrink)

The polarization of the individual and the community that underlies much of the debate between individualists and communitarians is made possible in part by the literal vanishingof civil society—the domain whose middling terms mediate the stark opposition of state and private sectors and offer women and men a space for activity that is both voluntary and public. Modern democratic ideology and the reality of our political practices sometimesseem to yield only a choice between elephantine and paternalistic government or a radically (...) solipsistic and nearly anarchic private market sector—overnment gargantuanism or private greed. Americans do not much like either one. President Clinton's callfor national service draws us out of our selfishness without kindling any affection for government. Private markets service our avarice without causing us to like ourselves. The question of how America's decentralized and multi-vocal public can secure a coherentvoice in debates over public policy under the conditions precipitated by so hollow and disjunctive a dichotomy is perhaps the most important issue facing both the political theory and social science of democracy and the practice of democratic politics in America today. Two recent stories out of Washington suggest just how grave the situation has become. Health-care reform failed in a paroxysm of mutual recrimination highlighted by the successful campaign of the private sector against a presidential program that seemed to be widely misunderstood. The public at large simply went missing in the debates. (shrink)

Helen's self-disparagement is an anomaly in epic diction, and this is especially true of those instances where she refers to herself as "dog" and "dog-face." This essay attempts to show that Helen's dog-language, in that it remains in conflict with other features of her characterization, has some generic significance for epic, helping to establish the superiority of epic performance over competing performance types which treated her differently. The metaphoric use of χύων and its derivatives has not been well understood: the (...) scholiast's gloss "shameless" is no more than a functional equivalent, and interpretations linking it primarily with reckless courage or with sexual misconduct are not well founded. An analysis of contexts suggests that "dog" as an insult has a fundamental association with physical greed and even cannibalism. The implied notion of avarice, however, may also be extended into other behavioral spheres, including those of fighting and sexuality. A character may also be called "dog" for reviling or slandering another unjustly. These strongly negative implications are out of keeping with the character given to Helen in epic. For where tragedy and lyric generally represent Helen as blameworthy, Homeric epic tends to absolve her of blame and to make her personally as well as physically attractive. The unexpected application of dog-terms to her may therefore be read as an allusion to other versions of the Troy legend which were more hostile to Helen. Negative portrayals of Helen are likely to have figured in the ancient kitharodic narrative which was a precursor of both tragedy and lyric; these are perhaps the unfriendly "songs" mentioned by Helen at Il. 6.357. By referring to such defamatory narratives through the dog-insult and through other instances of Helen's self-blame, the epic performer marks his own more favorable treatment as a generic preference. (shrink)

The nature of the soul is attribute-less and boundless. To experience its true potential, the dimensionless soul manifests itself in the physical dimension as a body. Materialism originates with the creation of the body as it grows around the soul and in the process of forming, enchants the soul with its materialistic conducts. The soul has the ability to materialize and dematerialize into bodily forms as per will, but such an entropic amendment may change the true essence of bodily life. (...) The avarice for materialistic needs mutilates the body physically and mentally, and unshackles the soul; for as we grow in our materialistic conducts, the body and its senses endure this burden, gradually progressing towards a lesser body and more soul. (shrink)

Traditionally studied as a window onto Arab-Muslim social reality, the medieval Arabic underworld slang found in Kitāb al­-Bukhalāʾ by al-Jāḥiẓ and indeed al­-Bukhalāʾ as a whole serve a number of functions and meanings at once, not just historical documentation. Such multiplicity has implications for translation, which should strive to convey the work’s sociolinguistic and textual heterogeneity. With this ideal in mind, this article compares two English versions of the Arabic slang: R. B. Serjeant’s The Book of Misers and Jim Colville’s (...) Avarice and the Avaricious. Serjeant uses transliteration, explicitation, and footnotes to create a “thick translation” that exposes the rich sociolinguistic and textual range. In somewhat of a contrast, Colville employs English colloquialisms and Scots canting slang to produce what might arguably be called “dynamic equivalence,” which stages a natural English reading experience. The comparison raises further questions about the relationship between a translation’s effects and the translator’s intent, as well as between translation and a second process to which it is sometimes compared, namely, reading. (shrink)

There is widespread agreement among large segments of western society that we are living in a period of hard times. At first glance such a belief might seem exceedingly odd. After all, persons in western society find themselves living in a time of unprecedented material abundance. Hunger and disease, evils all too familiar to the members of earlier generations, although far from eradicated from modern life, are plainly on the wane. Persons alive today can look forward to healthier, longer, and (...) more comfortable lives than those of their grand parents. Nevertheless, the feeling that life today is especially difficult is rampant in government, in the media, in popular books, and in academic circles. Western society is perceived in many quarters as wracked by crises of all sorts-of faith, of power, of authority, of social turmoil, of declining quality in workmanship and products, and of a general intellectual malaise afflicting both those on the Left and the Right. A tone of crisis permeates the language of public life. Editorials in major newspapers are full of dire warnings about the dangers of unbridled egoism, avarice and greed, and the risks and horrors of pollution, overpopulation, the arms race, crime, and indulgent lifestyles. (shrink)

A delightfully straightforward and lyrical retelling of the ancient Indian epic of loyalty, betrayal, redemption, and insight into the true nature of life -- one of history's most sacred ethical works, rendered with completeness and sterling accuracy for the modern reader. Here is one of the world's most hallowed works of sacred literature, the grand, sweeping epic of the divine bowman and warrior Rama and his struggles with evil, power, duplicity, and avarice. The Ramayana is one of the foundations (...) of world literature and one of humanity's most ancient and treasured ethical and spiritual works. 'This new version is so simply and beautifully written -- it will stir the soul!' --David Lynch. (shrink)

Humans are caught – in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too – in a net of good and evil. Natural evils are simply natural catastrophes that destroy human life, property, crops, and means of livelihood such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, avalanches, floods, and droughts. Some people may never recover from such evils and be incapable of leading a normal human life. The evil (...) of evil‐doers can therefore be explained away by showing that they themselves are victims. The existence of human evil is explained by reference to the wickedness of those who choose of their own will to do evil. The idea that evil is privative, that is, it consists in the absence of good, stripped of its theological trappings, is unconvincing. (shrink)