Under the guidance of Professor Veatch, Aristotle stands forth again as the philosopher who, above all, speaks simply and directly to the common sense of all ...

This book critiques contemporary trends in ethical theory, including the deontological tradition dating back to Kant, the teleological tradition of the utilitarians, the analytic movement, and the existentialist-phenomenologist movement. In refuting these trends, Veatch argues that moral and ethical distinctions cannot be rightly or adequately understood if they are regarded simply as matters of linguistic use but are grounded in the very being and nature of things.

This modern interpretation of Aristotelian ethics is ideally suited for undergraduate philosophy courses. It is also an engaging work for the expert and the beginner alike, offering a middle ground between existential and analytic ethics. Veatch argues for the existence of ethical knowledge, and he reasons that this knowledge is grounded in human nature. Yet he contends that the moral life is not merely one of following rules or recipes, nor is human well being something simple. Rather, the moral life, (...) which Veatch calls 'rational or intelligent living', is the life of practical wisdom where individual judgement of the particular and the contingent is paramount. Veatch's Rational Man offers a pluralistic understanding of human well being without lapsing into moral relativism. For those interested in morality and liberty, Rational Man offers fertile ground for developing an account of free and responsible persons. It has profoundly influenced the work of Den Uyl, Campbell, Machan, Miller, Mack, and many others. (shrink)

“Modern ethics,” so-called, has only in the most recent years come under some very sharp and telling, not to say even devastating, criticism. And what is it that one should understand by this term, “modern ethics”? Well, it is a term used largely by very recent critics to designate that whole tradition in ethics, in part utilitarian and in part Kantian in character, that has quite dominated the study of ethics, at least in Anglo-American philosophy, for upwards of three-quarters of (...) a century and more now. (shrink)

When the very possibility of a Christian philosophy was raised in the celebrated Bréhier-Gilson debate over half-a-century ago, there could have been no mistaking the issue in the debate. On the one hand, it was asked how any philosopher could properly think of himself as a Christian philosopher, if his philosophy were to be regarded as warranted simply on his faith as a Christian. For that presumably meant that one’s philosophy was seriously compromised by its appeal to something clearly extra-philosophical—viz. (...) to divine revelation. On the other hand, and no less embarrassing, was the complementary question: How could one very well claim to be a Christian philosopher without seeming thereby seriously to compromise one’s Christian faith by falling back on philosophy as something necessary to support and justify the faith that was within one? Surely, if one’s Christianity should turn out to be something ever in need of reinforcement from philosophy, that could only mean that one’s faith as a Christian was really no genuine faith at all. (shrink)

This book is a consideration of the differences between Aristotelian and symbolic logic and the consequences these have for how we view the world. What Veatch propose is to try to exhibit with respect to several of the key logical tools and devices propositions, inductive and deductive arguments, scientific and historical explanations, definitions, etc. how these several instruments are differently conceived, both as to their natures and their functions, in each of these respective logics.

One ventures to suggest that in reading this book, any reader—particularly if the reader is something of an Aristotelian—will experience just such excitement and tension as he or she doubtless would have felt in witnessing Jacob wrestling with the angel! For the author does, indeed, wrestle with Aristotle—not, to be sure, with a view to throwing him for a fall, but rather with a view to bringing out the incredible strength and resourcefulness of Aristotle’s ethics.

‘Apologetics’ is hardly a word to be used without apology in the present dispensation. And to speak of anything like a neglected avenue or opportunity in religious apologetics might almost seem as if one were speaking of an opportunity in just such an enterprise as no self-respecting philosopher would nowadays wish even to be associated with. For all of their avoidance of the term, however, the thing designated by the term is something with which not a few philosophers of recent (...) years have been not above dabbling in, albeit usually under other names and other labels. After all, religious language has now come to be recognized as not just a legitimate, but even a fashionable object of philosophic attention. And a concern with religious language has often brought with it a concern with religious attitudes, religious behaviour, religious argumentation — yes, even to the point of occasionally becoming a concern with the very religious realities themselves that religious language, religious attitudes, religious behaviour, and religious argument are presumably all about. True, religious realities in this sense are to today's garden of philosophy pretty much what the tree of knowledge once was to the garden of Eden. In fact, one even suspects that there could be a serpent about somewhere, for cases have been reported of an occasional philosopher Adam or philosopher Eve having yielded to temptation: a consideration of God-talk has been known to lead to cautious admissions that such talk might be cognitively meaningful; a consideration of God-experiences to the admission that such experiences under certain circumstances could be veridical; or, even more rarely, a consideration of proofs for God's existence to the gingerly admission that at least some of these proofs might just possibly be valid. Needless to say, though, such a yielding to temptation on the part of some few contemporary philosophers, while it may not have led to any manifest sewing together of fig-leaves, has certainly brought with it the danger, if not always the reality, of a supercilious expulsion from the glorious Eden of contemporary professional philosophy. (shrink)