Synopses & Reviews
How can we motivate ourselves to do what we think we ought? How can we deliberate about personal values and priorities? Bennett Helm rejects the standard philosophical answers to these questions, which presuppose a sharp distinction between cognition and impulse, and develops a detailed alternative theory both of emotions, desires, and evaluative judgments and of their rational interconnections. The result is an innovative theory of practical rationality and how we can control not only what we do but also what we value and who we are as persons.
Review
"This book is a significant contribution to some of the most central debates in moral psychology and represents an important advance in the articulation of a broadly McDowellian approach to them." Ethics
Synopsis
This book proposes a new and innovative theory of emotions, desires, and evaluative judgements.
Synopsis
In this book Bennett Helm proposes a new and innovative theory of emotions, desires, and evaluative judgements and of their rational interconnections. The result is a new vision of what it is to be a responsible agent.
About the Author
Bennett Helm is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Franklin and Marshall College.
Table of Contents
1. Two problems of practical reason; Part I. Felt Evaluations: 2. Emotions and the cognitive-conative divide; 3. Constituting import; 4. Import: cares, values and preferences; Part II. Practical Reason: 5. Single evaluation perspective; 6. Rational control: freedom of the will and the heart; 7. Deliberation about value; 8. Persons, friendship and moral value.