Full Description
What is a good human life? A life of duty? Virtue? Happiness? This book weaves a path through traditional answers. We live well, suggests the author, not primarily by pursuing goods for ourselves, but by cherishing other people and guiding them towards lives of cherishing. We cherish objects too - the planet, my grandfather's watch - and practices like music-making to which we are personally drawn. In this work of 'populated philosophy' (copiously illustrated by literary and 'real life' examples), a cherishing life is presented as hard and irreducibly individual. The idea of cherishing, says the author, points towards intimate, unreasonable layers of the ethical life, as well as the deepening of wisdom and connection. It also points towards incomparable satisfactions, reminding us who we are and who we want to be.
Contents
Series Editor's Foreword
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I: We Need to Talk About Children
1. 1. A Sense of Moral Crisis
2. 2. Ministering to the Good
Part II: Enhancing Children
3. 3. Should We Try to Make Children Happy?
4. 4. Should We Equip Children for Twenty-First-Century Life?
5. 5. Should we Promote Flourishing through Virtue?
6. 6. Should we Foster Respect through Inclusion?
Part III: Cherishing Children
7. 7. Humanness and the Difficulty of Reality
8. 8. Aristotle and the Transformation of Emotion
9. 9. An Ethic of Cherishing
Bibliography
Index
