Will as Commitment and Resolve: An Existential Account of Creativity, Love, Virtue, and Happiness
Will as Commitment and Resolve: An Existential Account of Creativity, Love, Virtue, and Happiness
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Abstract
In contemporary philosophy, the will is often regarded as a sheer philosophical fiction. In this book, the author argues not only that the will is the central power of human agency that makes decisions and forms intentions, but also that it includes the capacity to generate new motivation different in structure from prepurposive desires. The concept of “projective motivation” is the central innovation in the existential account of the everyday notion of striving will. Beginning with the contrast between “eastern” and “western” attitudes toward assertive willing, the author traces the lineage of the idea of projective motivation from NeoPlatonic and Christian conceptions of divine motivation to Scotus, Kant, Marx, Arendt, and Levinas. Rich with historical detail, this book includes an extended examination of Platonic and Aristotelian eudaimonist theories of human motivation. Drawing on contemporary critiques of egoism, it argues that happiness is primarily a byproduct of activities and pursuits aimed at other agent-transcending goods for their own sake. In particular, the motives in virtues and in the practices as defined by Alasdair MacIntyre are projective rather than eudaimonist. This theory is supported by analyses of radical evil, accounts of intrinsic motivation in existential psychology, and contemporary theories of identity-forming commitment in analytic moral psychology. Following Viktor Frankl, Joseph Raz, and others, the book argues that Harry Frankfurt's conception of caring requires objective values worth caring about, which serve as rational grounds for projecting new final ends. The argument concludes with a taxonomy of values or goods, devotion to which can make life meaningful for us.
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Front Matter
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I The Idea of Willing as Projective Motivation
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II The Existential Critique of Eudaimonism
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III Case Studies for the Existential Will as Projective Motivation
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9
Divine and Human Creativity: From Plato to Levinas
John Davenport
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10
Radical Evil and Projective Strength of Will
John Davenport
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11
Scotus and Kant: The Moral Will and Its Limits
John Davenport
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12
Existential Psychology and Intrinsic Motivation: Deci, Maslow, and Frankl
John Davenport
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13
Caring, Aretaic Commitment, and Existential Resolve
John Davenport
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An Existential Objectivist Account of What Is Worth Caring About
John Davenport
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Conclusion: The Danger of Willfulness Revisited
John Davenport
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9
Divine and Human Creativity: From Plato to Levinas
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End Matter
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