Ethical Habits

A Peircean Perspective

By (author) Aaron Massecar

Hardback - £78.00

Publication date:

21 April 2016

Length of book:

176 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9781498508544

Previous attempts to set up an Ethics based on the writings of Charles S. Peirce have generally begun and ended with the 1898 lecture, Philosophy and the Conduct of Life. It was in that lecture that Peirce famously argued that Theory and Practice should be kept distinct. In Ethical Habits: A Peircean Perspective, Aaron Massecar argues that this lecture opens up a uniquely Peircean Ethics that brings theory into practice through an ethics of intelligently formed habits.
In Ethical Habits: A Peircean Perspective, Aaron Massecar has taken on the worthwhile adventure of seeing how Peirce’s normative (theoretical) ethics might be put to work. He explores a wide range of Peircean texts to make his case for critical self-control in the development of human habits. The result is a persuasive story that reveals the nuances in Peirce’s thought and shows a creative dimension in establishing our moral habits and in pursuing human virtues. The Aristotelian-influenced Peirce of Massecar’s work is quite unlike the mechanical, deliberative Peirce others have promoted. Massecar’s work provides a nice opening for those who want to explore all of Peirce’s normative sciences for their everyday usefulness. And as an historical approach to the ethics of the pragmatists, this book makes a nice companion to Gregory Pappas’s John Dewey’s Ethics.