Overview

This open access volume provides an in-depth analysis of philosophical discussions concerning the common good and its relation to self-interest in the history of Western philosophy. The thirteen chapters explore both renowned and lesser-known thinkers from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, covering also the relevant ancient background. By bridging the gap between the medieval and early modern periods, they provide fresh insights into how moral and political philosophers understood the concepts of the common good and self-interest, along with their ethical and political implications. The concept of the common good occupies a central role in philosophical reflections on the public and private dimensions of moral and social life in contemporary debates. By exploring the rich and diverse ways in which the relationship between the common good and self-interest has been understood, this volume has the potential to contribute to our ongoing efforts to critically discern the possibilities and limitations of these concepts in the present. Thus, the volume will be useful for scholars interested in the multi-layered role of the notion of the common good both in the history of philosophy and in contemporary moral and political philosophy.

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9783031553035

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Heikki Haara, is University Lecturer in Political history at the University of Helsinki. His primary research interest has been theories of human nature and their relationship to moral and political thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He has been a visiting researcher at the universities of California, Berkeley and Oxford and Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. He is the author of Pufendorf’s Theory of Sociability: Passions, Habits and Social Order (Springer, 2018) and the editor of Rights at the Margins: Historical, Philosophical and Legal Perspectives (Brill, 2020) and Passions, Politics and the Limits of Society (de Gruyter, 2020).   Juhana Toivanen is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He has published widely on medieval philosophical psychology, medieval conceptions of animals, and political philosophy. His major publications include the monographs Perception and the Internal Senses (Brill, 2013) and The Political Animal in Medieval Philosophy (Brill, 2021). In addition, he has published more than fifty journal articles and book chapters. Currently he is working on social and political dimensions of moral vices in late medieval philosophy, focusing mainly on commentaries on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics from ca. 1250–1600.

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