No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 February 2019
The renewed interest in virtue ethics raises again a persistent question, namely, the relationship between the virtue ethics theory and liberalism as a political philosophy. Virtue ethicists focus on the good—i.e., human flourishing—and debate what constitutes that good. This focus creates a problem for liberals who are rights-oriented, which is the dominant form of contemporary liberalism.
The recent and timely book by Menachem Mautner, Human Flourishing, Liberal Theory, and the Arts, reminds us, however, that liberalism comes in many stripes. There is no one liberalism. Rather, there are many liberalisms. I discuss three aspects of Mautner’s remarkable and important book: first, his conception of human flourishing and its relationship to liberalism; second, his argument that a liberal political order committed to human flourishing ought to promote the arts; and third, his argument that the liberalism of flourishing is better able than neutralist liberalism to compete with religion in providing what Mautner calls “Big Meaning.”
1. See infra note 3.
2. Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, revised ed, edited and translated by Crisp, Roger (Cambridge University Press, 2014).Google Scholar
3. See, e.g., Nussbaum, Martha, “Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach” in Nussbaum, Martha C & Sen, Amartya, eds, The Quality of Life (Oxford University Press, 1993) 242; Michael Slote, From Morality to Virtue (Oxford University Press, 1995); Julia Annas, Intelligent Virtue (Oxford University Press, 2011); Christine Swanton, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View (Oxford University Press, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4. See Kymlicka, Will, Liberalism, Community and Culture (Clarendon Press, 1991) at 21. Kymlicka goes on to provide a trenchant criticism of the commonplace notion that there exists a clean distinction between the right and the good.Google Scholar
5. See, e,g., Dworkin, Ronald, Taking Rights Seriously (Harvard University Press, 1978).Google Scholar
6. * Mautner, Menachem, Human Flourishing, Liberal Theory, and the Arts (Routledge, 2018).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7. Ibid at 10.
8. See ibid at 1-3.
9. See ibid at 1.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. See Copp, David, “Introduction: Metaethics and Normative Ethics” in Copp, David, ed, The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory (Oxford University Press, 2006) 3 at 22.Google Scholar
13. See Hurka, Thomas, Perfectionism (Oxford University Press, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14. Ibid.
15. See, e.g., Nussbaum, Martha C, Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (Belknap Press, 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16. See e.g Sen, Amartya, Commodities and Capabilities (Oxford University Press, 1999).Google Scholar
17. Alexander, Gregory S, Property and Human Flourishing (Oxford University Press, 2018).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18. See Mautner, supra note 6 at 17-25.
19. See ibid at 40-41.
20. See ibid at 61.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid at 87.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid at 91.
25. Ibid at 93, citing Zolberg, Vera L, Constructing A Sociology of the Arts (Cambridge University Press, 1990) at 24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
26. See ibid at 94.
27. Ibid at 102.
28. Ibid at 103.
29. See Bruford, WH, The German Tradition of Self-Cultivation: ‘Bildung’ from Humboldt to Thomas Mann (Cambridge University Press, 1975).Google Scholar
30. See Mautner, supra note 6 at 94-96.
31. Ibid at 112.
32. See ibid at 112-13.
33. See ibid at 116.
34. See ibid at 117.
35. See ibid at 125.
36. Ibid at 126 [emphasis in original].
37. See Kenworthy, Bill, “Public Funding of Controversial Art” (June 2006), Freedom Forum Institute, online: https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/first-amendment-center/topics/freedom-of-speech-2/arts-first-amendment-overview/public-funding-of-controversial-art/.Google Scholar
38. See ibid.
39. See Mautner, supra note 6 at 127-32.
40. See Frasz, Alexis & Sidford, Holly, “How Are Private Funders Responding to Cuts in Public Funding?” (2011) 22:3 Grantmakers in the Arts Reader 4, online: https://www.giarts.org/article/how-are-private-funders-responding-cuts-public-funding.Google Scholar
41. See ibid.
42. See Okrent, Daniel, Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center (Viking Press, 2003) at 310-13.Google Scholar
43. See Furness, Hannah, “Secret of Winston Churchill’s Unpopular Sutherland Portrait Revealed”, The Telegraph (10 July 2015).Google Scholar
44. See Joseph, L Sax, Playing Darts with a Rembrandt: Public and Private Rights in Cultural Treasures (University of Michigan Press, 2001).Google Scholar
45. See ibid at 36-42.
46. Ibid at 35.
47. Ibid at 41.
48. See Jacob Strahilevitz, Lior “The Right to Destroy” (2005) 114 4 Yale LJ 781 at 838Google Scholar
49. Ibid.
50. See Mautner, supra note 6 at 10.
51. See ibid.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid at 155.
56. Ibid.
57. Eberle, Matthias, World War I and the Weimar Artists: Dix, Grosz, Beckmann, Schlemmer (Yale University Press, 1985) at 38.Google Scholar
58. “Mark Rothko No. 5/No. 22 1950”, MoMA, online: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80566.
59. Kierkegaard, Søren, Either/Or, Part II, edited and translated by Hong, Howard V & Hong, Edna H (Princeton University Press, 1987) at 179.Google Scholar
60. See Nagel, Thomas, The View from Nowhere (Oxford University Press,1986).Google Scholar
61. See ibid.
62. See Neil, Alex, “Art and Emotion” in Jerrold Levinson, ed, The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics (Oxford University Press, 2003) 421.Google Scholar
63. See Mautner, supra note 6 at 11: “[T]he liberalism of flourishing does not, and cannot, have at its disposal a coherent system of big meaning to be provided to the citizens of the liberal state.”
64. Ibid at 167.
65. Ibid.