The Philosophy of Manners: A Study of the Little Virtues

by Peter Johnson

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This work makes a case for manners as a subject for investigation by modern moral philosophy. The author examines manners as "little virtues", explaining their distinctive conceptual characteristics and charting their intricate detail and relationships with each other. In demonstrating why manners are important to our mutual expectations, Peter Johnson reveals a terrain which modern moral philosophy has left largely unmapped. Through a critical examination of the ethics of John Rawls and Alasdair MacIntyre, Johnson shows how the nature of manners constitutes a philosophical problem both for liberalism and its critics. Taking the recent revival of virture ethics as its broad starting point, the book discusses the "little virtues" as they are treated in Aristotelian and Kantian traditions of writing on ethics. Features of the book include discussions of nameless virtues, the logical intricacy of the "little virtues" which compose manners, and the nature of their orchestration by the more substantial virtues and moral concerns. The aim throughout is to give manners a philosophically defensible place in the moral life - a place which neither inflates nor understates their importance.
  • ISBN10 1855066149
  • ISBN13 9781855066144
  • Publish Date 15 May 1999
  • Publish Status Out of Print
  • Out of Print 30 June 2005
  • Publish Country GB
  • Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
  • Imprint Thoemmes Continuum
  • Format Hardcover
  • Pages 240
  • Language English