This collection embodies a debate that explores what could be characterised as the tension between judging and understanding. It seems that after a particular threshold of understanding of the basic facts leading to a given moral transgression, the more we understand the context and motives leading to crime, the more likely we are to abstain from harsh retributive judgement. Martha Nussbaum's essayEquity and Mercy included in this collection, is the philosophical starting point of this debate, and Bernhard Schlink's novel The Reader - a novel exploring the tension between judging and understanding, among other things - is used as a case study by most contributors. Some contributors, situated at one end of the spectrum of views represented in this collection, argue for the wholesale elimination of our practices of retribution in the light of the tension between judging and understanding, while contributors on the other side of the spectrum argue that the tension does not actually exist. A whole array of intermediate positions, including Nussbaum's, are represented. This anthology is comprised of nearly all specially commissioned essays bringing together work dealing with the moral, metaphysical, epistemological and phenomenological issues required for properly understanding whether in fact there is a tension between judging and understanding and what the moral and legal implications may be of accepting or rejecting this tension.

This book is about happiness and about how the supremely happy life - the life blessed with what Aristotle refers to as eudaimonia - is the life of an ethical individual living in a healthy community. Much ethical literature has drawn inspiration from Aristotle's outlook, but relatively little attention has been paid to the central concept of Aristotle's ethical system - the concept of eudaimonia. This book fills this important gap, focusing on Aristotle's central ethical concept and, among other things, using Davidson's account of mind and rationality to explain central Aristotelian claims relating to the structure of the psychological domain and to our radical interconnectedness. Starting with Aristotle, Tabensky shows how the ethical domain can best be understood in relation to our fundamental desire to live happy lives. Recapturing the Greek spirit, this book is an invitation to rethink the manner in which we understand our lives and the manner in which we conduct ourselves, and it is an invitation to do so in relation to an understanding of the sorts of creatures we are - creatures living for the sake of happiness.

This collection embodies a debate that explores what could be characterised as the tension between judging and understanding. It seems that after a particular threshold of understanding of the basic facts leading to a given moral transgression, the more we understand the context and motives leading to crime, the more likely we are to abstain from harsh retributive judgement. Martha Nussbaum's essayEquity and Mercy included in this collection, is the philosophical starting point of this debate, and Bernhard Schlink's novel The Reader - a novel exploring the tension between judging and understanding, among other things - is used as a case study by most contributors. Some contributors, situated at one end of the spectrum of views represented in this collection, argue for the wholesale elimination of our practices of retribution in the light of the tension between judging and understanding, while contributors on the other side of the spectrum argue that the tension does not actually exist. A whole array of intermediate positions, including Nussbaum's, are represented. This anthology is comprised of nearly all specially commissioned essays bringing together work dealing with the moral, metaphysical, epistemological and phenomenological issues required for properly understanding whether in fact there is a tension between judging and understanding and what the moral and legal implications may be of accepting or rejecting this tension.

This book is about happiness and about how the supremely happy life - the life blessed with what Aristotle refers to as eudaimonia - is the life of an ethical individual living in a healthy community. Much ethical literature has drawn inspiration from Aristotle's outlook, but relatively little attention has been paid to the central concept of Aristotle's ethical system - the concept of eudaimonia. This book fills this important gap, focusing on Aristotle's central ethical concept and, among other things, using Davidson's account of mind and rationality to explain central Aristotelian claims relating to the structure of the psychological domain and to our radical interconnectedness. Starting with Aristotle, Tabensky shows how the ethical domain can best be understood in relation to our fundamental desire to live happy lives. Recapturing the Greek spirit, this book is an invitation to rethink the manner in which we understand our lives and the manner in which we conduct ourselves, and it is an invitation to do so in relation to an understanding of the sorts of creatures we are - creatures living for the sake of happiness.