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Pagan Virtue

An Essay in Ethics

John Casey author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:31st Oct '91

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Pagan Virtue cover

Dr Casey argues that the classical virtues of courage, temperance, practical wisdom, and justice, which are largely ignored in modern moral philosophy, centrally define the good for Man. The values of success, pride, and worldliness remain alive, if insufficiently acknowledged, part of our moral thinking. The conflict between these values and our equally important Christian inheritance leads to tensions and contradictions in our understanding of the moral life.

`This is a delightful book: learned, without being dense; lucid, but not heartless.' Angela Tilby, Church Times
`Pagan Virtue deserves some of the highest praise which can be accorded to a work of philosophy: it speaks more directly to the general reader than to the specialist philosopher.'Mark Archer, Financial Times
`His style is succinct and vigorous ... his arguments are direct, unencumbered by jargon or verbiage. The whole thing is a triumph of commonsense and lucidity.'Simon Raven, Sunday Correspondent
`Written with guile and charm ... leaves one pondering life, luck and the cosmos for several weeks afterwards.' Mark Archer, The Spectator
`By this philosophical study of the four cardinal virtues, John Casey joins the ever-expanding ranks of those moral theorists who have contributed to the contemporary theory of the virtues. But Casey's book is set apart from the others both by the exceptionally high quality of his analysis and even more by his thesis that traditional thinking on the virtues is in tension, at least, with fundamental Christian assumptions about the nature of the moral life. For both these reasons, his book deserves serious attention, especially by those scholars who argue for a special congruity between virtue theory and Christian ethics ... Casey's work raises important questions for contemporary moral theory ... His book deserves to be widely read and carefully debated.' The Thomist
`a learned book of quite remarkable fluency and freedom from technical jargon' Rev. John Kerr, Warden, Society of Ordained Scientists
`This book offers interesting ... nomenological analyses of various moral topics, illumined by well-chosen literary examples.' The Review of Metaphysics

ISBN: 9780198240037

Dimensions: 216mm x 137mm x 14mm

Weight: 309g

256 pages