Character
Challenges
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, questions have been raised about whether there is such a thing as character at all. The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) charged that to explain a person's (one's own or someone else's) action in terms of his or her character is to assimilate the action to an event in the natural world (for which the character is an ad hoc explanation), denying the person's freedom and refusing the rational understanding that human action demands. In a separate development, a research tradition in experimental social psychology, "situationism," holds that people's behavior is not distinctive or consistent across a range of situations. These criticisms may apply more to the conception of character as revealed in signs than to the conception put forth in philosophical ethics.
See also Aristotelianism; Good; Kantianism; Moral Sense; Person, Idea of the; Utilitarianism; Virtue Ethics.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Christopher Rowe. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Bentham, Jeremy. The Principles of Morals and Legislation. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1988.
Boyce, Benjamin. The Theophrastan Character in England to 1642. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947.
Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon; New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Kant, Immanuel. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Translated by Mary J. Gregor. The Hague, Netherlands: M. Nijhoff, 1974.
——. Practical Philosophy. Translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Includes Metaphysics of Morals and Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals.
Klibansky, Raymond, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl. Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, and Art. New York: Basic Books, 1964.
Liddell, Henry George, and Robert Scott, comps. Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon; New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Mill, John Stuart. Essays on Politics and Culture. Edited by Gertrude Himmelfarb. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962.
——. Utilitarianism. Edited by George Sher. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1979.
Railton, Peter. "How Thinking about Character and Utilitarianism Might Lead to Rethinking the Character of Utilitarianism." Midwest Studies in Philosophy 13 (1988): 398–416.
Ross, Lee, and Richard E. Nisbett. The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Anti-Semite and Jew. Translated by George J. Becker. New York: Schocken, 1948.
Theophrastus. The Characters of Theophrastus: An English Translation from a Revised Text. Translated by J. E. Sandys. London: Macmillan, 1909.
Rachana Kamtekar
Additional topics
Science EncyclopediaScience & Philosophy: Categorical judgement to ChimaeraCharacter - Aristotle And Virtue Ethics, Kantian Ethics, Utilitarianism, Challenges, Bibliography