Montaigne and the Ethics of Compassion

“The implications of this argument for its chosen territories – Montaigne studies and the study of ethics – could hardly be deeper, and in my view Gauna pursues his arguments with a breadth of reference and erudition, and yet with a freshness of approach, which will find a response among a wide range of readers. The professional philosophers will surely see in it a new and original contribution to their discipline, drawing from a writer they have probably over-looked hitherto. Readers of Montaigne will meanwhile find a whole new background against which to project such stock notions as his political conservatism, his intellectual uncertainty and his moral relativism.” – John Parkin

Table of Contents (main headings)
Preface
Introduction: Montaigne and Ethical Progress
1. What We Are: Ethics and Psychology; Reason, the Divine Faculty; the Place of Reason in the Psychology of Montaigne; Memory and Imagination; Will; Identity; Forme, key conclusions
2. Principles: Pain – the Pivot Point; Empathy – the Ethical Cement; Objectivity; the Nature of the Good – Eudaimonism, Ethical Motivation, and the TK Principle; Intellectual Honesty; Elements of Conscience
3. Consequences: -Torture; Animals; Treachery; Justice; Coercion of Belief; Education and the Formation of Conscience; Friendship; Marriage; Men and Women, Love and Sex; Primitivism; Equality, Republicanism, Democracy; Death, Secularity and the Spiritualization of Life
4. Montaigne’s Ethics Now: Hume’s Law and Contemporary Ethical Debate; Montaigne Revisited – Hume’s Law; Virtue Ethics, Emotion, and the Rehabilitation of the Self
Bibliography; Index