Background
Blum, Lawrence Alan was born on April 16, 1943 in Baltimore.
(Most contemporary moral philosophy is concerned with issu...)
Most contemporary moral philosophy is concerned with issues of rationality, universality, impartiality, and principle. By contrast Lawrence Blum is concerned with the psychology of moral agency. The essays in this collection examine the moral import of emotion, motivation, judgment, perception, and group identifications, and explore how all these psychic capacities contribute to a morally good life.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521436192/?tag=2022091-20
( Friendship, Altruism, and Morality, originally publishe...)
Friendship, Altruism, and Morality, originally published in 1980, gives an account of "altruistic emotions" (compassion, sympathy, concern) and friendship that brings out their moral value. Blum argues that moral theories centered on rationality, universal principle, obligation, and impersonality cannot capture this moral importance. This was one of the first books in contemporary moral philosophy to emphasize the moral significance of emotions, to deal with friendship as a moral phenomenon, and to challenge the rationalism of standard interpretations of Kant, although Blum’s "sentimentalism" owes more to Schopenhauer than to Hume. It was a forerunner to care ethics, and feminist ethics more generally; to virtue ethics; and to subsequent influential interpretations of Kant that attempted to room for altruistic emotion and friendship, and other forms of particularism and partialism. In addition, the work has been widely influential in religious studies, political theory, bioethics, and feminist ethics.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415572924/?tag=2022091-20
Blum, Lawrence Alan was born on April 16, 1943 in Baltimore.
Bachelor, Princeton University, 1964; Doctor of Philosophy, Harvard University, 1974.
Professor philosophy, U. Massachusetts, Boston, since 1973; visiting associate professor philosophy, University of California at Los Angeles, 1984; visiting professor education, Stanford (California) U., 1990.
( Friendship, Altruism, and Morality, originally publishe...)
(Most contemporary moral philosophy is concerned with issu...)
Member American Philosophical Association, Association for Moral Education M C.
M. Judith Ellen Smith, June 22, 1975. Children: Benjamin, Sarah, Laura.