The Philosophy and Psychology of Character and Happiness

Since ancient times, character, virtue, and happiness have been central to thinking about how to live well. Yet until recently, philosophers have thought about these topics in an empirical vacuum. Taking up the general challenge of situationism – that philosophers should pay attention to empirical psychology – this interdisciplinary volume presents new essays from empirically informed perspectives by philosophers and psychologists on western as well as eastern conceptions of character, virtue, and happiness, and related issues such as personality, emotion and cognition, attitudes and automaticity. Researchers at the top of their fields offer exciting work that expands the horizons of empirically informed research on topics central to virtue ethics.

Introduction Nancy E. Snow and Franco V. Trivigno Part I: Perspectives on the Moral Psychology of Character and Virtue 1. Following Kurt Lewin Beyond the Situation and the Person C. Daniel Batson 2. The Real Challenge to Virtue Ethics from Psychology Christian Miller 3. The Geography of Thought Revisited: Reflections on Situationism and the Psychology of Asians Nancy E. Snow 4. Situational Virtues: How Contexts Affect People’s Ethics Kaiping Peng, Xiaowei Lv, and Feng Yu 5. A Morality of Doing, Not Having Darcia Narvaez and Daniel Lapsley 6. Disgust and Moral Knowledge Erik Wielenberg 7. Attitudes and Virtuous Automaticity Clea Rees and Jonathan Webber 8. Virtue and Imposition in Classical Confucianism Hagop Sarkissian 9. Seeing Confucian "Active Moral Perception" in Light of Contemporary Psychology Stephen Angle Part II: Perspectives on Happiness, Situations, and Virtue 10. Well-Being and Situationist Psychology Daniel Haybron 11. A Virtuous Cycle: Virtues and Happiness Ed Diener and Pelin Kesebir 12. Virtue and Happiness in Chinese Culture: The Psychological Perspective Samuel Ho 13. Aristotelian Well-Being for the Modern World: Taking the Capabilities Approach to the Next Level of Specificity Howard Curzer 14. Virtue Ethics and Human Nature Neera Badhwar 15. The Role of Empathy in Eudaimonia, Franco V. Trivigno Conclusion Nancy E. Snow and Franco V. Trivigno

Nancy E. Snow is Professor in the Philosophy Department at Marquette University, USA Franco V. Trivigno is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo, Norway