Ethics and the Discovery of the Unconscious

Download or read book Ethics and the Discovery of the Unconscious written by John Hanwell Riker and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1997-07-10 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows why the discovery of the unconscious by Nietzsche and Freud requires a reconception of the concepts of moral agency and responsibility and even of morality itself. It explicates how contemporary psychology has taken over the traditional task of ethics in elucidating a theory of human well-being, but criticizes this psychology for being unable to generate adequate notions of either responsibility or moral agency. Riker develops a new moral psychology in which the reality of unconscious functioning is included within a theory of responsibility, and the agent's primary ethic concern becomes knowing what her unconscious motivations are and integrating them into a morally and psychologically mature self.