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Ethics and the Discovery of the Unconscious (Suny Series in Transpersonal and Humanistics Psychology) (SUNY series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology)

$32.95
Author: John Hanwell Riker

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Paperback:
ISBN 10: 0791434265
ISBN 13: 978-0791434260

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.