Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™m a philosopher based in Tartu, Estonia. In my work Iā€™ve always been interested in value and value judgments, and how value gets us to act, sometimes, though by no means always. But only recently have I become puzzled by what happens when value motivates us the wrong way, as when we are drawn to something (an action, an event) for its badness, not for its goodness. And thatā€™s how I gradually uncovered the fascinating, centuries-long philosophical (and sometimes literary) history narrated in my book and partially represented in the booklist. 


I wrote

The Guise of the Good: A Philosophical History

By Francesco Orsi,

Book cover of The Guise of the Good: A Philosophical History

What is my book about?

When you want something, then you probably think thereā€™s something good about it: if you want to eat this apple,ā€¦

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

The books I picked & why

Book cover of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

Francesco Orsi Why did I love this book?

Aristotle is an obligatory milestone in the history of the main idea of my book: all desire the good or the apparent good.

The Nicomachean Ethics also provides a gallery of interesting and puzzling characters: the akratic, who wants the good but, being weak, goes for what they know to be worse; or the outright vicious, who wholeheartedly chooses the bad, but still under the guise of the good, being misled by pleasant associations with the wrong things.

By Aristotle, Robert C. Bartlett (translator), Susan D. Collins (translator)

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"The Nicomachean Ethics", along with its sequel, "the Politics", is Aristotle's most widely read and influential work. Ideas central to ethics - that happiness is the end of human endeavor, that moral virtue is formed through action and habituation, and that good action requires prudence - found their most powerful proponent in the person medieval scholars simply called 'the Philosopher'. Drawing on their intimate knowledge of Aristotle's thought, Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins have produced here an English-language translation of the Ethics that is as remarkably faithful to the original as it is graceful in its rendering. Aristotleā€¦


Book cover of Confessions

Francesco Orsi Why did I love this book?

Like for Aristotle, this is no easy read, but Augustine must be credited with planting in the clearest and most dramatic way the central doubt: cannot we want and do something merely for the sake of the evil or wrong we would commit?

His story of the pear theft is bound to leave an impression on anyone, regardless of oneā€™s religious background. Later Christian philosophers will try to get around Augustineā€™s doubts, with more or less success.

By Augustine, Thomas Williams (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Confessions as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Williams's masterful translation satisfies (at last!) a long-standing need. There are lots of good translations of Augustine's great work, but until now we have been forced to choose between those that strive to replicate in English something of the majesty and beauty of Augustine's Latin style and those that opt instead to convey the careful precision of his philosophical terminology and argumentation. Finally, Williams has succeeded in capturing both sides of Augustine's mind in a richly evocative, impeccably reliable, elegantly readable presentation of one of the most impressive achievements in Western thought-Augustine's Confessions." -Scott MacDonald, Professor of Philosophy and Normaā€¦


Ad

Book cover of Sufferance

Sufferance by Charles Palliser,

This is a novel about choices. How would you have chosen to act during the Second World War if your country had been invaded and occupied by a brutal enemy determined to isolate and murder a whole community?

Thatā€™s the situation facing an ordinary family man with two children, aā€¦

Book cover of The Black Cat and Other Tales

Francesco Orsi Why did I love this book?

Flash forward a few centuries, one finds not just a doubt, but a powerful statement of the reality of perverse inclinations in human nature: in Poeā€™s tales, such as The Black Cat or The Imp of the Perverse, one finds characters doing the most horrible things out of a self-confessed desire to do evil, with no apparent gain, and embracing the moral destruction they bring upon themselves.

Clearly the times were ripe for a radical revision of the guise of the good dogma. It was exciting for me to discover in Poeā€™s fiction a clear expression of philosophical ideas central to my project. 

By Edgar Allan Poe,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Black Cat and Other Tales as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


Book cover of Intention

Francesco Orsi Why did I love this book?

This is the book that shaped philosophical thinking about action since the past half-century, though I didnā€™t really understand this the first time I read it.

Among other things, Anscombe single-handedly resuscitates the old idea that all we want, we want under the guise of some good from the relative obscurity it had fallen into, handing it over to new generations of philosophers. She vehemently rejects the idea that people can actually behave like Poeā€™s characters.

By G. E. M. Anscombe,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Intention as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Intention is one of the masterworks of twentieth-century philosophy in English. First published in 1957, it has acquired the status of a modern philosophical classic. The book attempts to show in detail that the natural and widely accepted picture of what we mean by an intention gives rise to insoluble problems and must be abandoned. This is a welcome reprint of a book that continues to grow in importance.


Ad

Book cover of The Pianist's Only Daughter: A Memoir

The Pianist's Only Daughter by Kathryn Betts Adams,

The Pianist's Only Daughter is a frank, humorous, and heartbreaking exploration of aging in an aging expert's own family.

Social worker and gerontologist Kathryn Betts Adams spent decades negotiating evolving family dynamics with her colorful and talented parents: her mother, an English scholar and poet, and her father, a pianistā€¦

Book cover of Practical Reality

Francesco Orsi Why did I love this book?

This book personally helped me focus on and get interested in the concept of acting for reasons.

We all do things for reasons (good or bad), e.g. we take an umbrella because outside itā€™s raining, but what this exactly means is a philosophical puzzle. Dancy is probably the most powerful in arguing that we donā€™t normally find those reasons in ourselves, but in how things objectively are or might be.

Even when all we can say is ā€œI do it because itā€™s my desireā€, there has to be something attractive in what we desire beyond the fact that we desire it, which is one way to bring us back to the old idea of the guise of the good.

By Jonathan Dancy,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Practical Reality as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Practical Reality is about the relation between the reason why we do things and the reasons why we should. It maintains that current philosophical orthodoxy bowdlerizes this relation, making it impossible to understand how anyone can act for a good reason.
In order to understand this, Dancy claims, we have to abandon current conceptions of the reasons why we act (our 'motivating' reasons) as mental states of ourselves. Belief/desire explanations of action, or purely cognitive accounts in terms of beliefs alone, drive too great a wedge between the normative and the motivational. Instead, we have to understand a motivating reasonā€¦


Explore my book šŸ˜€

The Guise of the Good: A Philosophical History

By Francesco Orsi,

Book cover of The Guise of the Good: A Philosophical History

What is my book about?

When you want something, then you probably think thereā€™s something good about it: if you want to eat this apple, you may think itā€™s tasty, or healthy, and thatā€™s why you want it. Many philosophers turned this commonplace into a basic truth about human nature, desire, and action: you cannot want, or do something, if it doesnā€™t appear good to you in some way or other (maybe just because itā€™s the lesser evil!). In my book I explore this idea, for the first time, across some of the main figures of Western philosophy, from Socrates to Anscombe, including both advocates and notable critics, the latter often suggesting a darker picture: sometimes people want something because itā€™s bad, and see nothing good about it.

Book cover of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics
Book cover of Confessions
Book cover of The Black Cat and Other Tales

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

2,007

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

šŸ“š You might also likeā€¦

Book cover of No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

No Average Day by Rona Simmons,

October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.

The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention onā€¦

Book cover of I Am Taurus

I Am Taurus by Stephen Palmer,

The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. This book traces the story of the bull in the sky, a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull.

Each of the sections is written fromā€¦

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in ethics, philosophy, and philosophy of mind?

Ethics 145 books
Philosophy 1,820 books