Concept
Perfectionism (philosophy)
Overview
In ethics and value theory, perfectionism is the persistence of will in obtaining the optimal quality of spiritual, mental, physical, and material being. Thomas Hurka describes perfectionism as follows:
This moral theory starts from an account of the good life, or the intrinsically desirable life. And it characterizes this life in a distinctive way. Certain properties, it says, constitute human nature or are definitive of humanity—they make humans human. The good life, it then says, develops these properties to a high degree or realizes what is central to human nature. Different versions of the theory may disagree about what the relevant properties are and so disagree about the content of the good life. But they share the foundational idea that what is good, ultimately, is the development of human nature.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good, without qualification, except a good will. Intelligence, wit, judgement, and the other talents of the mind, however they may be named, or courage, resolution, perseverance, as qualities of temperament, are undoubtedly good and desirable in many respects; but these gifts of nature may also become extremely bad and mischievous…
Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
States what Perfectionism is; the author is tied to Perfectionism in the knowledge graph.
Happiness thus means perfection, and perfection a completely universalized individual. The motive toward the moral life is elsewhere stated to be love; and love is defined as interest in perfection, and hence culminates in love of God, the only absolute perfection. It also has its source in God, as the origin of perfection; so that Leibniz says, Whoso loves God, loves all.
John Dewey, Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding
States what Perfectionism is.
Whatever is in conformity with the desires of any individual will, is, relatively to it, termed =good=; for instance, good food, good roads, a good omen; the contrary is called =bad=, and, in the case of living beings, =malicious=.
Arthur Schopenhauer, The Basis of Morality
States what Perfectionism is.
Philosophers who discussed Perfectionism (philosophy)
Related ideas
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Matthew Arnold
- John Rawls
- Polis
- Immanuel Kant
- John Stuart Mill
- Happiness
- Harvard University
- Eudaimonia
- Mind
- Categorical imperative
- Plato
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Sigmund Freud
- Spirituality
- Transhumanism
- Aristotle
- Utilitarianism
- Value theory
- William Shakespeare
- Henry James
- Ethics
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Political philosophy.
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