On the genealogy of moral pleasure

Large, Duncan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6555-7334 (2009) On the genealogy of moral pleasure. German Life and Letters, 62 (3). pp. 255-269. ISSN 0016-8777

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Abstract

This article explores the problematic relation between pleasure and morality in German thought, from the Enlightenment aesthetics of the eighteenth century through to early twentieth-century psychoanalysis. Specifically, by focusing on the status and function of pleasure in the moral analyses of Kant, the post-Kantians Schiller and Schopenhauer, then Nietzsche and finally Freud, it argues for a shift in emphasis, over this period, from the moral evaluation of pleasure to a recognition of the pleasurable value of morality. Along the way, it traces the German reception of the Discourse on the Nature of Pleasure and Pain (1773-81) by the Milanese philosopher and economist Pietro Verri.

Item Type:	Article
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Research Group Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > British Centre for Literary Translation Research Group
Related URLs:	https://www.scopus.com/pages/publication...
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	01 May 2015 15:12
Last Modified:	18 Jun 2026 16:46
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/53340
DOI:	10.1111/j.1468-0483.2009.01462.x

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