A Matter of Choice: The Decisive Effect on Human Affairs (1)

By: Philip Hodgkiss

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Synopsis: A Matter of Choice represents a substantive discussion of the concept of choice in human affairs, taken against the backdrop of ethics and religion. Drawing on a range of contributions, Hodgkiss demonstrates in this study that, though often not the primary issue under consideration, a concern with choice has featured continually in human thought from the Hellenistic world of the Stoics to the post-Kantian environment of modern philosophy. Moreover, he argues that the social and historical dimension of choice has been consistently underplayed, and that the role of choice in modern economic and political developments is underestimated at our peril. Through a critical account of the literature, Hodgkiss adeptly diagnoses the insufficiency of the current conception of the choice-making sovereign individual in the contemporary liberal-democratic capitalist context and outlines the implications of this philosophy for the choice-maker.