The Harmony of the Soul: Mental Health and Moral Virtue Reconsidered

The Harmony of the Soul: Mental Health and Moral Virtue Reconsidered

Neal Weiner
Role: Author
Part of a celebrated SUNY series in Philosophy of Psychology

The Harmony of the Soul, Neal Weiner’s contribution to a celebrated SUNY series, creates a naturalistic grounding for ethics and a moral grounding for psychotherapy. It is an original and synthesis of the ideas of mental health and moral virtue based on neglected affinities between classical Greek ethics, contemporary virtue ethics, sociobiology, and the basic presuppositions of psychotherapy. A central thesis of the book is that we can assume “the worst” about what science tells us about the human animal without having to sacrifice any of the things that are of most importance to ethics: virtue and the good life, harmony of the soul, freedom, conscience, and moral knowledge.