I don’t have time to read your post seriously today*, so I apologise if I’m a bit redundant, but I just wanted to use this occasion to praise Jane Austen.
Amiability is the main virtue in Jane Austen books—in fact one could say that Austen’s novel are mainly about (the difference between) agreeableness and amiability. Fanny Price and Anne Elliot exemplify amiability ; Wickham, Mary and Henri Crawford exemplify agreeableness without amiability. Other characters like Emma or Elisabeth Bennet must learn to distinguish between agreeableness and amiability.
As I understand it, the main difference is that agreeableness is the ability to make other like you, while amiability is the virtue that makes you worthy of being liked (in this sense amiability holds in Jane Austen works a position quite similar to charity in Christian philosophy).
One consequence of this distinction is that you should try to associate with people who are really amiable rather than just agreeable, as you will learn amiability by imitation and emulation.
*I plan to do it in a few days, I like your posts ;)
Thanks! I remember that Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue made the surprising claim that Jane Austen was the last thinker of note in the Western virtue-oriented tradition of ethics as it was dying out (before its more recent revival). I should go back and reread some of her books with that in mind.
I don’t have time to read your post seriously today*, so I apologise if I’m a bit redundant, but I just wanted to use this occasion to praise Jane Austen.
Amiability is the main virtue in Jane Austen books—in fact one could say that Austen’s novel are mainly about (the difference between) agreeableness and amiability. Fanny Price and Anne Elliot exemplify amiability ; Wickham, Mary and Henri Crawford exemplify agreeableness without amiability. Other characters like Emma or Elisabeth Bennet must learn to distinguish between agreeableness and amiability.
As I understand it, the main difference is that agreeableness is the ability to make other like you, while amiability is the virtue that makes you worthy of being liked (in this sense amiability holds in Jane Austen works a position quite similar to charity in Christian philosophy).
One consequence of this distinction is that you should try to associate with people who are really amiable rather than just agreeable, as you will learn amiability by imitation and emulation.
*I plan to do it in a few days, I like your posts ;)
Thanks! I remember that Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue made the surprising claim that Jane Austen was the last thinker of note in the Western virtue-oriented tradition of ethics as it was dying out (before its more recent revival). I should go back and reread some of her books with that in mind.
My reading of this comes mainly from MacIntyre to be honest (and a bit of Allan Bloom too).