ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that, at the most fundamental level, there is another resource that can be utilised for investigating ethical naturalism, virtue ethics and, more specifically, eudaimonism, a resource found in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English Puritans. It explores how these Puritan thinkers used Aristotle, and at times Thomas Aquinas, to discuss the emotions in the moral and spiritual life. The chapter looks at how these thinkers located the emotions in terms of a flourishing of human being in a life pursued according to reason. It considers the Roman Catholic priest and religious controversialist Thomas Wright, for the Puritans were party to a wide cross-confessional discourse on this subject and Wright was one of the key sources used and to whom they were responding. The chapter addresses eudaimonism, the teleological structure of Aristotle's metaphysics, as well as the virtues' relation to the passions.
