Christianity is deeply interested in the body. In its central mysteries -- creation, incarnation, and resurrection -- the body and human flesh are radically implicated. Bodies are persons, and persons are spiritual beings, bearers of the divine image and destined for bodily union with God. From the Bible to the Second Vatican Council, from Irenaeus and Tertullian to Aquinas and Luther, the classic sources of the Christian tradition engender a spiritual philosophy that challenges the ever-present gnostic impulse either to marginalize, or else to worship, the body. Adam G. Cooper brings these rich sources into conversation with numerous contemporary voices in philosophy and theology, offering an illuminating and critical perspective on such pressing social and ethical questions as pornography, feminism, philosophy of mind, sterility, and death.

Sarah Conly argues that we do not have the right to have more than one child. If recent increases in global population continue, we will reduce the welfare of future generations to unacceptable levels. We do not have a right to impose on others in this way. While voluntary efforts to restrain population growth are preferable and may be enough, government regulations against having more than one child can be justified if they are necessary. Of course, government regulations have to be consistent with rights that we do hold, but Conly argues that since we do not have a right to have more than one child, government regulations are one of the methods we might use to reduce the fertility rate until we reach a sustainable population.

Speech, Media, and Ethics: The Limits of Free Expression is an interdisciplinary work that employs ethics, liberal philosophy, and legal and media studies to outline the boundaries to freedom of expression and freedom of the press, defined broadly to include the right to demonstrate and to picket, the right to compete in elections, and the right to communicate views via the written and electronic media. Moral principles are applied to analyze practical questions that deal with free expression and its limits.

Success by Choice Not By Chance gives a road map which clearly shows the potential for any one to succeed in life whether they came from Tupelo, Mississippi or was born on Wall Street. This book is about Ernie Tucker who defied the laws of success and has lived a charmed life by following the principles of having faith, repetition, imagination and above all persistence. He says "success has no room for excuses - it is all up to you." It is a choice one makes not a chance one takes, because chances is gambling and depends on the roll of the dice. It shows you that if you have a clearly defined objective and is willing to make the necessary sacrifices, in the long run your dream will become your reality. The book entails what he had faced, handled and triumphed over to become the success that he is. It is his dream to leave a legacy to the coming generations of whomsoever wishes to succeed be it family, friend or stranger. Embedded in the pages are elements of the will, wit and determination it took to get him there. It says that success is accessible but it is all up to you. To embrace the principles that took him there, you must follow his proven method for success. It shows you that success is a constant pursuit not an overnight affair. It is in fact for Ernie a true fulfillment of Martin Luther's dream that black men and white men could work together in unity. Since success is not a respecter of persons when Ernie's principles of faith are enacted, regardless of your color, creed, race or national origin, success will be attained when you step out in faith and have a vision of your goals.

This is the first book in bioethics that explains how it is that you actually go about doing good bioethics. Bioethics has made a mistake about its methods, and this has led not only to too much theorizing, but also fragmentation within bioethics. The unhelpful disputes between those who think bioethics needs to be more philosophical, more sociological, more clinical, or more empirical, continue. While each of these claims will have some point, they obscure what should be common to all instances of bioethics. Moreover, they provide another phantom that can lead newcomers to bioethics down blind alleyways stalked by bristling sociologists and philosophers. The method common to all bioethics is bringing moral reason to bear upon ethical issues, and it is more accurate and productive to clarify what this involves than to stake out a methodological patch that shows why one discipline is the most important. This book develops an account of the nature of bioethics and then explains how a number of methodological spectres have obstructed bioethics becoming what it should. In the final part, it explains how moral reason can be brought to bear upon practical issues via an 'empirical, Socratic' approach.

This book on the history of palliative care, 1500-1970 traces the historical roots of modern palliative care in Europe to the rise of the hospice movement in the 1960s. The author discusses largely forgotten premodern concepts like cura palliativa and euthanasia medica and describes, how patients and physicians experienced and dealt with terminal illness. He traces the origins of hospitals for incurable and dying patients and follows the long history of ethical debates on issues like truth-telling and the intentional shortening of the dying patients' lives and the controversies they sparked between physicians and patients. An eye opener for anyone interested in the history of ethical decision making regarding terminal care of critically ill patients.

In Orthodoxy, Gilbert K. Chesterton explains how and why he came to believe in Christianity and more specifically the Catholic Church's brand of orthodoxy. In the book, Chesterton takes the spiritually curious reader on an intellectual quest. While looking for the meaning of life, he finds truth that uniquely fulfills human needs. This is the truth revealed in Christianity. Chesterton likens this discovery to a man setting off from the south coast of England, journeying for many days, only to arrive at Brighton, the point he originally left from. Such a man, he proposes, would see the wondrous place he grew up in with newly appreciative eyes. This is a common theme in Chesterton's works, and one which he gave fictional embodiment to in Manalive. A truly lively and enlightening book!

The Liberatory Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. is a philosophical anthology which explores Dr. King's legacy as a philosopher and his contemporary relevance as a thinker-activist. It consists of sixteen chapters organized into four sections: Part I, King within Philosophical Traditions, Part II, King as Engaged Social and Political Philosopher, Part III, King's Ethics of Nonviolence, and Part IV, Hope Resurgent or Dream Deferred: Perplexities of King's Philosophical Optimism. Most chapters are written by philosophers, but two are by philosophically informed social scientists. The contributors examine King's relationships to canonical Western philosophical traditions, and to African-American thought. King's contribution to traditional branches of philosophy such as ethics, social philosophy and philosophy of religion is explored, as well as his relevance to contemporary movements for social justice. As is evident from the title, the book considers the importance of King's thought as liberatory discourse. Some chapters focus on "topical" issues like the relevance of King's moral critique of the Vietnam War to our present involvement in Middle Eastern wars. Others focus on more densely theoretical issues such as Personalism, existential philosophy or Hegelian dialectics in King's thought. The significance of King's reflections on racism, economic justice, democracy and the quest for community are abiding themes. But the volume closes, quite fittingly, on the importance of the theme of hope. The text is a kind of philosophical dialogue on the enduring value of the legacy of the philosopher, King.

The James M. H. Gregg Selected Works includes four books. Each book was written to inspire future generations to think and act in ways to improve themselves and society. Mr. Gregg's most recent work, Social Justice (A Blueprint), explores a new set of ideas and strategies for moving humans to a higher cultural plane on which all can live to their full potential. In Ideas of a Twentieth Century Grandfather the author reveals to his grandchildren his knowledge and insight that he may not otherwise get a chance to tell them. Zen Master is a dialogue between a Zen Master and students. The students ask him questions about many subjects to include the meaning of life and living, death, the essences of Zen, and peace of mind. Finally, Some Poems is a compilation of poems that the author has written over the years about loving, living, being, and love.

This book offers a first rate selection of academic articles on Latin American bioethics. It covers different issues, such as vulnerability, abortion, biomedical research with human subjects, environment, exploitation, commodification, reproductive medicine, among others. Latin American bioethics has been, to an important extent, parochial and unable to meet stringent international standards of rational philosophical discussion. The new generations of bioethicists are changing this situation, and this book demonstrates that change. All articles are written from the perspective of Latin American scholars from several disciplines such as philosophy and law. Working with the tools of analytical philosophy and jurisprudence, this book defends views with rational argument, and opening for pluralistic discussion.

This book aims to answer two simple questions: what is it to want and what is it to intend? Because of the breadth of contexts in which the relevant phenomena are implicated and the wealth of views that have attempted to account for them, providing the answers is not quite so simple. Doing so requires an examination not only of the relevant philosophical theories and our everyday practices, but also of the rich empirical material that has been provided by work in social and developmental psychology. The investigation is carried out in two parts, dedicated to wanting and intending respectively. Wanting is analysed as optative attitudinising, a basic form of subjective standard-setting at the core of compound states such as 'longings', 'desires', 'projects' and 'whims'. The analysis is developed in the context of a discussion of Moore-paradoxicality and deepened through the examination of rival theories, which include functionalist and hedonistic conceptions as well as the guise-of-the-good view and the pure entailment approach, two views popular in moral psychology. In the second part of the study, a disjunctive genetic theory of intending is developed, according to which intentions are optative attitudes on which, in one way or another, the mark of deliberation has been conferred. It is this which explains intention's subjection to the requirements of practical rationality. Moreover, unlike wanting, intending turns out to be dependent on normative features of our life form, in particular on practices of holding responsible. The book will be of particular interest to philosophers and psychologists working on motivation, goals, desire, intention, deliberation, decision and practical rationality.

Shaftesbury's Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times is a collection of treatises on interconnected themes in moral philosophy, aesthetics, literature, and politics. It was immensely influential on eighteenth-century British taste and manners, literature, and thought, and also on the Continental Enlightenment. The author was a Whig, a Stoic, and a theist, whose commitment to political liberty and civic virtue shaped all of his other concerns, from the role of the arts in a free state to the nature of the beautiful and the good. This is the first new edition of Shaftesbury's Characteristicks as a coherent collection for almost a century. A substantial Introduction discusses Shaftesbury's works and ideas in the context of his times, and traces the reception and influence of his writings through the eighteenth century and beyond. A full and scholarly commentary is provided, as well as a complete textual apparatus. The very thorough Index is Shaftesbury's own. The text is essentially that of the first edition of 1711, as marked up with changes by Shaftesbury himself in preparation for the posthumous second edition of 1714; and the striking emblematic engravings he commissioned especially for the second edition are incorporated.

Benedict de Spinoza's writings laid the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment and for modern Biblical criticism. By virtue of his magnum opus, the Ethics, Spinoza is considered one of Western philosophy's definitive ethicists. Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favoured by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune's greedily coveted favours, they are consequently, for the most part, very prone to credulity. The human mind is readily swayed this way or that in times of doubt, especially when hope and fear are struggling for the mastery, though usually it is boastful, over-confident, and vain. After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness. Spinoza was one of the great rationalists of 17th century philosophy. He helped lay the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism. His correspondence helps shed light on his ethical opinions and positions. Required reading for those who wish a deeper understanding of the writings of Benedict de Spinoza.

The issue of prisoners in war is a highly timely topic that has received much attention from both scholars and practitioners since the start of the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and the ensuing legal and political problems concerning detainees in those conflicts. This book analyzes these contemporary problems and challenges against the background of their historical development. It provides a multidisciplinary yet highly coherent perspective on the historical trajectory of legal and ethical norms in this field by integrating the historical analysis of war with a study of the emergence of the modern legal regime of prisoners in war. In doing so, it provides the first comprehensive study of prisoners, detainees and internees in war, covering a broad range of both regular and irregular wars from the crusades to contemporary counterinsurgency campaigns.
The book revolves around two major developments: First, there has been a continuous increase in the political relevance of prisoners in war, in particular since the emergence of POW camps in the nineteenth century. Secondly, and related, the growth in the legal regime pertaining to prisoners had contradictory consequences. Whilst it enhanced the protection of prisoners in regular conflicts, its state-centric bias tends to exclude combatants who do not fit the template of regular inter-state war. Detainees in the 'war on terror' embody both tendencies, the development of which, however, is by no means a novel phenomenon.
This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War.

Commonsense Consequentialism is a book about morality, rationality, and the interconnections between the two. In it, Douglas W. Portmore defends a version of consequentialism that both comports with our commonsense moral intuitions and shares with other consequentialist theories the same compelling teleological conception of practical reasons.
Broadly construed, consequentialism is the view that an act's deontic status is determined by how its outcome ranks relative to those of the available alternatives on some evaluative ranking. Portmore argues that outcomes should be ranked, not according to their impersonal value, but according to how much reason the relevant agent has to desire that each outcome obtains and that, when outcomes are ranked in this way, we arrive at a version of consequentialism that can better account for our commonsense moral intuitions than even many forms of deontology can. What's more, Portmore argues that we should accept this version of consequentialism, because we should accept both that an agent can be morally required to do only what she has most reason to do and that what she has most reason to do is to perform the act that would produce the outcome that she has most reason to want to obtain.
Although the primary aim of the book is to defend a particular moral theory (viz., commonsense consequentialism), Portmore defends this theory as part of a coherent whole concerning our commonsense views about the nature and substance of both morality and rationality. Thus, it will be of interest not only to those working on consequentialism and other areas of normative ethics, but also to those working in metaethics. Beyond offering an account of morality, Portmore offers accounts of practical reasons, practical rationality, and the objective/subjective obligation distinction.

T]his is much more than a conventional reference guide. The 12 carefully written chapters examine significant issues and contemporary views of many of the basic problems in the field. Topics are approaches to the study of ethics in government, ethical dilemmas and standards for public officials, techniques for incorporating ethical considerations in policy-making, and several substantive problems--professional ethics, the ethical use of quantitative analysis, several forms of corruption, and morality in foreign policy-making. The volume assimilates most of the contemporary literature, presents a number of interesting cases, and is ideally suited as a text for upper-division or graduate courses in public administration and public policy. . . . an essential item in any collection that deals with the subject of ethics and public policy. "Choice"

Although democracy in the United States was founded upon ethical principles that Americans continue to hold sacrosanct, these values are seldom explicitly heeded in the policy-making processes that affect the destiny of the country and its citizens. With the professionalization of public administration during the past one-hundred years, managerial efficiency and scientific methods have been promoted at the expense of both ethics and politics. In this important new work, a distinguished group of social scientists, management scholars, attorneys, and philosophers explores the implications of neglecting these vital concerns. The authors focus on the difficult questions facing policymakers, administrators, and elected officials and suggest approaches to reconciling bureaucratic necessity with democratic values.

The first part of the volume examines contemporary ethical perspectives and establishes a framework for analysis. The moral dilemmas faced by public servants and the ethical standards governing the conduct of legislators are considered next. Chapters devoted to the techniques and methods of ethical policy-making discuss such issues as risk analysis, negotiation of rules and standards, the ombudsman in conflict resolution, and equal opportunity and affirmative action legislation. Chapters exploring systemic issues include professionalism in politics and administration; quantitative analysis in decision-making; waste, fraud, and abuse in government; and morality in the making of foreign policy. The volume concludes with an overview of ethics and public policy from a comparative perspective. Addressing the fundamental ethical relations between organizational authority and public employees, this unique new study is pertinent to many of the most pressing problems of our time. It will be of interest to scholars, students, practitioners, and other readers concerned with public administration, public policy, ethics in government, and professional ethics.

"An Essay toward the Other" considers the three fundamental verities of the human experience-the True, the Good, and the Beautiful-and presents three arguments, one from the domain of each verity, in support of theism and in opposition to materialism. "The True" is the way things are. "The Good" is that which contributes to the happiness of the individual and the group. "The Beautiful" is an indefinable quality that evokes a pleasing and enjoyable inner experience. The verities derive from a Divine source and point toward that Divine source, thus the opening sentence, "From the One, three; from the three, One." While the verities are part of the human experience, their source and their vision transcend our realm. They are of God. The author accepts the classical view that all human intention, however flawed and misguided, looks to a final good. That final good we call happiness, and insofar as our aims and ways are shaped and guided by the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, we are drawn toward happiness.

This title provides an introduction to the philosophical implications of the recent surge of political and ethical interest in historical redress. Should the British Museum return the Elgin Marbles to Greece? Should settler societies in North America and Australasia compensate the aboriginal people whom they dispossessed? Should Israel have accepted Germany's compensation for Nazi extermination policies? The last twenty years have seen a remarkable surge of political and ethical interest in historical redress - that is, the righting of old wrongs. In this fascinating book, Richard Vernon argues that whatever the kind of redress that's at issue, and whether the wrong is large or small, an important philosophical issue arises. Exploring recent and high profile cases, Vernon focuses on the issue of responsibility. Responsibility isn't something inherited, like property or one's DNA. How, then, can it fall to one generation to make good the wrongs done by another? The book addresses all the main issues and arguments relating to justice, memory, apology and citizenship, and concludes by arguing for a forward-looking approach that focuses on the right of future generations to live just lives. "Think Now" is a new series of books which examines central contemporary social and political issues from a philosophical perspective. These books aim to be accessible, rather than overly technical, bringing philosophical rigour to modern questions which matter the most to us. Provocative yet engaging, the authors take a stand on political and cultural themes of interest to any intelligent reader.

The book is one of the first to focus on responsible leadership in the contemporary Asian century context. It adopts a unique context driven social innovation based responsible leadership approach to explain how context can impact and shape the theory and practice of responsible leadership. This unique work will strongly appeal to a broad spectrum of researchers and scholars across disciplines with a particular interest in the interplay between leadership, responsibility and ethics. As Asia's influence on the global economy continues to grow in the Asian Century, this book offers a culturally integrated view of how the shift in economic power to Asia and the rising new global economic order can influence the theory and practice of responsible leadership. The book focuses particularly on the Asian century opportunities and challenges as a strong contextual factor that shapes the 'responsibility' of responsible leadership. The scholarly literature on the topic, the case studies developed through interviews and secondary data, and author's corporate experiences in the Asia-Pacific region in leading organisations are key sources for the book's assertions. It fills an important gap in the literature on how Asian cultural factors might influence the predominantly Western developed responsible leadership theory and practice. This book covers key topics including the moral basis for responsibility, theory and practice of responsible leadership, Asian challenges to responsible leadership, and socially innovative responsible leadership. "Fernando's book provides a fresh and novel perspective on how evolutionary changes in economic power between Asia and the rest of the world undoubtedly will affect the practice of responsible leadership. He examines varying views on responsible leadership across cultures, demonstrating how Asian and Western leadership styles have evolved as our economy continues to become more globally integrated." Prof. Laura Pincus Hartman Director, Susilo Institute for Ethics in the Global Economy Boston University, Questrom School of Business, Boston, USA "There is little doubt that this is the Asian Century and that economic and political influences from the east will increase. But so too may cultural, ethical and even religious influences. It is therefore important that researchers understand these significant changes. In this book Mario Fernando gives us an insight into what this means for responsible leadership. It is primarily an excellent work of scholarship, written for academics who teach and research in this area by someone who knows Asian business and culture from the inside. But it will also reward careful study by practicing leaders and those who are the potential leaders of the future." Professor of Business Ethics, Geoff Moore Durham Business School Durham University, UK

Traditionally the ethic of care has been associated with women while the ethic of justice has been associated with men. In recent years some feminist philosophers have turned their energies to developing theories of care and to exploring the epistemological assumptions on which the ethic of care is based. This volume proposes an original theory of care, building on insights of both feminist and non-feminist critics of liberal moral theory, gleaning ideas from feminist ethics and epistemologies, and stimulated by the writings of post-colonial feminists. The author shows that a number of ethical and epistemological imperatives can be defined through the philosophical elaboration of an ethic of care and the endeavor to know and to care well.

Can the actual experienced practices of caring and the abstract conceptual thought process of philosophy be mutually informing? The author argues that the concrete everyday response of care provides the grounds for new ways of thinking about both ethics and reason. By examining the works of Kant, Mill, and Rawls, she describes and defends a radical critique of the liberal moral theory of Gilligan and Noddings and a transformed ethic of care, accounting for care as both action and disposition. This vigorous study will have applications in the fields of sociology, ethics, moral and political philosophy, political science, nursing, medicine, and education. A comprehensive and up-to-date Bibliography provides readers with excellent resources for further study.

Henry E. Allison presents a comprehensive commentary on Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). It differs from most recent commentaries in paying special attention to the structure of the work, the historical context in which it was written, and the views to which Kant was responding. Allison argues that, despite its relative brevity, the Groundwork is the single most important work in modern moral philosophy and that its significance lies mainly in two closely related factors. The first is that it is here that Kant first articulates his revolutionary principle of the autonomy of the will, that is, the paradoxical thesis that moral requirements (duties) are self-imposed and that it is only in virtue of this that they can be unconditionally binding. The second is that for Kant all other moral theories are united by the assumption that the ground of moral requirements must be located in some object of the will (the good) rather than the will itself, which Kant terms heteronomy. Accordingly, what from the standpoint of previous moral theories was seen as a fundamental conflict between various views of the good is reconceived by Kant as a family quarrel between various forms of heteronomy, none of which are capable of accounting for the unconditionally binding nature of morality. Allison goes on to argue that Kant expresses this incapacity by claiming that the various forms of heteronomy unavoidably reduce the categorical to a merely hypothetical imperative.

The Moral Responsibilities of Companies is a philosophical analysis of the question of whether companies can be held morally responsible for the harms they create, and what implications such a view has on the moral position of employees and shareholders in these companies.