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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Ethics & moral philosophy
In her new book, Corine Pelluchon argues that the dichotomy between
nature and culture privileges the latter. She laments that the
political system protects the sovereignty of the human and leaves
them immune to impending environmental disaster. Using the
phenomenological writings of French philosophers like Emmanuel
Levinas, Jacques Derrida, and Paul Ricoeur, Pelluchon contends that
human beings have to recognise humanity's dependence upon the
natural world for survival and adopt a new philosophy of existence
that advocates for animal welfare and ecological preservation. In
an extension of Heidegger's ontology of concern, Pelluchon declares
that this dependence is not negative or a sign of weakness. She
argues instead, that we are nourished by the natural world and that
the very idea of nourishment contains an element of pleasure. This
sustenance comforts humans and gives their lives taste. Pelluchon's
new philosophy claims then, that eating has an affective, social
and cultural dimension, but that most importantly it is a political
act. It solidifies the eternal link between human beings and
animals, and warns that the human consumption of animals and other
natural resources impacts upon humanity's future.
A thought-provoking contribution to the renaissance of interest in
Bergson, this study brings him to a new generation of readers.
Ansell-Pearson contends that there is a Bergsonian revolution, an
upheaval in philosophy comparable in significance to those that we
are more familiar with, from Kant to Nietzsche and Heidegger, that
make up our intellectual modernity. The focus of the text is on
Bergson's conception of philosophy as the discipline that seeks to
'think beyond the human condition'. Not that we are caught up in an
existential predicament when the appeal is made to think beyond the
human condition; rather that restricting philosophy to the human
condition fails to appreciate the extent to which we are not simply
creatures of habit and automatism, but also organisms involved in a
creative evolution of becoming. Ansell-Pearson introduces the work
of Bergson and core aspects of his innovative modes of thinking;
examines his interest in Epicureanism; explores his interest in the
self and in time and memory; presents Bergson on ethics and on
religion, and illuminates Bergson on the art of life.
When Michael Walzer's Spheres of Justice was published ten years
ago, the front page of The New York Times Book Review hailed the
work as "an imaginative alternative to the current debate over
distributive justice". Now in Thick and Thin, Walzer revises and
extends his arguments in Spheres of Justice, framing his ideas
about justice, social criticism, and national identity in light of
the new political world that has arisen in the past decade. Walzer
focuses on two different but interrelated kinds of moral argument:
maximalist and minimalist, thick and thin, local and universal.
According to Walzer the first, thick type of moral argument is
culturally connected, referentially entangled, detailed, and
specific; the second, or thin type, is abstract, ad hoc, detached,
and general. Thick arguments play the larger role in determining
our views about domestic justice and in shaping our criticism of
local arrangements. Thin arguments shape our views about justice in
foreign places and in international society. The book begins with
an account of minimalist argument, then examines two uses of
maximalist arguments, focusing on distributive justice and social
criticism. Walzer then discusses minimalism with a qualified
defense of self-determination in international society, and
concludes with a discussion of the (divided) self capable of this
differentiated moral engagement. Walzer's highly literate and
fascinating blend of philosophy and historical analysis will appeal
not only to those interested in the polemics surrounding Spheres of
justice but also to intelligent readers who are more concerned with
getting the arguments right.
Pushing back against the potential trivialization of moral
psychology that would reduce it to emotional preferences, this book
takes an enactivist, self-organizational, and hermeneutic approach
to internal conflict between a basic exploratory drive motivating
the search for actual truth, and opposing incentives to confabulate
in the interest of conformity, authoritarianism, and cognitive
dissonance, which often can lead to harmful worldviews. The result
is a new possibility that ethical beliefs can have truth value and
are not merely a result of ephemeral altruistic or cooperative
feelings. It will interest moral and political psychologists,
philosophers, social scientists, and all who are concerned with
inner emotional conflicts driving ethical thinking beyond mere
emotivism, and toward moral realism, albeit a fallibilist one
requiring continual rethinking and self-reflection. It combines
'basic emotion' theories (such as Panksepp) with hermeneutic depth
psychology. The result is a realist approach to moral thinking
emphasizing coherence rather than foundationalist theory of
knowledge.
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Symposium
(Hardcover)
Plato; Translated by Benjamin Jowett
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R658
Discovery Miles 6 580
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