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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Ethics & moral philosophy
This book presents a new examination of ethical dictum 'The Golden
Rule' exploring its formulation and significance in relation to the
world's major religions.The Golden Rule: treat others as you would
like to be treated. This ethical dictum is a part of most of the
world's religions and has been considered by numerous religious
figures and philosophers over the centuries. This new collection
contains specially commissioned essays which take a fresh look at
this guiding principle from a comparative perspective. Participants
examine the formulation and significance of the Golden Rule in the
world's major religions by applying four questions to the tradition
they consider: What does it say? What does it mean? How does it
work? How does it matter?Freshly examining the Golden Rule in broad
comparative context provides a fascinating account of its uses and
meaning, and allows us to assess if, how and why it matters in
human cultures and societies.
This is a new "Guide for the Perplexed" title providing an
examination of bioethics that will couple Christian and
philosophical perspectives.In this "Guide for the Perplexed",
Agneta Sutton understands Bioethics in a wide sense which includes
issues in medical ethics and questions concerning our relationship
with animals, plants and, indeed, the whole planet Earth. The key
question is that of the value of life. This, then, yields the
questions of what respect we owe to human and other forms of life
and of how we should care for the world in general.These questions
are approached from a Christian perspective and also from more
strictly philosophical perspectives. Thus, arguments from a
Christian perspective regarding our relationships with fellow
humans, other creatures and the planet, are coupled with
discussions of different kinds of argument and
counter-argument.Continuum's "Guides for the Perplexed" are clear,
concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and
subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging
- or indeed downright bewildering. Concentrating specifically on
what it is that makes the subject difficult to grasp, these books
explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader
towards a thorough understanding of demanding material.
What is the human heart like? Theologians and philosophers have
attempted to address this question, not just in the abstract, but
concretely in personal, as well as social and political,
dimensions. Patrick Downey explores the biblical writings of
Genesis and the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah, the Greek tragedies,
Plato, Aristotle, and political philosophers--such as Rousseau,
Hobbes, Nietzsche and Rene Girard--to seek answers to this profound
question. Recognizing our resistance to know the truth about our
own hearts, Downey calls his readers to join with these thinkers in
the search for truth and serious self-reflection. Not for the faint
of heart, this book courageously addresses the most foundational
question of our existence as individuals in community. What is the
nature of the human heart and can we, will we, know it?
Ethics for Disaster addresses the moral aspects of hurricanes,
earthquakes, tornadoes, plane crashes, Avian Flu pandemics, and
other disasters. Naomi Zack explores how these catastrophes
illuminate the existing inequalities in society. By employing the
moral systems of utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics to
analyze the consequences of recent natural disasters, Zack reveals
the special plight of the poor, disabled, and infirm when tragedy
strikes. Zack explores the political foundations of social contract
theory and dignitarianism and invites readers to rethink the
distinction between risk in normal times and risk in disaster.
Using both real life and fictional examples, Zack forcefully argues
for the preservation of normal moral principles in times of
national crisis and emergency, stressing the moral obligation of
both individuals and government in preparing for and responding to
disaster..
Sharing Common Ground makes a compelling contribution to an
important emerging field that affects a broad swath of humanities.
It uses historical, photographic, and literary examples, including
an entirely new translation of a little known work by Marguerite
Duras, presented here in full, to showcase the ethical capacity of
art. Robert Harvey deploys critical tools borrowed from literature,
aesthetics, and philosophy to mobilize the thought of several
seminal figures in literature and theory including Michel Foucault,
Marguerite Duras, Georges Didi-Huberman, and Giorgio Agamben, among
a host of others. Construction sites, concentration camps,
cemeteries, slums-such are only a few of the spaces that impel our
imagination naturally toward what we commonly call "cultural
memory." Sharing Common Ground reveals how the endeavor to think
and imagine in common, and especially about the spaces we inhabit
together, is critically important to human beings, artistically,
culturally, and ethically.
Gillian Brock develops a viable cosmopolitan model of global
justice that takes seriously the equal moral worth of persons, yet
leaves scope for defensible forms of nationalism and for other
legitimate identifications and affiliations people have. Brock
addresses two prominent kinds of skeptic about global justice:
those who doubt its feasibility and those who believe that
cosmopolitanism interferes illegitimately with the defensible scope
of nationalism by undermining goods of national importance, such as
authentic democracy or national self-determination. The model
addresses concerns about implementation in the world, showing how
we can move from theory to public policy that makes progress toward
global justice. It also makes clear how legitimate forms of
nationalism are compatible with commitments to global justice.
Global Justice is divided into three central parts. In the first,
Brock defends a cosmopolitan model of global justice. In the
second, which is largely concerned with public policy issues, she
argues that there is much we can and should do toward achieving
global justice. She addresses several pressing problems, discussing
both theoretical and public policy issues involved with each. These
include tackling global poverty, taxation reform, protection of
basic liberties, humanitarian intervention, immigration, and
problems associated with global economic arrangements. In the third
part, she shows how the discussion of public policy issues can
usefully inform our theorizing; in particular, it assists our
thinking about the place of nationalism and equality in an account
of global justice.
This edited collection provides the first comprehensive volume on
A. J. Ayer's 1936 masterpiece, Language, Truth and Logic. With
eleven original chapters the volume reconsiders the historical and
philosophical significance of Ayer's work, examining its place in
the history of analytic philosophy and its subsequent legacy.
Making use of pioneering research in logical empiricism, the
contributors explore a wide variety of topics, from ethics, values
and religion, to truth, epistemology and philosophy of language.
Among the questions discussed are: How did Ayer preserve or distort
the views and conceptions of logical empiricists? How are Ayer's
arguments different from the ones he aimed at reconstructing? And
which aspects of the book were responsible for its immense impact?
The volume expertly places Language, Truth and Logic in the
intellectual and socio-cultural history of twentieth-century
philosophical thought, providing both introductory and contextual
chapters, as well as specific explorations of a variety of topics
covering the main themes of the book. Providing important insights
of both historical and contemporary significance, this collection
is an essential resource for scholars interested in the legacy of
the Vienna Circle and its effect on ethics and philosophy of mind.
This book sets out to deepen our moral understanding by thinking
about forgiveness: what does it mean for our understanding of
morality that there is such a thing as forgiveness? Forgiveness is
a challenge to moral philosophy, for forgiveness challenges us: it
calls me to understand my relations to others, and thereby myself,
in a new way. Without arguing for or against forgiveness, the
present study tries to describe these challenges. These challenges
concern both forgiving and asking for forgiveness. The latter is
especially important in this context: what does the need to be
forgiven mean? In the light of such questions, central issues in
the philosophy of forgiveness are critically discussed, about the
reasons and conditions for forgiveness, but mostly the focus is on
new questions, about the relation of forgiveness to plurality,
virtue, death, the processes of moral change and development, and
the possibility of feeling at home in the world.
In this book, Munyaradzi Felix Murove explores African traditional
ethical resources for African politics. Arguing that African ethics
is integral to African post-colonial political contentious
discourse, Murove invites the reader to reflect on various
problematic political issues in post-colonial Africa and how
African ethics has been applied in these situations. Starting with
a succinct discussion of the scope of African ethics, he discusses
how African ethical values have been applied by post-colonial
politicians in the reconstruction of their societies. Further,
Murove looks critically at the issue of African poverty and how the
ethic of regional integration and economic cooperation among
post-colonial African nation-states has been instrumental to
efforts aimed at overcoming the scourge of poverty. The main
question this book seeks to answer is: Are African traditional
ethical values a panacea to modern African political problems?
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Walden
(Hardcover)
Henry David Thoreau
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R666
Discovery Miles 6 660
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Ships in 12 - 19 working days
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Walden is one of the best-known non-fiction books ever written by
an American. It details Thoreau's sojourn in a cabin near Walden
Pond, amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo
Emerson. Walden was written with expressed seasonal divisions.
Thoreau hoped to isolate himself from society in order to gain a
more objective understanding of it. Simplicity and self-reliance
were Thoreau's other goals, and the whole project was inspired by
Transcendentalist philosophy. This book is full of fascinating
musings and reflections. As pertinent and relevant today as it was
when it was first written.
Japan's March 11, 2011 triple horror of earthquake, tsunami, and
nuclear meltdown is its worst catastrophe since Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. Recovery remains an ongoing ordeal. Japan's Responses to
the March 2011 Disaster: Our Inescapable In-between uncovers the
pivotal role of longstanding cultural worldviews and their impact
on responses to this gut-wrenching disaster. Through unpacking the
pivotal notion in Japanese ethics of aidagara, or "in-betweenness,"
it offers testament to a deep-rooted sense of community. Accounts
from survivors, victims' families, key city officials, and
volunteers reveal a remarkable fiber of moral grit and resilience
that sustains Japan's common struggle to rally and carve a future
with promise and hope. Calamities snatch us out of the mundane and
throw us into the intensity of the moment. They challenge our moral
fiber. Trauma, individual and collective, is the uninvited litmus
test of character, personal and social. Ultimately, whether a
society rightfully recovers from disaster has to do with its degree
of connectedness, the embodied physical, interpersonal,
face-to-face engagement we have with each other. As these stories
bring to light, along with Michael Brannigan's extensive research,
personal encounters with survivors, and experience as a volunteer
in Japan's stricken areas, our degree of connectedness determines
how we in the long run weather the storm, whether the storm is
natural, technological, or human. Ultimately, it illustrates that
how we respond to and recover after the storm hinges upon how we
are with each other before the storm.
In this title, some of the world's leading scholars in metaethics,
epistemology and moral psychology explore the latest insights into
and challenges to Robert Audi's intuitionism. Since his 2004
publication of the book "The Good in the Right", Robert Audi has
been at the forefront of the current resurgence of interest in
intuitionism - the idea that human beings have an intuitive sense
of right and wrong - in ethics. "The New Intuitionism" brings
together some of the world's most important contemporary writers
from such diverse fields as metaethics, epistemology and moral
psychology to explore the latest implications of and challenges to
Audi's work. The book also includes an opening chapter that surveys
the development of contemporary intuitionism and a conclusion that
lays the ground for future developments and debates both written by
Audi himself, making this an essential survey of this important
school of ethical thought for anyone working in the field.
This collection explores the arguments related to veg(etari)anism
as they play out in the public sphere and across media, historical
eras, and geographical areas. As vegan and vegetarian practices
have gradually become part of mainstream culture, stemming from
multiple shifts in the socio-political, cultural, and economic
landscape, discursive attempts to both legitimize and delegitimize
them have amplified. With 12 original chapters, this collection
analyses a diverse array of these legitimating strategies,
addressing the practice of veg(etari)anism through analytical
methods used in rhetorical criticism and adjacent fields. Part I
focuses on specific geo-cultural contexts, from early 20th century
Italy, Serbia and Israel, to Islam and foundational Yoga Sutras. In
Part II, the authors explore embodied experiences and legitimation
strategies, in particular the political identities and ontological
consequences coming from consumption of, or abstention from, meat.
Part III looks at the motives, purposes and implication of
veg(etari)anism as a transformative practice, from ego to eco, that
should revolutionise our value hierarchies, and by extension, our
futures. Offering a unique focus on the arguments at the core of
the veg(etari)an debate, this collection provides an invaluable
resource to scholars across a multitude of disciplines.
This book offers the first comprehensive investigation of ethics in
the canon of William Faulkner. As the fundamental framework for its
analysis of Faulkner's fiction, this study draws on The Methods of
Ethics, the magnum opus of the utilitarian philosopher Henry
Sidgwick. While Faulkner's Ethics does not claim that Faulkner read
Sidgwick's work, this book traces Faulkner's moral sensitivity. It
argues that Faulkner's language is a moral medium that captures the
ways in which people negotiate the ethical demands that life places
on them. Tracing the contours of this evolving medium across six of
the author's major novels, it explores the basic precepts set out
in The Methods of Ethics with the application of more recent
contributions to moral philosophy, especially those of Jacques
Derrida and Derek Parfit.
Hobbes's concept of the natural condition of mankind became an
inescapable point of reference for subsequent political thought,
shaping the theories of emulators and critics alike, and has had a
profound impact on our understanding of human nature, anarchy, and
international relations. Yet, despite Hobbes's insistence on
precision, the state of nature is an elusive concept. Has it ever
existed and, if so, for whom? Hobbes offered several answers to
these questions, which taken together reveal a consistent strategy
aimed at providing his readers with a possible, probable, and
memorable account of the consequences of disobedience. This book
examines the development of this powerful image throughout Hobbes's
works, and traces its origins in his sources of inspiration. The
resulting trajectory of the state of nature illuminates the ways in
which Hobbes employed a rhetoric of science and a science of
rhetoric in his relentless pursuit of peace.
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