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Books > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Ethics & moral philosophy
Sound Sentiments seeks to open a new path in the philosophy of
emotion. The focus of most recent work on the philosophy of emotion
has been on the nature of emotion, with some attention also to the
relation of emotion to ethics. This book explores the idea that
emotions admit of valuation, of degrees of adequacy. We cannot just
decide what to think, or to desire, or to feel, as we can decide to
act, and these attitudes are integral to emotions. Nonetheless,
emotions can have normative characteristics that resemble virtues.
Philosophers are familiar with the notion that emotions are
valuational. But how well they serve that function determines the
value they themselves have. The book opens with an account of the
theory of emotion, reflecting recent work on that, and considers
the way in which emotions are valuational (with reference to the
contributions of writers such as de Sousa, Gibbard, and McDowell).
The worth of an emotional experience depends on the quality of the
valuation it itself achieves. Most of the book is then devoted to a
set of interconnected themes. Some of these concern properties that
emotions can have which can variously enhance or detract from them:
profundity, social leverage, narcissism, and sentimentality. Others
are attitudes with characteristic emotional loadings, and sometimes
motivations, that raise similar questions: cynicism, ambivalence,
and sophistication. David Pugmire's general approach is indirect
and negative: to analyse emotional foibles, which tend to elude us
as we succumb to them, and thereby to point to what soundness in
emotion would be. He also elicits connections amongst these aspects
of the emotional life. The most pervasive is the dimension of
profundity, which opens the discussion: each of the subsequent
problems amounts to a way in which emotion can be shallow and
slight and so amount to less than it seems; and accordingly, each
identifies a form of integrity in the emotions.
Bernard Gert's classic work Morality, in which he argues his
distinctive and comprehensive moral theory, is now in its sixth
edition. Gert argues that morality is an informal system that does
not provide answers to every moral question but does always limit
the range of morally acceptable options and so explains why some
moral questions cannot be resolved. Gert describes the two-step
procedure that is used in moral decisions and judgments, and he
shows that moral rules cannot be understood independently of the
system in which they are embedded. Although his moral theory is
sophisticated, it is presented with a clarity that will appeal to
undergraduate and graduate students alike, as well as anyone with a
general interest in applied ethics.
In this new edition, Gert perfects the consistency of his views by
presenting his argument in greater detail; he also revises the text
in light of a critical book and two symposia dedicated to his
theory that have surfaced since the book's last publication. This
is the definitive edition to the work that has received so much
attention and acclaim.
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(Hardcover)
Anthony Bash; Foreword by Martyn Percy
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This book looks at Kierkegaard with a fresh perspective shaped by
the history of ideas, framed by the terms romanticism and
modernism. 'Modernism' here refers to the kind of intellectual and
literary modernism associated with Georg Brandes, and such later
nineteenth and early twentieth century figures as J. P. Jacobsen,
Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Ibsen (all often associated with Kierkegaard
in early secondary literature), and the young Georg Lukacs. This
movement, currently attracting increasing scholarly attention, fed
into such varied currents of twentieth century thought as
Bolshevism (as in Lukacs himself), fascism, and the early
existentialism of, e.g., Shestov and the radical culture journal
The Brenner (in which Kierkegaard featured regularly, and whose
readers included Martin Heidegger). Each of these movements has,
arguably, its own 'Romantic' aspect and Kierkegaard thus emerges as
a figure who holds together or in whom are reflected both the
aspirations and contradictions of early romanticism and its later
nineteenth and twentieth century inheritors. Kierkegaard's specific
'staging' of his authorship in the contemporary life of Copenhagen,
then undergoing a rapid transformation from being the backward
capital of an absolutist monarchy to a modern, cosmopolitan city,
provides a further focus for the volume. In this situation the
early Romantic experience of nature as providing a source of
healing and an experience of unambiguous life is transposed into a
more complex and, ultimately, catastrophic register. In
articulating these tensions, Kierkegaard's authorship provided a
mirror to his age but also anticipated and influenced later
generations who wrestled with their own versions of this situation.
This textbook describes and explains the fundamentals of applying
empirical methods for theory building and theory testing in
marketing research. The authors explain the foundations in
philosophy of science and the various methodological approaches to
readers who are working empirically with the purpose of developing
and testing theories in marketing. The primary target group of the
book are graduate students and PhD students who are preparing their
empirical research projects, e.g. for a master thesis or a
dissertation.
Longing and Letting Go explores and compares the energies of desire
and non-attachment in the writings of Hadewijch, a
thirteenth-century Christian Beguine, and Mirabai, a
sixteenth-century Hindu bhakta. Through an examination of the
relational power of their respective mystical poetics of longing,
the book invites interreligious meditation in the middle spaces of
longing as a resource for an ethic of social justice: passionate
non-attachment thus surfaces as an interreligious value and
practice in the service of a less oppressive world. Mirabai and
Hadewijch are both read through the primary comparative framework
of viraha-bhakti, a mystical eroticism from Mirabai's Vaisnava
Hindu tradition that fosters communal experiences of longing.
Mirabai's songs of viraha-bhakti are conversely read through the
lens of Hadewijch's concept of "noble unfaith," which will be
construed as a particular version of passionate non-attachment.
Reading back and forth across the traditions, the comparative
currents move into the thematics of apophatic theological
anthropology, comparative feminist ethics, and religiously plural
identities. Judith Butler provides a philosophically complementary
schema through which to consider how the mystics' desire, manifest
in the grief of separation and the erotic bliss of near union,
operates as a force of "dispossession" that creates the very
conditions for non-attachment. Hadewijch's and Mirabai's practices
of longing, read in terms of Butler's concept of dispossession,
offer clues for a lived ethic that encourages desire for the
flourishing of the world, without that passion consuming the world,
the other, or the self. Longing-in its vulnerable, relational,
apophatic, dispossessive aspects-informs a lived ethic of
passionate non-attachment, which holds space for the desires of
others in an interrelated, fragile world. When configured as
performative relationality and applied to the discipline of
comparative theology, practices of longing decenter the self and
allow for the emergence of dynamic, even plural, religious
identities.
In this book, Charles Bellinger draws on the thought of Søren Kierkegaard and Rene Girard in search of a Christian understanding of the roots of violence. Utilizing Kierkegaard's idea of sin as the evasion of the call to become oneself before God, he argues that the basic motive that impels human beings toward acts of violence is a refusal to grow spiritually. He finds congruencies between Kierkegaard's concept and the Girardian theory of mimetic desire and scapegoating. From these two sources he creates a model which he applies to a consideration of the problem of violent acts committed by Christians throughout history. Such episodes as the Crusades and the Inquisition, says Bellinger, reveal the failure of ostensible Christians to live in accordance with the insights of biblical revelation.
In recent years, many important moral, social, and political issues
have come under philosophical scrutiny, with the result that
applied or practical ethics has become one of the largest areas of
growth in philosophy. These specially commissioned essays by many
of the leading figures in applied ethics track that growth. They
provide substantive discussions of the pressing issues that orient
around the topics in question, and, collectively, constitute an
in-depth, state-of-the-art account of present-day philosophical
thinking in practical ethics. A Companion to Applied Ethics is the
most ambitious and authoritative account of applied ethics
available. The volume will serve professionals as an indispensable
resource, and, because it is written accessibly, will provide
students and educated laymen with an excellent guide to the current
state of play in substantive discussion by philosophers of major
moral, social, and political issues.
Cursory allusions to the relation between Kierkegaard and
Wittgenstein are common in philosophical literature, but there has
been little in the way of serious and comprehensive commentary on
the relationship of their ideas. Genia Schoenbaumsfeld closes this
gap and offers new readings of Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's
conceptions of philosophy and religious belief. Chapter one
documents Kierkegaard's influence on Wittgenstein, while chapters
two and three provide trenchant criticisms of two prominent
attempts to compare the two thinkers, those by D. Z. Phillips and
James Conant. In chapter four, Schoenbaumsfeld develops
Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's concerted criticisms of certain
standard conceptions of religious belief, and defends their own
positive conception against the common charges of 'irrationalism'
and 'fideism'. As well as contributing to contemporary debate about
how to read Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's work, A Confusion of
the Spheres addresses issues which not only concern scholars of
Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard, but anyone interested in the
philosophy of religion, or the ethical aspects of philosophical
practice as such.
A new account of Aristotle's Ethics, this book argues for the
central importance of the concept of techne or craft in Aristotle's
moral theory. Exploring the importance of techne in the Platonic
and pre-Platonic intellectual context in which Aristotle was
writing, Tom Angier here shows that this concept has an important
role in Aristotle's Ethics that has rarely been studied in
Anglo-American scholarship. Through close-analysis of the primary
texts, this book uses the focus on techne to systematically
critique and renew Aristotelian moral philosophy. Techne in
Aristotle's Ethics provides a novel and challenging approach to one
of the Ancient World's most enduring intellectual legacies.
Intersections of Value investigates the universal human need for
aesthetic experience. It examines three appreciative contexts where
aesthetic value plays a central role: art, nature, and the
everyday. However, no important appreciative context or practice is
completely centered on a single value. Hence, the book explores the
way the aesthetic interacts with moral, cognitive, and functional
values in these contexts. The account of aesthetic appreciation is
complemented by analyses of the cognitive and ethical value of art,
the connection between environmental ethics and aesthetics, and the
degree to which the aesthetic value of everyday artefacts derives
from their basic practical functions. Robert Stecker devotes
special attention to art as an appreciative context because it is
an especially rich arena where different values interact. There is
an important connection between artistic value and aesthetic value,
but it is a mistake to reduce the former to the latter. Rather,
artistic value should be seen as complex and pluralistic, composed
not only of aesthetic but also ethical, cognitive, and
art-historical values.
How do we see and act justly in the world? In what ways can we
ethically respond to social and economic crisis? How do we address
the desperation that exists in the new forms of violence and
atrocity? These are all questions at the heart of Justice and Love,
a philosophical dialogue on how to imagine and act in a more just
world by theologian Rowan Williams and philosopher Mary Zournazi.
Looking at different religious and philosophical traditions,
Williams and Zournazi argue for the re-invigoration and enriching
of the language of justice and, by situating justice alongside
other virtues, they extend our everyday vocabularies on what is
just. Drawing on examples ranging from the Paris Attacks, the
Syrian War, and the European Migrant Crisis to Brexit and the US
Presidential elections, Williams and Zournazi reflect on justice as
a process: a condition of being, a responsiveness to others, rather
than a cold distribution of fact. By doing so, they explore the
love and patience needed for social healing and the imagination
required for new ways of relating and experiencing the world.
Nearly four decades after a revolution, experiencing one of the
longest wars in contemporary history, facing political and
ideological threats by regional radicals such as ISIS and the
Taliban, and having succeeded in negotiations with six world powers
over her nuclear program, Iran appears as an experienced Muslim
country seeking to build bridges with its Sunni neighbours as well
as with the West. Ethics of War and Peace in Iran and Shi'i Islam
explores the wide spectrum of theoretical approaches and practical
attitudes concerning the justifications, causes and conduct of war
in Iranian-Shi'i culture. By examining primary and secondary
sources, and investigating longer lasting factors and questions
over circumstantial ones, Mohammed Jafar Amir Mahallati seeks to
understand modern Iranian responses to war and peace. His work is
the first in its field to look into the ethics of war and peace in
Iran and Shi'i Islam. It provides a prism through which the binary
source of the Iranian national and religious identity informs
Iranian response to modernity. By doing so, the author reveals that
a syncretic and civilization-conscious soul in modern Iran is
re-emerging.
Criticism and Compassion: The Ethics and Politics of Claudia Card
offers a unique perspective on the range of issues explored by Card
during her distinguished career in philosophy. Investigates her
work as an early leader in the development of feminist philosophy,
challenging many preconceptions about the society's norms regarding
gender, marriage, and motherhood Crossing many disciplinary
boundaries, her concept of social death has come to play a
significant role in multidisciplinary field of genocide studies
This volume combines many of Claudia Card's important essays with
recently commissioned essays by leading philosophers whose work has
been influenced by Card The full scope of Card's philosophy is
presented here - both in her own words and those of her critics and
interpreters
'May you live in interesting times' was made famous by Sir Austen
Chamberlain. The premise is that 'interesting times' are times of
upheaval, conflict and insecurity - troubled times. With the
growing numbers of displaced populations and the rise in the
politics of fear and hate, we are facing challenges to our very
'species-being'. Papers in the volume include ethnographic studies
on the 'refugee crisis', the 'financial crisis' and the 'rule of
law crisis' in the Mediterranean as well as the crisis of violence
and hunger in South America.
This is a philosophical exploration of the moral issues raised by
the use of private military contractors in war. The presence of
contractors on today's battlefields is without question one of the
most significant developments in modern warfare. While many
contractors perform relatively benign tasks on behalf of the
military, controversy rages around those contractors who offer
services that involve the use of armed force. The rise of the
private military industry raises some difficult issues. For
example, Jeremy Scahill, one of the industry's most vociferous
critics, questions whether the outsourcing of military force is not
'a subversion of the very existence of the nation-state and of
principles of sovereignty'. These questions are at essence
philosophical challenges to the existence of the private military
industry. In "Just Warriors, Inc.", philosopher and ethicist
Deane-Peter Baker argues that, contrary to popular assumptions, a
compelling moral and philosophical case can be made in favour of
the ongoing utilization of the services that these 'private
warriors' offer. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in
moving beyond the hyperbole and exploring in depth the real
questions that should be asked about the privatisation of military
force. "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.
On the Genealogy of Morality, the classic three essay treatise of
Friedrich Nietzsche, is considered by scholars to be one of the
author's philosophic masterworks. This astounding work represents
the maturity of Nietzsche's ideas, and consists of three distinct
essays. In each, Nietzsche isolates and expands upon ideas he
expressed in Beyond Good and Evil. Nietzsche juxtaposes ideas of
weakness and strength, and notions of human preconception as
generated over millenia of hierarchy inclusive of slavery, to
demonstrate an evolution of ideas beyond traditional duality. This
text controversially introduces the 'blond beast' - a a forebear
for Nietzsche's posthumous association with Nazism and racial
superiority. Nietzsche demonstrates how people with allegiance to
ascetic ideals gained traction in society. He proceeds to discount
science as an opposing influence, together with historians and idle
thinkers, advocating for criticism of what is accepted as truth,
and a replacement for flawed definitions.
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