"Democracy and Education" is one of John Dewey's most famous classical works and is a landmark of progressive theory. He drove hard to develop strategies and methods for training students for social responsibility. Dewey is not only a giant of modern educational theory but of progressive humanitarian thought. He believed that democracy was both a means and an end to building a just society. In "Freedom and Culture" Dewey believed that humankind could keep a firm grip on it's destiny only if critical intelligence of the scientific method and it's democratic counterpart were emphasized and promoted. Freedom of inquiry, speech, cultural pluralism and a willingness to co-operate in the pursuit of shared values and ideals would be the springboard for social development. A Collector's Edition.

This accessible introduction to religious ethics focuses on the major forms of moral reasoning encompassing the three 'Abrahamic' religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Draws on a range of moral issues, such as examples arising from friendship, marriage, homosexuality, lying, forgiveness and its limits, the death penalty, the environment, warfare, and the meaning of work, career, and vocationLooks at both ethical reasoning and importantly, "how" that reasoning reveals insights into a religious traditionInvestigates the resources available to address common problems confronting Abrahamic faiths, and how each faith explains and defends its moral viewpointsOffering concrete topics for interfaith discussions, this is a timely and insightful introduction to a fast-growing field of interest

Lisa Bellantoni argues that contemporary bioethics divides into two logically incommensurable positions: a cult of rights, which identifies the worth of human life with our autonomy, and a cult of life, which identifies human worth with the possession of a soul, and thereby, of human dignity.

The study of altruism, morality, and social solidarity is an emerging field of scholarship and research in sociology. This handbook will function as a foundational source for this subject matter and field, and as an impetus to its further development.

This work defends two main theses. First, modern Western pornographic fiction functions as a self-deceptive vehicle for sexual or blood-lustful arousal; and second, that its emergence owes as much to Puritan Protestantism and its inner- or this-worldly asceticism as does the emergence of modern rationalized capitalism.

An interdisciplinary collection of comparative essays which look at aspects of the thought of Edwards and Franklin and consider their places in American culture.

"Intelligently addresses several of the most important unresolved issues and controversies about altruism."
--"The Journal of Politics"

All but buried for most of the twentieth century, the concept of altruism has re-emerged in this last quarter as a focus of intense scholarly inquiry and general public interest. In the wake of increased consciousness of the human potential for destructiveness, both scholars and the general public are seeking interventions which will not only inhibit the process, but may in fact chart a new creative path toward a global community. Largely initiated by a group of pioneering social psychologists, early questions on altruism centered on its motivation and development primarily in the context of contrived laboratory experiments. Although publications on the topic have been considerable over the last several years, and now represent the work of representatives from many disciplines of inquiry, this volume is distinguished from others in several ways.

"Embracing the Other" emerged primarily as a response to recent research on an extraordinary manifestation of real-life altruism, namely to recent studies of non-Jewish rescuers of Jews during World War II. It is the work of a multi-disciplinary and international group of scholars, including philosophers, social psychologists, historians, sociologists, and educators, challenging several prevailing conceptual definitions and motivational sources of altruism. The book combines both new empirical and historical research as well as theoretical and philosophical approaches and includes a lengthy section addressing the practical implications of current thinking on altruism for society at large. The resultis a multi-textured work, addressing critical issues in varied disciplines, while centered on shared themes.

This book is devoted to the welfare of invertebrates, which make up 99% of animal species on earth. Addressing animal welfare, we do not often think of invertebrates; in fact we seldom consider them to be deserving of welfare evaluation. And yet we should. Welfare is a broad concern for any animal that we house, control or utilize - and we utilize invertebrates a lot. The Authors start with an emphasis on the values of non-vertebrate animals and discuss the need for a book on the present topic. The following chapters focus on specific taxa, tackling questions that are most appropriate to each one. What is pain in crustaceans, and how might we prevent it? How do we ensure that octopuses are not bored? What do bees need to thrive, pollinate our plants and give us honey? Since invertebrates have distinct personalities and some social animals have group personalities, how do we consider this? And, as in the European Union's application of welfare consideration to cephalopods, how do the practical regulatory issues play out? We have previously relegated invertebrates to the category 'things' and did not worry about their treatment. New research suggest that some invertebrates such as cephalopods and crustaceans can have pain and suffering, might also have consciousness and awareness. Also, good welfare is going to mean different things to spiders, bees, corals, etc. This book is taking animal welfare in a very different direction. Academics and students of animal welfare science, those who keep invertebrates for scientific research or in service to the goals of humans, as well as philosophers will find this work thought-provoking, instructive and informative.

Having roots as a specialized philosophical movement at Oxford University in the early 1970s, critical animal studies is now taking shape as a wide-open, multidisciplinary endeavor through which scholars across the humanities, sciences, and social sciences, and others ranging from creative writers to architects, are joining together to address issues related to today s unprecedented subjection of animals. Introducing this emerging field, Dawne McCance describes the wide range of analysis and approaches represented, looking at much-debated practices such as industrialized or factory farming of animals, handling and slaughter, animal experimentation, wildlife management, animal captivity, global genomics, meat-eating, and animal sacrifice. McCance equally focuses on many of the theoretical and ethical problems that recur across the field, raising critical questions about prevailing approaches to animal ethics, and inviting new ways of thinking about and responding to animals."

New scientific and technological developments challenge us to reconsider our moral world order. This book offers an original philosophical approach to this issue: it makes a distinctive contribution to the development of a relational approach to moral status by re-defining the problem in a social and phenomenological way.

This book is a novel contribution to contemporary research on Simone de Beauvoir, and a defense of the importance of the humanities. It reveals previously unexplored dimensions of Beauvoir's work by exposing her as a significant and inspiring humanist thinker. These essays argue that her works and influence testify to the transformative potential of humanistic research.

Media, Markets, and Morals provides an original ethical framework designed specifically for evaluating ethical issues in the media, including new media. The authors apply their account of the moral role of the media, in their dual capacity as information providers for the public good and as businesses run for profit, to specific morally problematic practices and question how ethical behavior can be promoted within the industry. * Brings together experts in the fields of media studies and media ethics, information ethics, and professional ethics * Offers an original ethical framework designed specifically for evaluating ethical issues in the media, including new media * Builds upon and further develops an innovative theoretical model for examining and evaluating media corruption and methods of media anti-corruption previously developed by authors Spence and Quinn * Discloses and clarifies the inherent ethical nature of information and its communication to which the media as providers of information are necessarily committed

This is the first collection of essays in which European and American philosophers explicitly think out their respective contributions and identities as environmental thinkers in the analytic and continental traditions. The American/European, as well as Analytic/Continental collaboration here bears fruit helpful for further theorizing and research. The essays group around three well-defined areas of questioning all focusing on the amelioration/management of environmentally, historically and traditionally diminished landscapes. The first part deals with differences between New World and the Old World perspectives on nature and landscape restoration in general, the second focuses on the meaning of ecological restoration of cultural landscapes, and the third on the meaning of the wolf and of wildness. It does so in a way that the strengths of each philosophical school-continental and analytic-comes to the fore in order to supplement the other's approach. This text is open to educated readers across all disciplines, particularly those interested in restoration/adaptation ecology, the cultural construction of place and landscape, the ongoing conversation about wilderness, the challenges posed to global environmental change. The text may also be a gold mine for doctoral students looking for dissertation projects in environmental philosophy that are inclusive of continental and analytic traditions. This text is rich in innovative approaches to the questions they raise that are reasonably well thought out. The fact that the essays in each section really do resonate with one another directly is also intellectually exciting and very helpful in working out the full dimensions of each question raised in the volume.

This text offers a review of historical traditions of international ethical and political theory in the light of modern developments in political philosophy. McCarthy provides a defence of natural law tradition, and in response to the criticism of natural law that, along with Kantianism, it is too abstract to produce a substantive account of justice and rights, constructs an argument for basic, agency-grounded rights. Through his study, the author attacks "realism" and the modern "cosmopolitan" theories that have been too little debated.

Robert Audi here presents an ethical theory that uniquely integrates naturalistic and rationalistic elements. He develops his theory in four areas: moral epistemology, the metaphysics of ethics, moral psychology, and the foundations of ethics. Including both new and published work, he sets forth a moderate intuitionism, clarifies the relation between reason and motivation, constructs a theory of intrinsic value and its place in moral obligation, and presents a sophisticated account of moral justification. The concluding chapter articulates a new normative framework built from both Kantian and intuitionist elements.

Are there things we should value because they are, quite simply, good? If so, such things might be said to have "absolute goodness." They would be good simpliciter or full stop - not good for someone, not good of a kind, but nonetheless good (period). They might also be called "impersonal values." The reason why we ought to value such things, if there are any, would merely be the fact that they are, quite simply, good things. In the twentieth century, G. E. Moore was the great champion of absolute goodness, but he is not the only philosopher who posits the existence and importance of this property.
Against these friends of absolute goodness, Richard Kraut here builds on the argument he made in What is Good and Why, demonstrating that goodness is not a reason-giving property - in fact, there may be no such thing. It is, he holds, an insidious category of practical thought, because it can be and has been used to justify what is harmful and condemn what is beneficial. Impersonal value draws us away from what is good for persons. His strategy for opposing absolute goodness is to search for domains of practical reasoning in which it might be thought to be needed, and this leads him to an examination of a wide variety of moral phenomena: pleasure, knowledge, beauty, love, cruelty, suicide, future generations, bio-diversity, killing in self-defense, and the extinction of our species. Even persons, he proposes, should not be said to have absolute value. The special importance of human life rests instead on the great advantages that such lives normally offer.
"When one reads this, one sees the possibility of real philosophical progress. If Kraut is right, I'd be wrong to say that this book is good, period. Or even great, period. But I will say that, as a work of philosophy, and for those who read it, it is excellent indeed." --Russ Shafer-Landau, University of Wisconsin-Madison