At a time when rapidly evolving technologies, political turmoil, and the tensions inherent in multiculturalism and globalization are reshaping historical consciousness, what is the proper role for historians and their work? By way of an answer, the contributors to this volume offer up an illuminating collective meditation on the idea of ethos and its relevance for historical practice. These intellectually adventurous essays demonstrate how ethos-a term evoking a society's "fundamental character" as well as an ethical appeal to knowledge and commitment-can serve as a conceptual lodestar for history today, not only as a narrative, but as a form of consciousness and an ethical-political orientation.

Particularism and the Space of Moral Reasons critically assesses the startling idea that our moral reasoning does not need to use moral principles. If we don't have principles, how do we work out what to do? This book examines 'moral particularism', a controversial idea at the forefront of contemporary moral theory.

The Key to Character looks deep into a major problem that has plagued many for years. A misunderstanding of the differences between personality and character is an underlying cause of everything from identity crises', to feelings of inadequacy, to general feelings of unhappiness. Khalid El Bey does an excellent job of personalizing the content in a way that will be satisfying to the reader, regardless of one's backgroud or station in life. Allow the Key to Character to be your guide towards finding you personal freedom.

Shaw addresses the 'ethical turn' in contemporary sociological thinking, by exploring the contribution of sociology and the social sciences to bioethical debates about morality and tissue exchange practices.

Who or what determines the right to die? Do advancing reproductive technologies change reproductive rights? What forces influence cultural standards of beauty? How do discipline, punishment, and torture reflect our attitudes about the human body?
In this challenging new book, Jean Bethke Elshtain, a nationally recognized scholar in political science and philosophy, and J. Timothy Cloyd, a strong new voice in social and political science, have assembled a collection of thought-provoking essays on these issues written by some of the finest minds of our day.

It is well over a decade since John Fischer and Mark Ravizza - and before them, Jay Wallace and Daniel Dennett - defended responsibility from the threat of determinism. But defending responsibility from determinism is a potentially endless and largely negative enterprise; it can go on for as long as dissenting voices remain, and although such work strengthens the theoretical foundations of these theories, it won't necessarily build anything on top of those foundations, nor will it move these theories into new territory or explain how to apply them to practical contexts.

To this end, the papers in this volume address these more positive challenges by exploring how compatibilist responsibility theory can be extended and/or applied in a range of practical contexts.For instance, how is the narrow philosophical concept of responsibility that was defended from the threat of determinism related to the plural notions of responsibility present in everyday discourse, and how might this more fine-grained understanding of responsibility open up new vistas and challenges for compatibilist theory? What light might compatibilism shed, and what light might be shed upon it, by political debates about access to public welfare in the context of responsibility for one's own health, and by legal debates about the impact of self-intoxication on responsibility. Does compatibilist theory, which was originally designed to cater for analysis of individual actions, scale to scenarios that involve group action and collective responsibility - e.g. for harms due to human-induced climate change?

This book's chapters deal with a range of theoretical problems discussed in classic compatibilist literature - e.g. the relationship between responsibility and capacity, the role of historical tracing in discounting the exculpatory value of incapacities, and the justifiability of retributive punishment. But instead of motivating their discussions by focusing on the alleged threat that determinism poses to responsibility, these chapters' authors have animated their discussions by tackling important practical problems which crop up in contemporary debates about responsibility.

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Friendship was recognized as a central moral value in the classical period, but it was dismissed from medieval, modern, and twentieth century moral theories. This book argues that this dismissal is unjustifiable. The validity of this claim is established in four steps. First, it proposes the concept of moral paradigm. This concept enables us to explore the source of moral value and to provide a criterion for the evaluation of the adequacy of moral theory. Second, the book explains why medieval, modern and twentieth century moral theorists neglected friendship as a central moral value in their analysis of moral behavior and why this neglect was unjustifiable. Third, it explains why the classical moral philosophers viewed friendship as a central moral value. Fourth, it argues that friendship is an ontological need, therefore, a necessary condition of the moral life. This need is implicitly recognized in the moral paradigms that underlie the moral theories of the medieval, modern, and twentieth century moral theories. Accordingly it cannot be neglected in the process of moral theorizing.

Mathematical Theologies uncovers the lost history of Christianity's encounters with Pythagorean religious ideas before the Renaissance. David Albertson shows that the writings of Thierry of Chartres (d. 1157) and Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464) represent a robust Christian Neopythagoreanism that reconceived the Trinity and the Incarnation within the framework of Greek number theory. Their sophisticated mathematical theologies challenge contemporary assumptions about the relation of religion and modern science. David Albertson surveys the slow formation of Neopythagorean theologies of the divine One from the Old Academy through Middle Platonism into the Middle Ages. Against this backdrop, Thierry of Chartres's writings stand out as the first authentic retrieval and incorporation of Neopythagoreanism within western Christianity. By reading Boethius and Augustine against the grain, Thierry reactivated a suppressed potential in ancient Christian traditions that harmonized the divine Word with notions of divine Number. Despite fame during his lifetime, Thierry's ideas remained well outside the medieval mainstream.Nicholas rediscovered anonymous fragments of Thierry and his medieval readers, and drew on them liberally in his first mystical treatise. Yet tensions among this collection of sources drove Cusanus to try to reconcile their competing understandings of Word and Number. Over three decades Nicholas eventually learned how to articulate traditional Christian dogmas within a Neopythagorean cosmology of mathematized nature - anticipating the situation of modern Christian thought after the seventeenth century. Mathematical Theologies skillfully guides readers through the newest scholarship on Pythagoreanism, the school of Chartres, and Cusanus, while revising some of the categories that have separated those fields in the past.

An African-American single mother is harassed and threatened with violence until she moves out of an all 'white' neighborhood. A hate crime has occurred and we wonder, who is responsible? Is it just the few people who actively threatened the woman and her children, or does responsibility extend further? This book explores these questions in detail and ultimately finds that responsibility may extend far beyond active perpetrators.
Within philosophy, these kinds of questions are typically discussed in the debate over 'collective' or 'group' responsibility. This book reviews the debate and examines the standard objections to group responsibility. It also evaluates some currently available accounts but finds them unsatisfying in various ways. Ultimately, drawing on work in social psychology, narrative ethics, and feminist philosophy, the author presents a new account which answers the standard objections while also giving practical guidance to individuals who take their group-related responsibilities seriously.

Church Ethics and Its Organizational Context is the first book to provide a broadly interdisciplinary approach to understanding the leadership crisis in the Catholic Church in the wake of the sex abuse scandal and how it was handled. Well-known scholars, religious clergy, and laymen in the trenches of church formation and leadership come together from the disciplines of organizational behavior, theology, sociology, history, and law, to foster the creation of a new code of ethics that is both ecclesial and professional. Touching on issues of governance, authority, accountability, and transparency, this volume goes on to specifically explore whether and how professional ethics can shape the identity and actions of Church leaders, ministers, and their congregations. While evoked by the sex scandal in the Church, the essays in this book raise questions that have implications far beyond this current issue, to much broader issues such as the role of professionalism in ethics and what it means for an organization to engage in moral action.

Progressive theorists and activists insist that contemporary capitalism is deeply flawed from a normative point of view. However, most accept the liberal egalitarian thesis that the serious shortcomings of market societies (financial excess, inequality, and so on) could be overcome with proper political regulation. Building on Marx's legacy, Tony Smith argues in Beyond Liberal Egalitarianism that advocates of this thesis (Rawls, Habermas, Stiglitz, et al.) lack an adequate concept of capital and the state. These theorists also fail to comprehend new developments in world history ensuring that the 'destructive' aspects of capitalism increasingly outweigh whatever 'creative' elements it might continue to possess. Smith concludes that a normative social theory adequate to the twenty-first century must explicitly and unequivocally embrace socialism.

Would it be cool to see woolly mammoth alive one day? Disappeared species have always fascinated the human mind. A new discussion of using genomic technologies to reverse extinction and to help in conservation has been sparked. This volume studies the question philosophically. The collection consists of an introduction, epilogue and nine new articles written by philosophers. The intended readership consists of academic philosophers, ecologists and others interested in conservation biology.

Diplomacy, Funding and Animal Welfare is a practical guide to the best diplomatic and negotiation practices needed to convince governments and international institutions to effectively protect animals, which also introduces new approaches to fundraising. Animal protection advocates are prepared for speaking to diplomats and government officials in any setting, and to combatants in war zones. The book mainly focuses on approaching local and national governments, the United Nations system, the international Red Cross movement and systems related to other international organizations that can help animals, often in surprising ways. The reader will learn the rules of "diplomatic protocol", and much about the rules and procedures of major international bodies. To provide balance and real world relevance, the guide draws on a compilation of the author's extensive activities across a range of development, animal welfare, emergency management and climate issues in government and in the NGO world, as well as interviews with scholars and officials from NGOs, diplomatic missions, the United Nations, the Red Cross, governments and corporations.

Mainstream philosophical discussions of ethics usually involve either a search for a problem-solving theory (such as utilitarianism), or an exploration of ontological status (of things like obligations or reasons). This book will argue that such efforts are often misplaced. Instead, the proper starting point should always be the actual words and deeds of ordinary people in ordinary disagreements; for the ethical concepts in play can only derive their full meaning within the context of ordinary human lives. This will require a better understanding of the 'ordinary', and of what it means to lead a life.

Christian Miller presents a new account of moral character. Most of our friends, colleagues, and even family members are not virtuous people. They do not have virtues such as compassion, honesty, or courage. But at the same time, they are not vicious people either. They do not have vices such as cruelty, dishonesty, or cowardice. Instead most people today have characters which do not qualify as either virtuous or vicious. They have many positive moral features, but also many negative ones too. Our characters are decidedly mixed, and are much more complex than we might have thought. On the one hand, many of us would kill an innocent person in a matter of minutes under pressure from an authority figure as part of a psychology study. Or we would pretend to not see someone collapse from an apparent heart attack across the street. Or we would make a wide circle around someone's dropped papers rather than stop to help pick them up. Yet it is also true that many of us would help another person when we are by ourselves and hear sounds of a non-ambiguous emergency in the next room. Or we would come to the aid of a friend when feeling empathy for her need, and do so for altruistic rather than egoistic reasons. In Moral Character: An Empirical Theory Miller outlines a new picture of our moral character which involves what are called Mixed Character Traits. This picture can help make sense of how most of us are less than virtuous people but also morally better than the vicious.

What should society or individuals do when the compelling dictates of personal conscience conflict with the law? To what extent should lawyers and lawmakers be influenced by considerations of morality? Are there principles that go beyond legal jurisdiction to justify acts of civil disobedience? Is it right to violate the laws of society when they are opposed to personal moral convictions? Is it ever appropriate for religious considerations to influence lawyers or the law? Few questions have had and will continue to have a more compelling effect on the human community. For this reason the editors have brought together this collection of intellectually stimulating articles, which grapple with the tough issues involving morality, justice, and the law. Part One contains articles on the connection between morality and the law by such eminent thinkers as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Cass R. Sunstein, and others. Part Two focuses on issues of morality and lawyering by looking at such questions as how lawyers should represent clients with whom they disagree ethically and how criminal defence lawyers can represent guilty clients. This section also addresses the recent law and religion movement. Part Three addresses the question concerning when civil disobedience is justified and includes an important essay by Ronald Dworkin. Part Four explores moral and legal questions related to capital punishment and includes the Supreme Court's most recent decision on capital punishment, in which the majority and the dissent had radically different views. Finally, Part Five examines the highly charged debate about immigration. This balanced anthology will be of interest to philosophers, legal scholars, and anyone concerned about the relation of law to morality.

This study charts relationships between moral claims and audience response in medieval exemplary works by such poets as Chaucer, Gower, Robert Henryson, and several anonymous scribes. In late medieval England, exemplary works make one of the strongest possible claims for the social value of poetic fiction. Studying this debate reveals a set of local literary histories, based on both canonical and non-canonical texts, that complicate received notions of the didactic Middle Ages, the sophisticated Renaissance, and the fallow fifteenth century in between.

Theories of generosity, or gift giving, are becoming increasingly important in recent work in philosophy and religion. Stephen Webb seeks to build on this renewed interest by surveying a distinctively modern and postmodern approach to the issue of generosity, and then developing a theological framework for it.

"The Practice of Ethics" is an outstanding guide to the burgeoning field of applied ethics, and offers a coherent narrative that is both theoretically and pragmatically grounded for framing practical issues.
Discusses a broad range of contemporary issues such as racism, euthanasia, animal rights, and gun control.
Argues that ethics must be put into practice in order to be effective.
Draws upon relevant insights from history, psychology, sociology, law and biology, as well as philosophy.
An excellent companion to LaFollette's authoritative anthology, "Ethics in Practice: An Anthology, Third Edition "(Blackwell, 2006).