Examines the meaning of "life" in an era of emerging biotechnology.

What happens to prevailing beliefs about the uniqueness of individual life when life can be cloned? Or to traditional understandings of family relationships when a child can have up to five parents? These are some of the questions addressed by Valerie Hartouni in her consideration of the cultural effects of new reproductive technologies as reflected in video images, popular journalism, scientific debates, legal briefs, and policy decisions.

In Cultural Conceptions, Hartouni tracks the circulation and communication of various myths, images, and stories pertaining to new reproductive technologies and their effects, both imagined and real, during the past two decades. While addressing topics ranging from surrogacy and cloning to adoption, ultrasound imaging, and abortion, Hartouni looks to American popular culture for clues to what these new -- and not so new -- reproductive practices tell us about issues of personhood.

Hartouni investigates the emergence of new anxieties about the nature of selfhood as well as the recurrence of age-old myths regarding individuality, sexuality, property, and family. She argues that both are being played out in cultural contests over the meaning and organization of women's reproductive capacity. In her discussion of provocative issues such as The Bell Curve controversy and the Baby M. case, Hartouni traces the dialectic of crisis and containment unleashed by reproductive technologies. Ultimately, however, Cultural Conceptions argues that the anxieties that surround new reproductive technologies provide openings for alternative understandings and practices of life to emerge andchallenge those currently in place.

A thoughtful, daring, and original look at this complex set of issues, Cultural Conceptions provides an much-needed guide to our nation's psyche as we approach the new millennium.

This book attempts to open up a path towards a phenomenological theory of values (more technically, a phenomenological axiology). By drawing on everyday experience, and dissociating the notion of value from that of tradition, it shows how emotional sensibility can be integrated to practical reason. This project was prompted by the persuasion that the fragility of democracy, and the current public irrelevance of the ideal principles which support it, largely depend on the inability of modern philosophy to overcome the well-entrenched skepticism about the power of practical reason. The book begins with a phenomenology of cynical consciousness, continues with a survey of still influential theories of value rooted in 20th century philosophy, and finally offers an outline of a bottom-up axiology that revives the anti-skeptical legacy of phenomenology, without ignoring the standards set by contemporary metaethics.

In this book, Cecilea Mun introduces an innovative meta-framework for conducting interdisciplinary research in the science of emotion, broadly construed, as well as a framework for a particular kind of theory of emotion. She provides new solutions and arguments in support of an embodied cognitive approach to resolving a wide range of problems, including those concerning skepticism, the place of ordinary intuitions for the science of emotion, intentionality, the rationality of emotions, naturalizing knowledge, and the debate between philosophical cognitive and noncognitive theories of emotion. Her solutions include a revolutionary, unifying, interdisciplinary taxonomy of theories of emotion, which allows one to understand the discourse in the science of emotion as a debate between four fundamental types of theories: realism, instrumentalism, eliminativism, and eliminative-realism. Her original proposal for a conception of intentionality that makes sense of our ordinary intuitions is also combined with her comprehensive account of rationality to articulate a groundbreaking understanding of the structure of human rationality. All of the contributions made herein, together, provide the foundations for a profound understanding of emotions, including as a kind of embodied language.

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.

Jonas Olson presents a critical survey of moral error theory, the view that there are no moral facts and so all moral claims are false. In Part I (History), he explores the historical context of the debate, and discusses the moral error theories of David Hume and of some more or less influential twentieth century philosophers, including Axel Hagerstroem, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Richard Robinson. He argues that the early cases for moral error theory are suggestive but that they would have been stronger had they included something like J. L. Mackie's arguments that moral properties and facts are metaphysically queer. Part II (Critique) focuses on these arguments. Olson identifies four queerness arguments, concerning supervenience, knowledge, motivation, and irreducible normativity, and goes on to establish that while the first three are not compelling, the fourth has considerable force, especially when combined with debunking explanations of why we tend to believe that there are moral properties and facts when in fact there are none. One conclusion of Part II is that a plausible error theory takes the form of an error theory about irreducible normativity. In Part III (Defence), Olson considers challenges according to which that kind of error theory has problematic ramifications regarding hypothetical reasons, epistemic reasons, and deliberation. He ends his discussion with a consideration of the implications of moral error theory for ordinary moral thought and talk, and for normative theorizing.

Reading Augustine presents concise, personal readings of St. Augustine of Hippo from leading philosophers and religion scholars. Augustine of Hippo knew that this fallen world is a place of sadness and suffering. In such a world, he determined that compassion is the most suitable and virtuous response. Its transformative powers could be accessed through the mind and its memories, through the healing of the Incarnation, and through the discernment of Christians who are forced to navigate through a corrupt and deceptive world. Susan Wessel considers Augustine's theology of compassion by examining his personal experience of loss and his reflections concerning individual and corporate suffering in the context of the human condition and salvation.

This book addresses how Plato, Kant, and Iris Murdoch (each in different ways) view the connection aesthetic experience has to morality. While offering an examination of Iris Murdoch's philosophy, it analyses deeply the suggestive links (as well as essential distinctions) between Plato's and Kant's philosophies. Meredith Trexler Drees considers not only Iris Murdoch's concept of unselfing, but also its relationship with Kant's view of Achtung and Plato's view of Eros. In addition, Trexler Drees suggests an extended, and partially amended, version of Murdoch's view, arguing that it is more compatible with a religious way of life than Murdoch herself realized. This leads to an expansion of the overall argument to include Kant's affirmation of religion as an area of life that can be improved through Plato's and Murdoch's vision of how being good and being beautiful can be part of the same life-task.

Mary Midgley is one of the most influential moral philosophers of the twentieth century. Over the last 40 years, Midgley's writings on such central yet controversial topics as human nature, morality, science, animals, the environment, religion, and gender have shaped the landscape of contemporary philosophy. She is celebrated for the complexity, nuance, and sensibility with which she approaches some of the most challenging issues in philosophy without falling into the pitfalls of close-minded extremism. In turn, Midgley's sophisticated treatment of the interconnected and often muddled issues related to human nature has drawn interest from outside the philosophical world, stretching from scientists, artists, theologians, anthropologists, and journalists to the public more broadly. Mary Midgley: An Introduction systematically introduces readers to Midgley's collected thought on the most central and influential areas of her corpus. Through clear and lively engagement with Midgley's work, this volume offers readers accessible explanation, interpretation, and analysis of the concepts and perspectives for which she is best known, most notably her integrated understanding of human nature, her opposition to reductionism and scientism, and her influential conception of our relationship to animals and the wider world. These insights, supplemented by excerpts from original interviews with Midgley herself, provide readers of all backgrounds with an informed understanding and appreciation of Mary Midgley and the philosophical problems to which she has devoted her life's work.

Despite the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, a growing number of countries are interested in expanding or introducing nuclear energy. However, nuclear energy production and nuclear waste disposal give rise to pressing ethical questions that society needs to face. This book takes up this challenge with essays by an international team of scholars focusing on the key issues of risk, justice, and democracy. The essays consider a range of ethical issues, including radiological protection, the influence of gender in the acceptability of nuclear risk, and environmental, international, and intergenerational justice in the context of nuclear energy. They also address the question of when, and under which conditions, nuclear energy should play a role in the world's future supply of electricity, looking at both developing and industrialized countries. The book will interest readers in ethics and political philosophy, social and political sciences, nuclear engineering, and policy studies.

In this important and original interdisciplinary work, well-known environmental philosopher Eric Katz explores technology's role in dominating both nature and humanity. He argues that technology dominates, and hence destroys, the natural world; it dominates, and hence destroys, critical aspects of human life and society. Technology causes an estrangement from nature, and thus a loss of meaning in human life. As a result, humans lose the power to make moral and social choices; they lose the power to control their lives. Katz's argument innovatively connects two distinct areas of thought: the fundamental goal of the Holocaust, including Nazi environmental policy, to heal the degenerate elements of society; and the plan to heal degraded natural systems that informs the contemporary environmental policy of 'ecological restoration'. In both arenas of 'healing,' Katz argues that technological forces drive action, while domination emerges as the prevailing ideology. Katz's work is a plea for the development of a technology that does not dominate and destroy but instead promotes autonomy and freedom.Anne Frank, a victim of Nazi ideology and action, saw the titular tree behind her secret annex as a symbol of freedom and moral goodness. In Katz's argument, the tree represents a free and autonomous nature, resistant to human control and domination. Anne Frank's Tree is rooted in an empirical approach to philosophy, seating complex ethical ideas in an accessible and powerful narrative of historical fact and deeply personal lived experience.