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Books > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Ethics & moral philosophy > General
Every year nine million people are diagnosed with tuberculosis,
every day over 13,400 people are infected with AIDs, and every
thirty seconds malaria kills a child. For most of the world,
critical medications that treat these deadly diseases are scarce,
costly, and growing obsolete, as access to first-line drugs remains
out of reach and resistance rates rise. Rather than focusing
research and development on creating affordable medicines for these
deadly global diseases, pharmaceutical companies instead invest in
commercially lucrative products for more affluent customers. Nicole
Hassoun argues that everyone has a human right to health and to
access to essential medicines, and she proposes the Global Health
Impact (global-health-impact.org/new) system as a means to
guarantee those rights. Her proposal directly addresses the
pharmaceutical industry's role: it rates pharmaceutical companies
based on their medicines' impact on improving global health,
rewarding highly-rated medicines with a Global Health Impact label.
Global Health Impact has three parts. The first makes the case for
a human right to health and specifically access to essential
medicines. Hassoun defends the argument against recent criticism of
these proposed rights. The second section develops the Global
Health Impact proposal in detail. The final section explores the
proposal's potential applications and effects, considering the
empirical evidence that supports it and comparing it to similar
ethical labels. Through a thoughtful and interdisciplinary approach
to creating new labeling, investment, and licensing strategies,
Global Health Impact demands an unwavering commitment to global
justice and corporate responsibility.
The Essential Berkeley and Neo-Berkeley is an introduction to the
life and work of one of the most significant thinkers in the
history of philosophy and a penetrating philosophical assessment of
his lasting legacy. Written in clear and user-friendly style,
Berman provides: * A concise summary of George Berkeley
(1685-1753)'s life and writings * An accessible introduction to the
structure of Berkeley's most authoritative work, The Principles of
Human Knowledge * An overview of common misunderstandings of
Berkeley's philosophy, and how to avoid them Beyond solely an
introduction, Berman also gives us a broader and deeper
appreciation of Berkeley as a philosopher. He argues for Berkeley's
work as a philosophical system with coherence and important key
themes hitherto unexplored and provides an analysis of why he
thinks Berkeley's work has had such lasting significance. With a
particular focus on Berkeley's dualist thinking and theories of
'mental types', Berman provides students and scholars with a key to
unlocking the significance of this work. This introductory text
will provide an insight into Berkeley's full body of work, the
distinctiveness of his thinking and how deeply relevant this key
thinker is to contemporary philosophy.
Collecting together numerous examples of Augustine's musical
imagery in action, Laurence Wuidar reconstructs the linguistic
laboratory and the hermeneutics in which he worked. Sensitive and
poetical, this volume is a reminder that the metaphor of music can
give access not only to human interiority, but allow the human mind
to achieve proximity to the divine mind. Composed by one of
Europe's leading musicologists now engaging an English-speaking
audience for the first time, this book is a candid exploration of
Wuidar's expertise. Drawing on her long knowledge of music and the
occult, from antiquity to modernity, Wuidar particularly focuses
upon Augustine's working methods while refusing to be distracted by
questions of faith or morality. The result is an open and at times
frightening vista on the powers that be, and our complex need to
commune with them.
In his Treatise on the Virtues, Aquinas discusses the character and
function of habit; the essence, subject, cause, and meaning of
virtue; and the separate intellectual, moral, cardinal, and
theological virtues. His work constitutes one of the most thorough
and incisive accounts of virtue in the history of Christian
philosophy. John Oesterle's accurate and elegant translation makes
this enduring work readily accessible to the modern reader.
The figure of the mistress is undoubtedly controversial. She
provokes intense reactions, ranging from fear, to disgust and
revulsion, to excitement and titillation, to sadness and perhaps to
some, love. The mistress is conventionally depicted as a threat to
moral living and someone whose sexuality is considered defective
and toxic. Of course, she is a woman that you would not have as
your friend, and certainly not your wife, since her ethical sense,
if she even has one, is dubious at best. This book subverts these
traditional judgements and offers an unflinching look at the lived
experience of the mistress. Here she is recast as a potentially
loving, free, intimate 'other' woman. Drawing upon feminist
philosophy, contemporary sexual ethics and the current cultural
moment of #MeToo, Mistress Ethics moves beyond a narrative of
infidelity, conventional judgment, the safeguarding of monogamy and
conventional heterosex that permeates our society. It asks what
happens when we let go of our insecurities, judgments and
moralistic relationship philosophies and opt, instead, for an
ethics of kindness. This kindness - underpinned by engaging with
those deemed 'other' and learning from mistresses, both straight
and queer - will teach us new ways of thinking about ethics and
sex, and reveal how we have better sex, and how we can be better to
each other.
This second of a two-volume work provides a new understanding of
Western subjectivity as theorized in the Augustinian Rule. A
theopolitical synthesis of Antiquity, the Rule is a humble, yet
extremely influential example of subjectivity production. In these
volumes, Jodra argues that the Classical and Late-Ancient
communitarian practices along the Mediterranean provide historical
proof of a worldview in which the self and the other are not
disjunctive components, but mutually inclusive forces. The
Augustinian Rule is a culmination of this process and also the
beginning of something new: the paradigm of the monastic self as
protagonist of the new, medieval worldview. In the previous volume,
Jodra gave us the Mediterranean backstory to Augustine's Rule. In
this volume two, he develops his solution to socialism, through a
kind of Augustinian communitarianism for today, in full. These
volumes therefore restore the unity of the Hellenistic and Judaic
world as found by the first Christians, proving that the self and
the other are two essential pieces in the construction of our
world.
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