Why is the philosopher Hegel returning as a potent force in contemporary thinking? Why, after a long period when Hegel and his dialectics of history have seemed less compelling than they were for previous generations of philosophers, is study of Hegel again becoming important? Fashionable contemporary theorists like Francis Fukuyama and Slavoj Zizek, as well as radical theologians like Thomas Altizer, have all recently been influenced by Hegel, the philosopher whose philosophy now seems somehow perennial- or, to borrow an idea from Nietzsche-eternally returning. Exploring this revival via the notion of 'negation' in Hegelian thought, and relating such negativity to sophisticated ideas about art and artistic creation, Andrew W. Hass argues that the notion of Hegelian negation moves us into an expansive territory where art, religion and philosophy may all be radically conceived and broken open into new forms of philosophical expression. The implications of such a revived Hegelian philosophy are, the author argues, vast and current. Hegel thereby becomes the philosopher par excellence who can address vital issues in politics, economics, war and violence, leading to a new form of globalised ethics. Hass makes a bold and original contribution to religion, philosophy, art and the history of ideas.

Jacqueline Taylor offers an original reconstruction of Hume's social theory, which examines the passions and imagination in relation to institutions such as government and the economy. Reflecting Subjects begins with a close examination of Hume's use of an experimental method to explain the origin, nature and effects of pride, an indirect passion that reflects a person's sense of self-worth in virtue of her valuable qualities, for example, her character or wealth. In explaining the origin of pride in terms of efficient causes, Hume displaces the traditional appeal to final causes, and is positioned to give an account of the significance for us of the passions in terms of a social theory. Subsequent chapters reconstruct this social theory, looking in particular at how the principle of sympathy functions to transmit cultural meanings and values, before examining Hume's account of social power-especially with regard to rank and sex. Turning to Hume's system of ethics, Taylor argues for the importance of Hume's more sophisticated moral philosophy in his Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, since it emphasizes certain virtues of good moral evaluation. She demonstrates that the principle of humanity stands as the central concept of Hume's Enlightenment philosophy.

You are reading the word "now" right now. But what does that mean? "Now" has bedeviled philosophers, priests, and modern-day physicists from Augustine to Einstein and beyond. In Now, eminent physicist Richard A. Muller takes up the challenge. He begins with remarkably clear explanations of relativity, entropy, entanglement, the Big Bang, and more, setting the stage for his own revolutionary theory of time, one that makes testable predictions. Muller's monumental work will spark major debate about the most fundamental assumptions of our universe, and may crack one of physics' longest-standing enigmas.

This book presents an alternative theory of globalization that derives not from the dominant perspective of the West, from which this process emerged, but from the critical vantage point of the Third World, which has borne the heaviest burdens of globalization. It offers a critical and uniquely first-hand perspective that is lacking not only from the apologists of Western hegemony, but from most scholars writing against this hegemony from within the globalizing world. Renowned throughout Latin America and parts of Europe, the author, Brazilian geographer Milton Santos, has long been for the most part inaccessible to the English-speaking world. Only one of his books, The Shared Space: The Two Circuits of the Urban Economy in Underdeveloped Countries, published in 1975, has been translated into English; nevertheless, the works of Santos's most important phase, from the 1980s until his death in 2001, have remained unavailable to English readers. With the translation of Toward an Other Globalization, one of the last works published in Santos's lifetime, this situation has finally been rectified. In this book, Santos argues that we must consider globalization in three different senses: globalization as a fable (the world as globalizing agents make us believe), as perversity (the world as it is presently, in the throes of globalization), and as possibility (the world as it could be). What emerges from the analysis of these three senses is an alternative theory of globalization rooted in the perspective of the so-called Global South. Santos concludes his text with a message that is optimistic, but in no way nai ve. What he offers instead is a revolutionary optimism and, indeed, an other globalization.

Philosopher David Hume was considered to one of the most important figures in the age of Scottish enlightenment. "A Treatise of Human Nature" broke new ground by attempting to base philosophy on human nature, making it one of the most important texts in Western Philosophy. Human passions and the ability to distinguish between virtue and vice are elucidated in the text. In "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" Hume discusses the weaknesses that humans have in their abilities to understand the world around them. This book is often a textbook for Philosophy Courses. "An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals" is an elegant enquiry into ethical theory, explained clearly and comprehensively. In Hume's "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion" he explores the very idea of God, the possibility of his existence, and his alleged nature as a good, perfect, omniscient, omnipotent Supreme Being.

Classic 19th-century British novels that give full expression to complex ethical problems necessarily project the claims of conflicting or interfering values and thus complicate the strategies for resolving the dilemmas they dramatize. This book reasserts the importance of the ethics of reading. It analyzes a developing dialogue between moral philosophers and literary critics, all of whom in their different ways celebrate literature's capacity to confront us with values in conflict. They agree that a key reason for rereading and arguing about classic novels is that they often hypothesize moral dilemmas in more realistically particularized detail than any abstract, rational discussion of ethics could match. But even if novels provide specifically situated explorations of moral issues, this does not mean that they can resolve the problems they dramatize.

This book considers interfering values in novels by Austen, Dickens, Eliot, and Hardy and the difficulties in interpreting these works. Each novel has caused protracted disputes among critics because of its heroine and its conflicting values. Different readings of these novels reveal how critics engage in interpretive strategies to defend or deplore what they read. But while they try to articulate and limit the reader's responses, the novels break through the frames they would impose, thus enlarging our awareness of the problems of making judgments.

For over thirty years, Steven Mailloux has championed and advanced the field of rhetorical hermeneutics, a historically and theoretically informed approach to textual interpretation. This volume collects fourteen of his most recent influential essays on the methodology, plus an interview. Following from the proposition that rhetorical hermeneutics uses rhetoric to practice theory by doing history, this book examines a diverse range of texts from literature, history, law, religion, and cultural studies. Through four sections, Mailloux explores the theoretical writings of Heidegger, Burke, and Rorty, among others; Jesuit educational treatises; and products of popular culture such as Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran and Star Trek: The Next Generation. In doing so, he shows how rhetorical perspectives and pragmatist traditions work together as two mutually supportive modes of understanding, and he demonstrates how the combination of rhetoric and interpretation works both in theory and in practice. Theoretically, rhetorical hermeneutics can be understood as a form of neopragmatism. Practically, it focuses on the production, circulation, and reception of written and performed communication. A thought-provoking collection from a preeminent literary critic and rhetorician, Rhetoric's Pragmatism assesses the practice and value of rhetorical hermeneutics today and the directions in which it might head. Scholars and students of rhetoric and communication studies, critical theory, literature, law, religion, and American studies will find Mailloux's arguments enlightening and essential.

In this authoritative discussion of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, A. W. Price considers four related areas: eudaimonia, or living and acting well, as the ultimate end of action; virtues of character in relation to the emotions, and to one another; practical reasoning, especially from an end to ways or means; and acrasia, or action that is contrary to the agent's own judgement of what is best. The focal concept is that of eudaimonia, which both Plato and Aristotle view as an abstract goal that is valuable enough to motivate action. Virtue has a double role to play in making its achievement possible, both in proposing subordinate ends apt to the context, and in protecting the agent against temptations to discard them too easily. For both purposes, Price suggests that virtues need to form a unity--but one that can be conceived in various ways. Among the tasks of deliberation is to work out how, and whether, to pursue some putative end in context. Aristotle returns to early Plato in finding it problematic that one should consciously sacrifice acting well to some incidental attraction; Plato later finds this possible by postulating schism within the soul. Price maintains that it is their emphasis upon the centrality of action within human life that makes the reflections of these ancient philosophers perennially relevant.

This book is about normativity and reasons. By the end, however, the subject becomes the relation between self, thought, and world. If we understand normativity, we are on the road to understanding this relation.
John Skorupski argues that all normative properties are reducible to reason relations, so that the sole normative ingredient in any normative concept is the concept of a reason. This is a concept fundamental to all thought. It is pervasive (actions, beliefs, and sentiments all fall within its range), primitive (all other normative concepts are reducible to it), and constitutive of the idea of thought itself. Thinking is sensitivity to reasons. Thought in the full sense of autonomous cognition is possible only for a being sensitive to reasons and capable of deliberating about them.
In Part II of the book Skorupski examines epistemic reasons, and shows that aprioricity, necessity, evidence, and probability, which may not seem to be normative at all, are in fact normative concepts analysable in terms of the concept of a reason. In Part III he shows the same for the concept of a person's good, and for moral concepts including the concept of a right. Part IV moves to the epistemology and metaphysics of reasons. When we make claims about reasons to believe, reasons to feel, or reasons to act we are asserting genuine propositions: judgeable, truth-apt contents. But these normative propositions must be distinguished from factual propositions, for they do not represent states of affairs.
So Skorupski's ambitious theory of normativity has broad and deep implications for philosophy. It shows how reflection on the logic, epistemology, and ontology of reasons finally leads us to an account of the interplay of self, thought, and world.

Die Bibliotheca Teubneriana, gegrundet 1849, ist die weltweit alteste, traditionsreichste und umfangreichste Editionsreihe griechischer und lateinischer Literatur von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit. Pro Jahr erscheinen 4-5 neue Editionen. Samtliche Ausgaben werden durch eine lateinische oder englische Praefatio erganzt. Die wissenschaftliche Betreuung der Reihe obliegt einem Team anerkannter Philologen: Gian Biagio Conte (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa) Marcus Deufert (Universitat Leipzig) James Diggle (University of Cambridge) Donald J. Mastronarde (University of California, Berkeley) Franco Montanari (Universita di Genova) Heinz-Gunther Nesselrath (Georg-August-Universitat Goettingen) Oliver Primavesi (Ludwig-Maximilians Universitat Munchen) Michael D. Reeve (University of Cambridge) Richard J. Tarrant (Harvard University) Vergriffene Titel werden als Print-on-Demand-Nachdrucke wieder verfugbar gemacht. Zudem werden alle Neuerscheinungen der Bibliotheca Teubneriana parallel zur gedruckten Ausgabe auch als eBook angeboten. Die alteren Bande werden sukzessive ebenfalls als eBook bereitgestellt. Falls Sie einen vergriffenen Titel bestellen moechten, der noch nicht als Print-on-Demand angeboten wird, schreiben Sie uns an: [email protected] Samtliche in der Bibliotheca Teubneriana erschienenen Editionen lateinischer Texte sind in der Datenbank BTL Online elektronisch verfugbar.

Fairness and Futurity: Essays on Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice brings together leading international figures in political theory and sociology, as well as representatives from the political community, to consider the normative issues at stake in the relationship between environmental sustainability and social justice. It raises important questions and sets out to provide the answers. If future generations are owed justice, what should we bequeath them? Is `sustainability' an appropriate medium for environmentalists to express their demands? Is environmental protection compatible with intra-generational justice? Is environmental sustainability a luxury when social peace has broken down? These essays emerged from three intensive seminars that involved participants in constant re-evaluations of their work, and which bought three distinct groups-environmental theorists, `mainstream' political theorists, and policy community members-into fruitful contact. In particular, the attempt to involve `mainstream' theorists in environmental questions, and to encourage environmentalists to use intellectual resources of political theory, should be highlighted.

Rarely discussed in courses on ethics is the topic of excuses, but in McDowell's view, excuses offer the most illuminating way to understand the true nature of ethical problems in the professions. He looks at excuses that professionals give when accused of acting unethically, and asks, when are they valid and when not? Problems of professional ethics are really problems of compliance, he argues, not ignorance of expectations. The study of excuses can help us understand what these problems are and offer insights into ways to solve them. Banks maintains too that our ethical expectations may need overhauling, given substantial changes that have occurred in how professionals do their work today. They can be easily persuaded that what they are doing is not unethical; it depends on the excuses they give themselves as well as others. Professionals know what's expected of them, but social and economic pressures make compliance difficult. Professionals in all fields, who struggle to be both successful and ethical, will find the book challenging, provocative, and yet sympathetic and reassuring too. It will also be an important resource for graduate students in courses exploring the relationship between business and ethics.

Excuses may be ways of avoiding professional responsibility, says McDowell, but they may also be the way in which general ethical principles are adapted to particular contexts. They may also indicate that ethical codes need to be reformulated to adapt to changes in how professional services are delivered. Specialization, urbanization and the systematic breakdown in community relationships, the globalization of the economy, system, and market pressures for success--for all these reasons, professionals today face problems much different from those faced by their counterparts earlier in the century. Excuses also raise the problem of whether any system of voluntary compliance, like professional ethics, can function when the decision on whether an excuse is valid or invalid rests with the actor, who can rationalize almost any self-interested action he or she might take. McDowell explores these issues and others in a fresh, readable style, with numerous anecdotal examples, and with evidence from many sources that the crisis is real and demands quick but lasting remedies.

"A society without truth—and the related quality of trust—will not long endure." —from the Preface

Ethics in corporate America has become a bottom-line issue. Scandals such as the junk bond debacle in the late '80s and the recent bankruptcy of Orange County, California, graphically illustrate just how devastating losses from corrupt business practices can be. Closing the rift between a company's public and private face, its avowed as opposed to actual behavior, is now more than ever the concern of the accountant.

Examining a firm's business records and practices has traditionally placed the accountant in the role of watchdog. And in a corporate world where ethical ambivalence can complicate even the most routine business decision, a trusted accountant can guide a company toward a revived sense of purpose, showing it how to live up to its own expressed ethical standards—leading the way to new business, increased profits, and cost savings. Ethics and the CPA details just how an accountant can assess a company's ethical health as part of a rigorous accounting regimen—and institute corrective measures.

The book begins by clearly defining the accountant's role in the area of "ethical services," with specifics on establishing and performing an audit on an ethics-based program for business, governmental, and not-for-profit entities. Issues such as the specific knowledge, competencies, and attitudes essential to the professional providing ethical services are also discussed.

The second part of the book takes the ethical pulse of the contemporary business environment, analyzing some notable ethical failures in well-known companies as well as the range of regulatory demands on CPAs, including the requirement for finding unethical/illegal behavior (SAS 82) and SEC oversight responsibilities. Also included are the results of an ethics survey report on CPAs given to state CPA societies, regulatory bodies, and industry.

Finally, part three looks at the framework and issues surrounding developing and leading an in-house ethics program, as well as the elements of an effective ethical program, developing an ethical oversight committee, benchmarking an ethics program, marketing ethical services, and the ethical challenges in the new millennium.

Ethics and the CPA is a practical handbook for the accountant on guiding one's clients toward an improved bottom line and financial stability—through impeccable conduct from the boardroom on down.

Ensuring your client's continued financial prosperity —with an in-house ethics program.

Keeping a firm financially healthy has become more and more a question of monitoring its ethical pulse. Assessing the on-the-job behavior of managers and employees and how closely it measures up to their expressed codes of conduct has now become part of a CPA's overall financial review function. And building an in-house ethics program that both leads and inspires has become one of the key measures of an accountant's success. Ethics and the CPA describes how to make "ethical services" part of the accounting regimen, with specifics on establishing and performing an audit on an ethics-based program for business, governmental, and not-for-profit entities. It also surveys the contemporary business environment, analyzing some notable ethical failures in well-known companies as well as the host of regulatory demands on CPAs, including selected laws and regulations illustrating the range of compliance expected in the United States. The book also provides the specifics of setting up an effective ethical program, developing an ethical oversight committee, benchmarking an ethics program, marketing ethical services, and the ethical challenges in the new millennium. The essential guidebook on how to incorporate ethical services into an existing accounting practice, Ethics and the CPA shows accountants how to make their clients' bottom line an ethical one.

This volume focuses on naval leadership and ethics with respect to the individual leader and how his or her values and actions affect military cohesion, mission success, and the profession of arms. Moving beyond the "right and wrong" of personal ethics to examine the broader field of professional military ethics, this carefully selected collection of relevant materials from the Naval Institute's vast collection of articles recognizes the range of experience, perspectives, and opinions that are found in the sea services and argues that diversity does not preclude acceptance of common core values and standards of performance within any unit. Included are articles by Adm. Arleigh Burke and Vice Adm. James B. Stockdale that speak from long personal experience regarding the topics of integrity and moral courage.

With the world as our classroom and each of us a student, what lessons are we learning? The status quo often shifts from honesty and integrity to the systematic economic decay and moral bankrupting of our society. Unfortunately, the consequences of our actions are now only viewed as acceptable inconveniences, and that is only when the misdeeds are discovered. Mistakes are made and our social and economic environment has provided the diversion of excuses for making the wrong decisions sufferable. One of the greatest life lessons I adopted into my everyday work ethic came from my teacher and mentor in high school, who once told me, "An excuse, no matter how valid a reason it might be, is still.an excuse." The path to ethical renewal starts with one step, one person. Learning how to think must be paramount to learning what to think, and each person must think independently. Take a moment.and consider your Ethics Everyday.

This book explores what is at stake in our confessional culture. Thomas Docherty examines confessional writings from Augustine to Montaigne and from Sylvia Plath to Derrida, arguing that through all this work runs a philosophical substratum - the conditions under which it is possible to assert a confessional mode - that needs exploration and explication.
Docherty outlines a philosophy of confession that has pertinence for a contemporary political culture based on the notion of 'transparency'. In a postmodern 'transparent society', the self coincides with its self-representations. Such a position is central to the idea of authenticity and truth-telling in confessional writing: it is the basis of saying, truthfully, 'here I take my stand'.
The question is: what other consequences might there be of an assumption of the primacy of transparency? Two areas are examined in detail: the religious and the judicial. Docherty shows that despite the tendency to regard transparency as a general social and ethical good, our contemporary culture of transparency has engendered a society in which autonomy (or the very authority of the subject that proclaims 'I confess') is grounded in guilt, reparation and victimhood.

Democracy is emerging as the political system of choice throughout the world. Peoples now freed from the shackles of totalitarian systems seek to share the benefits made possible by democracy in its "home bases" in North America and Western Europe. Yet, paradoxically, in the last decade liberal democracy has been subjected to an onslaught of criticism from thinkers at its "home bases". Criticisms of democracy have been informed by scholarship in feminism, postmodernism and communitarianism as well as the revived interest in applying ethics to public policy. These criticisms raise important questions about the traditional values - liberalism, neutrality or equality, autonomy, and human rights - thought to justify democracy. They also raise questions about the success of democratic systems in promoting alternative values and in protecting lifestyles not desired by majorities. This anthology contains essays by authors at the forefront of the controversy as well as by acute observers of the processes by which "democratic" public policy is formed. The essays include criticisms of democratic theory and practice, defences of liberalism (the set of values often thought to ground democracy), calls for major revisions of democratic institutions and practices, and recommendations for new ways of understanding our rights and responsibilities as members of democratic communities.

In consequence of significant social, political, economic, and demographic changes several wildlife species are currently growing in numbers and recolonizing Europe. While this is rightly hailed as a success of the environmental movement, the return of wildlife brings its own issues. As the animals arrive in the places we inhabit, we are learning anew that life with wild nature is not easy, especially when the accumulated cultural knowledge and experience pertaining to such coexistence have been all but lost. This book provides a hermeneutic study of the ways we come to understand the troubling impacts of wildlife by exploring and critically discussing the meanings of 'ecological discomforts'. Thus, it begins the work of rebuilding the culture of coexistence. The cases presented in this book range from crocodile attacks to mice infestations, and their analysis consequently builds up an ethics that sees wildlife as active participants in the shaping of human moral and existential reality. This book is of interest not only to environmental philosophers, who will find here an original contribution to the established ethical discussions, but also to wildlife managers, and even to those members of the public who themselves struggle to make sense of encounters with their new wild neighbors.

Mass Moralizing: Marketing and Moral Storytelling examines the narratives of today's brand marketing, which largely focuses on creating an emotional attachment to a brand rather than directly promoting a product's qualities or features. Phil Hopkins explores these narratives' influence on how we think about ourselves and our moral possibilities, our cultural ideas about morality, and our relations to each other. He closely studies the relationship between three interrelated dynamics: the power of narrative in the construction of identity and world, the truth-telling pretenses of mass marketing, and the growth of moralizing as the primary moral discourse practice in contemporary consumer culture. Mass Moralizing scrutinizes the way marketing speaks to us in explicitly moralistic terms, significantly influencing how we think about ourselves and our moral possibilities.