Jewish symbols reflect the interaction of word and image within Jewish culture. Jews have always studied, interpreted, and revered sacred texts; they have also adorned the settings and occasions of sacred acts. Calligraphy and ornamentation have transformed Hebrew letters into art; quotation, interpretation, legend, and wordplay have made ceremonial objects into narrative. This book represents just such a collaboration between art and language. Ellen Frankel and Betsy Platkin Teutsch, writer and artist, have brought their extensive knowledge and talents together to create The Encyclopedia of Jewish Symbols, the first reference guide of its kind, designed for use by educators, artists, rabbis, folklorists, feminists, Jewish and non-Jewish scholars, and lay readers.

Comparable worth-the idea that women ought to be paid the same wages as men performing comparable although not the same jobs-has generated a firestorm of controversy. This analysis of the comparable worth debate takes up its pros and cons in an extraordinarily disciplined and fair-minded manner. After outlining the debate, Paul attempts to resolve this deeply divisive debate in terms of larger philosophical underpinnings. To do so, she develops a sophisticated analysis of the American economic marketplace as well as the general marketplace of ideas. The volume initially sets forth the case for comparable worth by a wide-ranging review of the difference between the fairness of the marketplace and the demands for wealth redistribution. The author squarely addresses the toughest issues in the comparable worth debate: the persistence of a wage gap; undervaluation of jobs as a result of gender; and social conditioning into subordinate and superordinate roles. She then shifts into an analysis of the essentially economic counter-arguments against the largely social arguments in favor of comparable worth. An exhaustive history of the legislative, judicial, and regulatory history that underlies the comparable worth debate is given exhaustive treatment. Paul concludes with the belief that efforts to replace the market for setting labor and wage priorities would lead to misalignments and misalliances of such severity that calls for more central planning would be the predictable result. Paul shows that for the most part efforts at artificially leveraging wages between men and women would have unanticipated consequences, such as restricting free choice among working people and innovation among entrepreneurs. Professor Paul cites such present advantages as freedom of job entry or the United States' ability to compete in international markets would be early victims in an environment dominated by strong regulation, which for her is at the heart of the comparable worth debate. The author argues that equity is best insured by women entering all areas of the work force from which they have been blocked in the past. To encourage women to enter new and challenging occupations rather than to seek artificial shifts in compensation should be the goal of an equity-oriented society. This volume is not an argument against equity, but against the artificial regulation and control of free economies to the ultimate detriment of women. It should be of great interest to professionals interested in political economy, social policy and planning, and women's studies.

In a country built on the institution of private property, property-owner rights have been under attack. By arguing that private property is a fundamental liberty whose protection deserves the highest priority, Ellen Frankel Paul challenges one of the dominant trends of the past half century: the erosion of property rights via zoning and land use restrictions, carried on by government exercising its "police power" or promoting "the public interest."

Paul begins by examining the arguments of environmentalists in support of land-use legislation, and explores a few particularly troubling examples of the exercise of eminent domain and police powers. She traces the philosophical arguments for the two powers as well as their tortuous judicial history, the meaning of property rights and investigates how previous thinkers have defended these rights is detailed, and Paul suggests a more adequate defense for them. In the concluding portion of the book, the very legitimacy of eminent domain is questioned and the author offers recommendations for its reform.

This analysis is wide in scope and makes creative use of historical, legal, economic, and philosophic methodologies. It not only gives an account of the present power regulations on land, but also provides an exhaustive history of the development of the law in these two areas and of the philosophical ideas of the thinkers who helped shape this process. This book is distinctive because it places a theory of the just acquisition of property at the heart of the answer to the question of the extent to which governments can rightfully exercise the powers of eminent domain and police.

"Amazingly, in a country built on the institution of private property, the right to property in land has been under increasing assault, and has seldom been defended. Paul's book--by arguing that private property is a fundamental liberty whose protection deserves the highest priority--is a major step toward filling the void."--Robert Hessen, Stanford University

"Ellen Frankel Paul" is Deputy Director of the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, and is professor of political science and philosophy at Bowling Green State University. She is also an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.

Three hundred Jewish tales in this extraordinary volume span three continents and four millennia. Culled from traditional sources-the Bible, Talmud, Midrash, hasidic texts, and oral folklore-and retold in modern English by Ellen Frankel, these stories represent the brightest jewels in the vast treasure chest of Jewish lore. Beautifully clothed in contemporary language, these classic tales sparkle with the gentle and insightful humor of the Jewish folk imagination. And like so much of Jewish literature, these stories abound in allusions to classic Jewish texts. Biblical cadences, phrases from the prayer book, and ideas from Jewish proverbs and heroic legends resonate in the air when these tales are read or told aloud. In The Classic Tales, history sheds its dust to become as intimate as family memory. While the breadth and depth of this book make it completely unique, three special features also help distinguish it: God appears without gender (though certainly not without personality); women characters, so often nameless in the original biblical text, wear their midrashic names (e.g., Noah's wife Naamah, Abraham's mother Amitlai, Lot's wife Edith); and many tales of Sephardic origin have been included to correct the common American bias toward Eastern European sources. What's more, this volume has been uniquely designed to be of use to educators, rabbis, parents, and students. It features a chronological table of contents as well as six separate indexes?arranged by Jewish holidays, Torah and Haftorah readings, character types, symbols, topics, and proper names and places-to make the tales easily referenced in a wide variety of ways. Anyone who needs a story to inspire a child, to illustrate a point, to develop a sermon, or just to uplift his or her own thirsting soul will find just the right one in The Classic Tales.

Jewish symbols reflect the interaction of word and image within Jewish culture. Jews have always studied, interpreted, and revered sacred texts; they have also adorned the settings and occasions of sacred acts. Calligraphy and ornamentation have transformed Hebrew letters into art; quotation, interpretation, legend, and wordplay have made ceremonial objects into narrative. This book represents just such a collaboration between art and language. Ellen Frankel and Betsy Platkin Teutsch, writer and artist, have brought their extensive knowledge and talents together to create The Encyclopedia of Jewish Symbols, the first reference guide of its kind, designed for use by educators, artists, rabbis, folklorists, feminists, Jewish and non-Jewish scholars, and lay readers.

From disagreement over an Islamic Center in New York to clashes between Christians and Muslims in Egypt, tension between the three Abrahamic faiths often runs high. Yet for all their differences, these three traditions Judaism, Islam, and Christianity share much in common. Three Testaments brings together for the first time the text of the Torah, the New Testament, and the Quran, so that readers can explore for themselves the connections, as well as the points of departure, between the three faiths. Notable religion scholars provide accessible introductions to each tradition, and commentary from editor Brian Arthur Brown explores how the three faiths may draw similarities from the ancient Zoroastrian tradition. This powerful book provides a much-needed interfaith perspective on key sacred texts.

Whether it is a result of nature, the consequence of a choice to escape the state of nature, or the outcome of some other process of deliberation, the fact of human association gives rise to recurrent themes in political and social philosophy. The character and requirements of justice, the profile of political legitimacy, and the relationship between the powers of government and the rights of the governed are some of the subjects of ongoing consideration and debate in the disciplines of philosophy, political theory, economics, and law. This volume represents a contribution to the investigation of these issues of perennial interest and import, featuring essays whose authors hope to extend, deepen, and, in some cases, move in new directions, the current state of discussion.

The essays in this collection investigate two political traditions and their critical interactions. The first series of essays deals with the development of natural rights individualism, some examining its origins in the thought of the seminal political theorist, John Locke, and the influential constitutional theorist, Montesquieu, others the impact of their theories on intellectual leaders during the American Revolution and the Founding era, and still others the culmination of this tradition in the writings of nineteenth-century individualists such as Lysander Spooner. The second series of essays focuses on the Progressive repudiation of natural rights individualism and its far-reaching effect on American politics and public policy.

Modern industrial societies have achieved a level of economic prosperity undreamed of in earlier times, but in the view of the contemporary environmental movement, the prosperity has come at the cost of serious degradations to the natural world. For environmental advocates, problems such as resource depletion, air and water pollution, global warming, and the loss of biodiversity represent due threats to the well-being of human societies and the planet itself. But just how serious are these threats, and how should we go about confronting them? Do environmental problems call for more extensive government controls over industrial activity, energy policy, and the like, or is it possible to find solutions by harnessing the incentives of the free market? The essays in this collection address these questions and explore related issues.

Do we desire things because they are good, or are they good because we desire them? Objectivists answer that we desire things because they are good; subjectivists answer that things are good because we desire them. Further, does it make sense to account for moral disagreement by claiming, as the moral relativist does, that something might be good for one person but not for another? Some essays in this book consider whether objective moral truths can be grounded in an understanding of the nature of human beings as rational and social animals. Some discuss the ethical theories of historical figures-Aristotle, Aquinas, or Kant-or offer critical assessments of the work of recent and contemporary theorists-such as Moore, Putnam, Ayn Rand, Philippa Foot, and Rosalind Hursthouse. Other essays ask whether moral principles and values can be constructed through a process of practical reasoning or deliberation. Still others consider what the phenomenology of our moral experiences can reveal about moral objectivity.

What constitutes a just tax system, and what are its moral foundations? Should a society's tax regime be designed to achieve a just distribution of wealth among its citizens, or should such a regime be designed to promote economic growth, rising standards of living, and increasing levels of employment? Are these two goals compatible or incompatible? Why should justice not require, or at least lead to, an increase in general prosperity? The essays in this volume examine the history of tax policies and the normative principles that have informed the selection of various types of taxes and tax regimes; economic data to discover which tax policies lead to economic growth; particular theories of justice or property rights regarding the design of tax systems; and other essays propose specific tax reforms. Still others challenge traditional theories of taxation, offering new ways of understanding the fiscal relationship between governments and their citizens.

What is a person? What makes me the same person today that I was yesterday or will be tomorrow? Philosophers have long pondered these questions. In Plato's Symposium, Socrates observed that all of us are constantly undergoing change: we experience physical changes to our bodies, as well as changes in our 'manners, customs, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, [and] fears'. Aristotle theorized that there must be some underlying 'substratum' that remains the same even as we undergo these changes. John Locke rejected Aristotle's view and reformulated the problem of personal identity in his own way: is a person a physical organism that persists through time, or is a person identified by the persistence of psychological states, by memory? These essays - written by prominent philosophers and legal and economic theorists - offer valuable insights into the nature of personal identity and its implications for morality and public policy.

Whether free speech is defended as a fundamental right that inheres in each individual, or as a guarantee that all of society's members will have a voice in democratic decision-making, or as 'marketplace of ideas' that facilitates the emergence of truth by allowing vigorous competition among diverse points of view, the central role of expressive freedom in liberating the human spirit is undeniable. Enshrined in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution with a brevity that would belie its subsequent history of intricate judicial parsing, freedom of expression will, as the essays in this volume illuminate, encounter new and continuing controversies in the twenty-first century. Advances in digital technology raise pressing questions regarding freedom of speech and, with it, intellectual property and privacy rights. As the expansion of the Internet tests, and often confounds, legal statutes and precedents established in the era of the printing press, cyberspace looms as a relatively uncharted frontier for free speech and copyright law. Campaign finance reform limits the formerly sacrosanct category of 'political speech', while campus speech codes have spawned debates over '

A central idea in moral and political philosophy, ‘autonomy’ is generally understood as some form of self-governance or self-direction. Certain Stoics, modern philosophers such as Spinoza, and most importantly, Immanuel Kant, are among the great philosophers who have offered important insights on the concept. Some theorists analyze autonomy in terms of the self being moved by its higher-order desires. Others argue that autonomy must be understood in terms of acting from reason or from a sense of moral duty independent of the passions. Autonomy seems closely related to the notion of freedom, but in what sense: freedom from coercion, freedom from psychological constraints, or freedom from material necessity? Various approaches to these and similar questions yield different implications for public policy. Is capitalism, social democracy or socialism more favorable to autonomy? The essays in this volume address these important questions.

The essays in this volume assess the empirical and theoretical questions raised by inequalities of income and wealth. Some consider empirical claims about the amount of equality in modern market economies, assessing the allegation that income and wealth have become more unequally distributed in the past quarter-century. Others consider the extent to which various government initiatives can ameliorate the problems inequality putatively poses. They consider which standards of equality meet the requirements of distributive justice. They also ask if inequality is intrinsically immoral, regardless of its consequences.

The essays is this volume--written by prominent philosophers and academic lawyers--examine various aspects of both the right to privacy and the roles that this right plays in moral philosophy, legal theory, and public policy. Some of the essays discuss possible justifications for privacy rights, basing them on classical liberal principles or the considerations of moral pluralism. Other essays examine the role that privacy plays in American consitutional theory. Still others assess how privacy considerations affect certain issues in medical ethics, such as the proper extent of access to medical information and the normative status of the right to die.

The essays in this volume address questions about responsibility that arise in moral philosophy and legal theory. Some analyse different theories of causality, asking which theory offers the best account of human agency and the most satisfactory resolution of troubling controversies about free will and determinism. Some essays look at responsibility in the legal realm, seeking to determine how the law should assign liability for negligence, or whether the courts should allow defendants to offer excuses for their wrongdoing or to claim some form of 'diminished responsibility'. Other essays explore libertarian views about political freedom and accountability, asking whether libertarian positions on consent, contract law, and responsibility are consistent, or whether restitution is superior to retribution or deterrence as a basis for a theory of corrective justice. Still others examine the notion of partial or divided responsibility, or the relationship between responsibility and the emotions.

This volume examines human flourishing and its relationship to other key concepts in moral theory. Some essays question whether a theory of human nature can allow us to develop an objective list of goods valuable to all agents. Some look at the role of relationships in a good life, or ask whether an ethical theory based on human flourishing can accommodate concern for others. Other essays analyze the function of social-political institutions in promoting the flourishing of individuals. Still others explore the implications of flourishing for political theory and principles of social justice.

The essays in this volume assess the strength and impact of market liberal or libertarian political theory, which, broadly conceived, advocates a more carefully circumscribed role for the state and a greater reliance on the ability of individuals and voluntary, private-sector institutions to confront social problems. They offer insights into the limits of government, develop market-oriented solutions to pressing social problems, and explore some defects in traditional libertarian theory and practice.

These essays examine the nature of self-interest and the relationship between rationality and morality. Some challenge the assumption that morality is exclusively concerned with the pursuit of the good of others, arguing that self-interest can be a legitimate moral motive. Some ask whether it is possible to resolve the apparent conflict between self-interest and morality by appealing to some third, overarching standard, or by showing that self-regard and regard for others share significant common features or spring from a common source. Others explore the relationship between self-interest and practical reason, or between self-interest and virtue.