What is the effect of long-term media violence on our national character? Do we want four-year-olds watching slasher films? Who should decide?While almost everyone has a strong opinion about the profusion of violence-in film, TV, video games, and on line-paralysis sets in when it comes to action. The issue is seen as a hopeless standoff between free speech and preserving public morality. In Mayhem, Sissela Bok reframes the issue. She shows us that we have created a false dilemma and that we need not feel so helpless.Mayhem lays out the arguments and weighs the evidence on each side: the desensitization, fear, and addiction that concern psychologists, pediatricians, and religious groups on the one hand, and, on the other, the threat of censorship invoked by journalists, civil libertarians, and the entertainment industry. The book gives a vivid historical overview of the debate: from Rome, to nineteenth-century attempts to ban all theatre, to censorship of the Internet in Singapore and China, and contrasting views of figures as diverse as Martin Scorsese, Bill Moyers, and Judge Bork.As in Lying and Secrets, she puts this thorny question in clarifying perspective, and shows how our ways of dealing with it not only express, but can shape our character and lives. Finally, she takes up specific and imaginative ways to resolve the dilemma, from private measures for individuals and families to large-scale collective efforts.

A classic work in the field of practical and professional ethics, this collection of nine essays by English philosopher and educator Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) was first published in 1898 and forms a vital complement to Sidgwick's major treatise on moral theory, The Methods of Ethics. Reissued here as Volume One in a new series sponsored by the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, the book is composed chiefly of addresses to members of two ethical societies that Sidgwick helped to found in Cambridge and London in the 1880s. Clear, taut, and lively, these essays demonstrate the compassion and calm reasonableness that Sidgwick brought to all his writings.
As Sidgwick explains in his opening essay, the societies he addressed aimed to allow academics, professionals, and others to pursue joint efforts at reaching "some results of value for practical guidance and life." Sidgwick hoped that members might discuss such questions as when, if ever, public officials might be justified in lying or in breaking promises, whether scientists could legitimately inflict suffering on animals for research purposes, when nations might have just cause in going to war, and a score of other issues of ethics in public and private life still debated a century later.
This valuable reissue returns Practical Ethics to its rightful place in Sidgwick's oeuvre. Noted ethicist Sissela Bok provides a superb Introduction, ranging over the course of Sidgwick's life and career and underscoring the relevance of Practical Ethics to contemporary debate. She writes: "Practical Ethics, the last book that Henry Sidgwick published before his death in 1900, contains the distillation of a lifetime of reflectionon ethics and on what it would take for ethical debate to be 'really of use in the solution of practical questions.'" This rich, engaging work is essential reading for all concerned with the relationship between ethical theory and. practice, and with the questions that have driven the study of professional ethics in recent years.

A concern for the ethical instruction and formation of students has always been a part of American higher education. Yet that concern has by no means been uniform or free from controversy. The centrality of moral philosophy in the undergraduate curriculum during the mid-19th Century gave way later during that era to the first signs of increasing specialization of the disciplines. By the middle of the 20th Century, instruction in ethics had, by and large, become confined almost exclusively to departments of philosophy and religion. Efforts to introduce ethics teaching in the professional schools and elsewhere in the university often met with indifference or outright hostility. The past decade has seen a remarkable resurgence of the interest in the teaching of ethics, at both the undergraduate and the professional school levels. Beginning in 1977, The Hastings Center, with the support of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, undertook a system atic study of the state of the teaching of ethics in American higher education."

In their second edition of Combating Corruption, Encouraging Ethics, William L. Richter and Frances Burke update this essential staple to delve deeply into the unique ethical problems of twenty-first century public administration. Wide-ranging readings from Aristotle and Kant to John Kennedy and John T. Noonan provide initiation into the philosophical basis of ethics as virtue, consequence, principle, and responsibility, while new case studies drawn from today's headlines join old classics from the previous edition to help students apply ethical foundations to a modern administrative career. New chapters on privacy, secrecy, and confidentiality and the changing boundaries of public administration consider the consequences of computerization and globalization, two of this century's greatest challenges. By seamlessly melding theory with practice, Richter and Burke have created a key resource in educating future public administrators on the ethical problems associated with corruption, deception, evasion of accountability, and the abuse of authority. Open-ended examples and discussion questions encourage students to understand the complexity of administrative ethics and the need for careful thought in their day-to-day decisions. Combating Corruption, Encouraging Ethics offers both the depth demanded by graduate courses in administrative ethics and the accessibility necessary for an undergraduate introduction to public administration.

From the acclaimed author of Lying, a brilliant exploration of happiness set in the context of the world's great philosophers, leaders, writers, and artists In this smart and timely book, the distinguished moral philosopher Sissela Bok ponders the nature of happiness and its place in philosophical thinking and writing throughout the ages. With nuance and elegance, Bok explores notions of happiness-from Greek philosophers to Desmond Tutu, Charles Darwin, Iris Murdoch, and the Dalai Lama-as well as the latest theories advanced by psychologists, economists, geneticists, and neuroscientists. Eschewing abstract theorizing, Bok weaves in a wealth of firsthand observations about happiness from ordinary people as well as renowned figures. This may well be the most complete picture of happiness yet. This book is also a clarion call to think clearly and sensitively about happiness. Bringing together very different disciplines provides Bok with a unique opportunity to consider the role of happiness in wider questions of how we should lead our lives and treat one another-concerns that don't often figure in today's happiness equation. How should we pursue, weigh, value, or limit our own happiness, or that of others, now and in the future? Compelling and perceptive, Exploring Happiness shines a welcome new light on the heart of the human condition.

Translated by Mahadev Desai and with a New Preface
The only authorized American edition
Mohandas K. Gandhi is one of the most inspiring figures of our time. In his classic autobiography he recounts the story of his life and how he developed his concept of active nonviolent resistance, which propelled the Indian struggle for independence and countless other nonviolent struggles of the twentieth century.
In a new foreword, noted peace expert and teacher Sissela Bok urges us to adopt Gandhi's "attitude of experimenting, of tesing what will and will not bear close scrutiny, what can and cannot be adapted to new circumstances," in order to bring about change in our own lives and communities. All royalties earned on this book are paid to the Navajivan Trust, founded by Gandhi, for use in carrying on his work.

The moral issues involved in doctors assisting patients to die with dignity are of absolutely central concern to the medical profession, ethicists, and the public at large. The debate is fueled by cases that extend way beyond passive euthanasia to the active consideration of killing by physicians. The need for a sophisticated but lucid exposition of the two sides of the argument is now urgent. This book supplies that need. Two prominent philosophers, Gerald Dworkin and R. G. Frey argue that in certain circumstances it is morally and should be legally permissible for physicians to provide the knowledge and means by which patients can take their lives. One of the best-known ethicists in the US (author of Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private) Sissela Bok argues that the legalization of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide would entail grave risks and would in no way deal adequately with the needs of those at the end of their lives, least of all in societies without health insurance available to all. All the moral and factual issues relevant to this controversy are explored. The book will thus enable readers to begin to decide for themselves how to confront a decision that we are all likely to face at some point in our lives.

The moral issues involved in doctors assisting patients to die with dignity are of absolutely central concern to the medical profession, ethicists, and the public at large. The debate is fueled by cases that extend way beyond passive euthanasia to the active consideration of killing by physicians. The need for a sophisticated but lucid exposition of the two sides of the argument is now urgent. This book supplies that need. Two prominent philosophers, Gerald Dworkin and R. G. Frey argue that in certain circumstances it is morally and should be legally permissible for physicians to provide the knowledge and means by which patients can take their lives. One of the best-known ethicists in the US (author of Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private) Sissela Bok argues that the legalization of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide would entail grave risks and would in no way deal adequately with the needs of those at the end of their lives, least of all in societies without health insurance available to all. All the moral and factual issues relevant to this controversy are explored. The book will thus enable readers to begin to decide for themselves how to confront a decision that we are all likely to face at some point in our lives.

Shows how the ethical issues raised by secrets and secrecy in our careers or private lives take us to the heart of the critical questions of private and public morality.

Alva Myrdal (1902-1986), diplomat, feminist, and one of the founders of the Swedish welfare state, exemplifies in her extraordinary life the joys, the sorrows, and the achievements of women in our time. Her daughter shows us with unflinching candor how Myrdal struggled to attain in her private life the freedom and opportunity which she won for millions of other women.