Compassion Versus Guilt, and Other Essays

Compassion Versus Guilt, and Other Essays PDF Author: Thomas Sowell
Publisher: William Morrow
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Collection of columnist Thomas Sowell's controversial columns about issues ranging from homelessness, foreign policy, AIDS, environmentalism, education, law, race and nostalgia.

Compassion Versus Guilt, and Other Essays

Compassion Versus Guilt, and Other Essays PDF Author: Thomas Sowell
Publisher: William Morrow
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Collection of columnist Thomas Sowell's controversial columns about issues ranging from homelessness, foreign policy, AIDS, environmentalism, education, law, race and nostalgia.

Moral Responsibility and the Boundaries of Community

Moral Responsibility and the Boundaries of Community PDF Author: Marion Smiley
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226763250
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
The question of responsibility plays a critical role not only in our attempts to resolve social and political problems, but in our very conceptions of what those problems are. Who, for example, is to blame for apartheid in South Africa? Is the South African government responsible? What about multinational corporations that do business there? Will uncovering the "true facts of the matter" lead us to the right answer? In an argument both compelling and provocative, Marion Smiley demonstrates how attributions of blame—far from being based on an objective process of factual discovery—are instead judgments that we ourselves make on the basis of our own political and social points of view. She argues that our conception of responsibility is a singularly modern one that locates the source of blameworthiness in an individual's free will. After exploring the flaws inherent in this conception, she shows how our judgments of blame evolve out of our configuration of social roles, our conception of communal boundaries, and the distribution of power upon which both are based. The great strength of Smiley's study lies in the way in which it brings together both rigorous philosophical analysis and an appreciation of the dynamics of social and political practice. By developing a pragmatic conception of moral responsibility, this work illustrates both how moral philosophy can enhance our understanding of social and political practices and why reflection on these practices is necessary to the reconstruction of our moral concepts.

Ever Wonder Why?

Ever Wonder Why? PDF Author: Thomas Sowell
Publisher: Hoover Press
ISBN: 0817947531
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
Thomas Sowell takes aim at a range of legal, social, racial, educational, and economic issues in this latest collection of his controversial, never boring, always thought-provoking essays. From "gun control myths" to "mealy mouth media" to "free lunch medicine," Sowell gets to the heart of the matters we all care about with his characteristically unsparing candor.

The Unreality of Memory

The Unreality of Memory PDF Author: Elisa Gabbert
Publisher: FSG Originals
ISBN: 0374720339
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
"Terror, disaster, memory, selfhood, happiness . . . leave it to a poet to tackle the unthinkable so wisely and so wittily."* A literary guide to life in the pre-apocalypse, The Unreality of Memory collects profound and prophetic essays on the Internet age’s media-saturated disaster coverage and our addiction to viewing and discussing the world’s ills. We stare at our phones. We keep multiple tabs open. Our chats and conversations are full of the phrase “Did you see?” The feeling that we’re living in the worst of times seems to be intensifying, alongside a desire to know precisely how bad things have gotten—and each new catastrophe distracts us from the last. The Unreality of Memory collects provocative, searching essays on disaster culture, climate anxiety, and our mounting collective sense of doom. In this new collection, acclaimed poet and essayist Elisa Gabbert explores our obsessions with disasters past and future, from the sinking of the Titanic to Chernobyl, from witch hunts to the plague. These deeply researched, prophetic meditations question how the world will end—if indeed it will—and why we can’t stop fantasizing about it. Can we avoid repeating history? Can we understand our moment from inside the moment? With The Unreality of Memory, Gabbert offers a hauntingly perceptive analysis of our new ways of being and a means of reconciling ourselves to this unreal new world. "A work of sheer brilliance, beauty and bravery.” *—Andrew Sean Greer, author of Less

Against Empathy

Against Empathy PDF Author: Paul Bloom
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062339354
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
New York Post Best Book of 2016 We often think of our capacity to experience the suffering of others as the ultimate source of goodness. Many of our wisest policy-makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers agree that the only problem with empathy is that we don’t have enough of it. Nothing could be farther from the truth, argues Yale researcher Paul Bloom. In AGAINST EMPATHY, Bloom reveals empathy to be one of the leading motivators of inequality and immorality in society. Far from helping us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and, ironically, often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it, but to draw instead upon a more distanced compassion. Basing his argument on groundbreaking scientific findings, Bloom makes the case that some of the worst decisions made by individuals and nations—who to give money to, when to go to war, how to respond to climate change, and who to imprison—are too often motivated by honest, yet misplaced, emotions. With precision and wit, he demonstrates how empathy distorts our judgment in every aspect of our lives, from philanthropy and charity to the justice system; from medical care and education to parenting and marriage. Without empathy, Bloom insists, our decisions would be clearer, fairer, and—yes—ultimately more moral. Brilliantly argued, urgent and humane, AGAINST EMPATHY shows us that, when it comes to both major policy decisions and the choices we make in our everyday lives, limiting our impulse toward empathy is often the most compassionate choice we can make.

The Empathy Exams

The Empathy Exams PDF Author: Leslie Jamison
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 1555970885
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
From personal loss to phantom diseases, The Empathy Exams is a bold and brilliant collection, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize A Publishers Weekly Top Ten Essay Collection of Spring 2014 Beginning with her experience as a medical actor who was paid to act out symptoms for medical students to diagnose, Leslie Jamison's visceral and revealing essays ask essential questions about our basic understanding of others: How should we care about each other? How can we feel another's pain, especially when pain can be assumed, distorted, or performed? Is empathy a tool by which to test or even grade each other? By confronting pain—real and imagined, her own and others'—Jamison uncovers a personal and cultural urgency to feel. She draws from her own experiences of illness and bodily injury to engage in an exploration that extends far beyond her life, spanning wide-ranging territory—from poverty tourism to phantom diseases, street violence to reality television, illness to incarceration—in its search for a kind of sight shaped by humility and grace.

Discovering Eve

Discovering Eve PDF Author: Carol Meyers
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199879184
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
This groundbreaking study looks beyond biblical texts, which have had a powerful influence over our views of women's roles and worth, in order to reconstruct the typical everyday lives of women in ancient Israel. Meyers argues that biblical sources alone do not give a true picture of ancient Israelite women because urban elite males wrote the vast majority of the scriptural texts and the stories of women in the Bible concern exceptional individuals rather than ordinary Israelite women. Analyzing the biblical material in light of recent archaeological discoveries about rural village life in ancient Palestine, Meyers depicts Israelite women not as submissive chattel in an oppressive patriarchy, but rather as strong and significant actors within their families and society.

Awakening Compassion at Work

Awakening Compassion at Work PDF Author: Monica Worline
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 1626564469
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Presenting an outline of the four necessary steps for meeting suffering with compassion, this insightful book shows how to build a capacity for compassion into the structures and practices of an organization. --

The Jukebox and Other Essays on Storytelling

The Jukebox and Other Essays on Storytelling PDF Author: Peter Handke
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374180547
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
In his "Essay on Tiredness," Handke transforms an everyday experience - often precipitated by boredom - into a fascinating exploration of the world of slow motion, differentiating degrees of fatigue, the types of weariness, its rejuvenating effects, as well as its erotic, cultural, and political implications.

How to Think Straight

How to Think Straight PDF Author: Antony Flew
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1615922156
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
Practical reasoning and clear thinking are essential for everyone if we are to make sense of the information we receive each day. Being able to quickly know the difference between valid and invalid arguments, the contradictory versus the contrary, vagueness and ambiguity, contradiction and self-contradiction, the truthful and the fallacious, separates clear thinkers from the crowd. How to Think Straight lays the foundation for critical reasoning by showing many ways in which our thinking goes awry. Celebrated philosopher Antony Flew entertainingly instructs on the many and varied faults that occur in argument, the power of reason, how to challenge assertions and find evidence, and how not to be persuaded by half-truths. Flew also examines poor reasoning, and why we should be concerned with finding the truth. Lucid, terse, and sensible, with study questions and exercises to help along the way, this enlightening second edition will help you develop the skills necessary to argue and reason effectively by following a few simple, easy-to-remember directions.