Mere Humanity

Mere Humanity PDF Author: Donald T. Williams
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
ISBN: 0805440186
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Williams delves into the writings of G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien for answers about the purpose of man and his life on earth.

Mere Humanity

Mere Humanity PDF Author: Donald T. Williams
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
ISBN: 0805440186
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Williams delves into the writings of G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien for answers about the purpose of man and his life on earth.

Humanity's End

Humanity's End PDF Author: Nicholas Agar
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262525178
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
An argument that achieving millennial life spans or monumental intellects will destroy values that give meaning to human lives. Proposals to make us smarter than the greatest geniuses or to add thousands of years to our life spans seem fit only for the spam folder or trash can. And yet this is what contemporary advocates of radical enhancement offer in all seriousness. They present a variety of technologies and therapies that will expand our capacities far beyond what is currently possible for human beings. In Humanity's End, Nicholas Agar argues against radical enhancement, describing its destructive consequences. Agar examines the proposals of four prominent radical enhancers: Ray Kurzweil, who argues that technology will enable our escape from human biology; Aubrey de Grey, who calls for anti-aging therapies that will achieve “longevity escape velocity”; Nick Bostrom, who defends the morality and rationality of enhancement; and James Hughes, who envisions a harmonious democracy of the enhanced and the unenhanced. Agar argues that the outcomes of radical enhancement could be darker than the rosy futures described by these thinkers. The most dramatic means of enhancing our cognitive powers could in fact kill us; the radical extension of our life span could eliminate experiences of great value from our lives; and a situation in which some humans are radically enhanced and others are not could lead to tyranny of posthumans over humans.

Rethinking the Value of Humanity

Rethinking the Value of Humanity PDF Author: Sarah Buss
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019753936X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
To treat some human beings as less worthy of concern and respect than others is to lose sight of their humanity. But what does this moral blindness amount to? What are we missing when we fail to appreciate the value of humanity? The essays in this volume offer a wide range of competing, yet overlapping, answers to these questions. Some essays examine influential views in the history of Western philosophy. In others, philosophers currently working in ethics develop and defend their own views. Some essays appeal to distinctively human capacities. Others argue that our obligations to one another are ultimately grounded in self-interest, or certain shared interests, or our natural sociability. The philosophers featured here disagree about whether the value of human beings depends on the value of anything else. They disagree about how reason and rationality relate to this value, and even about whether we can reason our way to discovering it. This rich selection of proposals encourages us to rethink some of our own deepest assumptions about the moral significance of being human.

Ethics and Humanity

Ethics and Humanity PDF Author: N. Ann Davis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195325192
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
This work pays tribute to Jonathan Glover, a pioneering figure whose thought and personal influence have had a significant impact on applied philosophy. The papers collected here address topics to which Glover has contributed.

Revisiting Kant's Universal Law and Humanity Formulas

Revisiting Kant's Universal Law and Humanity Formulas PDF Author: Sven Nyholm
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110401320
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
This book offers new readings of Kant’s “universal law” and “humanity” formulations of the categorical imperative. It shows how, on these readings, the formulas do indeed turn out being alternative statements of the same basic moral law, and in the process responds to many of the standard objections raised against Kant’s theory. Its first chapter briefly explores the ways in which Kant draws on his philosophical predecessors such as Plato (and especially Plato’s Republic) and Jean-Jacque Rousseau. The second chapter offers a new reading of the relation between the universal law and humanity formulas by relating both of these to a third formula of Kant’s, viz. the “law of nature” formula, and also to Kant’s ideas about laws in general and human nature in particular. The third chapter considers and rejects some influential recent attempts to understand Kant’s argument for the humanity formula, and offers an alternative reconstruction instead. Chapter four considers what it is to flourish as a human being in line with Kant’s basic formulas of morality, and argues that the standard readings of the humanity formula cannot properly account for its relation to Kant’s views about the highest human good.

New Themes for the Protestant Clergy: Creeds without Charity, Theology without Humanity, and Protestantism without Christianity. [By S. A. Colwell.] With notes by the editor, on the literature of charity, population, pauperism, political economy and Protestantism

New Themes for the Protestant Clergy: Creeds without Charity, Theology without Humanity, and Protestantism without Christianity. [By S. A. Colwell.] With notes by the editor, on the literature of charity, population, pauperism, political economy and Protestantism PDF Author: Stephen A. COLWELL
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Charity
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Humanity across International Law and Biolaw

Humanity across International Law and Biolaw PDF Author: Britta van Beers
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113986808X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
The concepts of humanity, human dignity and mankind have emerged in different contexts across international law and biolaw. This raises many different questions. What are the aims for which 'humanity' is mobilised? How do these aims affect the ensuing interpretations of this concept? What are the negative counterparts of humanity, mankind and human dignity? And what happens if a concept developed in one particular context is taken up in another? By bringing together research from international law, biolaw and legal theory, this volume answers such questions by analysing how the concepts overlap and contradict each other across the disciplines. The result is not an examination of what humanity is but rather what it does and what it brings about in a variety of contexts.

The Rev. Samuel Noble on the Glorification of the Lord's Humanity

The Rev. Samuel Noble on the Glorification of the Lord's Humanity PDF Author: Samuel Noble
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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A Note on Mr. Gladstone's "The Peace to Come"

A Note on Mr. Gladstone's Author: Scotus
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Eastern question (Balkan)
Languages : en
Pages : 108

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The Value of Humanity in Kant's Moral Theory

The Value of Humanity in Kant's Moral Theory PDF Author: Richard Dean
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0199285721
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
The humanity formulation of Kant's Categorical Imperative demands that we treat humanity as an end in itself. Because this principle resonates with currently influential ideals of human rights and dignity, contemporary readers often find it compelling, even if the rest of Kant's moral philosophy leaves them cold. Moreover, some prominent specialists in Kant's ethics recently have turned to the humanity formulation as the most theoretically central and promising principle of Kant'sethics. Nevertheless, despite the intuitive appeal and the increasingly recognized philosophical importance of the humanity formulation, it has received less attention than many other, less central, aspects of Kant's ethics. Richard Dean offers the most sustained and systematic examination of thehumanity formulation to date.Dean argues that the 'rational nature' that must be treated as an end in itself is not a minimally rational nature, consisting of the power to set ends or the unrealized capacity to act morally, but instead is the more properly rational nature possessed by someone who gives priority to moral principles over any contrary impulses. This non-standard reading of the humanity formulation provides a firm theoretical foundation for deriving plausible approaches to particular moral issues - and,contrary to first impressions, does not impose moralistic demands to pass judgment on others' character. Dean's reading also enables progress on problems of interest to Kant scholars, such as reconstructing Kant's argument for accepting the humanity formulation as a basic moral principle, and allows forincreased understanding of the relationship between Kant's ethics and supposedly Kantian ideas such as 'respect for autonomy'.