Tolerance and the Ethical Life

Tolerance and the Ethical Life PDF Author: Andrew Fiala
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1847140378
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
In a fresh and exciting way, this new book shows how tolerance connects with the practice of philosophy. Andrew Fiala examines the virtue of tolerance as it appears in several historical contexts: Socratic philosophy, Stoic philosophy, Pragmatism, and Existentialism. The lesson derived is that tolerance is a virtue for what Fiala calls 'tragic communities'. Such communities are developed when we come together across our differences, but they lack the robust sense of connection that we often seek with others - the complete sort of happiness that is offered by a more utopian ideal of community. But rather than viewing this conclusion as a failure, Fiala maintains that tragic communities are the best communities possible for human beings who are aware of their own individuality and finitude. Indeed, they are typical of the sorts of communities created by philosophers engaged in dialogue with others. Tolerance and the Ethical Life will strongly appeal to specialists and upper-level students in Ethics and Political Philosophy, both for its unique historical exploration of tolerance and its application of those results to present-day moral theory.

Tolerance and the Ethical Life

Tolerance and the Ethical Life PDF Author: Andrew Fiala
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1847140378
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Get Book Here

Book Description
In a fresh and exciting way, this new book shows how tolerance connects with the practice of philosophy. Andrew Fiala examines the virtue of tolerance as it appears in several historical contexts: Socratic philosophy, Stoic philosophy, Pragmatism, and Existentialism. The lesson derived is that tolerance is a virtue for what Fiala calls 'tragic communities'. Such communities are developed when we come together across our differences, but they lack the robust sense of connection that we often seek with others - the complete sort of happiness that is offered by a more utopian ideal of community. But rather than viewing this conclusion as a failure, Fiala maintains that tragic communities are the best communities possible for human beings who are aware of their own individuality and finitude. Indeed, they are typical of the sorts of communities created by philosophers engaged in dialogue with others. Tolerance and the Ethical Life will strongly appeal to specialists and upper-level students in Ethics and Political Philosophy, both for its unique historical exploration of tolerance and its application of those results to present-day moral theory.

Tolerance Among the Virtues

Tolerance Among the Virtues PDF Author: John R. Bowlin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691191697
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
In a pluralistic society such as ours, tolerance is a virtue—but it doesn't always seem so. Some suspect that it entangles us in unacceptable moral compromises and inequalities of power, while others dismiss it as mere political correctness or doubt that it can safeguard the moral and political relationships we value. Tolerance among the Virtues provides a vigorous defense of tolerance against its many critics and shows why the virtue of tolerance involves exercising judgment across a variety of different circumstances and relationships—not simply applying a prescribed set of rules. Drawing inspiration from St. Paul, Aquinas, and Wittgenstein, John Bowlin offers a nuanced inquiry into tolerance as a virtue. He explains why the advocates and debunkers of toleration have reached an impasse, and he suggests a new way forward by distinguishing the virtue of tolerance from its false look-alikes, and from its sibling, forbearance. Some acts of toleration are right and good, while others amount to indifference, complicity, or condescension. Some persons are able to draw these distinctions well and to act in accord with their better judgment. When we praise them as tolerant, we are commending them as virtuous. Bowlin explores what that commendation means. Tolerance among the Virtues offers invaluable insights into how to live amid differences we cannot endorse—beliefs we consider false, actions we think are unjust, institutional arrangements we consider cruel or corrupt, and persons who embody what we oppose.

Tolerance and the Ethical Life

Tolerance and the Ethical Life PDF Author: Fiala, Andrew Gordon Fiala
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Toleration
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description


True Tolerance

True Tolerance PDF Author: Jay Budziszewski
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351294784
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
In contemporary liberal thought, "tolerance" has come to be redefined as a synonym for ethical neutrality: refusal to judge among competing views of goods and evils. The result of this extreme relativism has been a foundations crisis in law, politics, education, and other areas of social life. In this lucidly written and brilliantly argued volume, J. Budziszewski attempts to reserve the self-destruction of modern liberalism by showing that true tolerance is not only consistent with taking stands about objective goods and evils, but actually requires doing so.Tolerance, falsely understood as ethical neutrality, has the paradoxical effect of crippling policy choice by divesting it of the moral and practical framework on which it depends. By painstakingly and exhaustively dissecting each of the many neutralist arguments, Budziszewski demonstrates that real neutrality is logically impossible. Confronted by alternative views, the neutralist at best obscures his own underlying judgments, and at worst abandons all possible defense against fanatics who oppose both true equality and true tolerance.True Tolerance is both a rigorous critique, and a polemic undertaken in the name of a positive, twenty-first century vision of liberalism. Budziszewsky outlines a view of true tolerance that assumes a relationship with an older liberal tradition and a codependence with other virtues, including humility, mercy, charity, respect, and courtesy. This vision is rooted in historical experience and rational conviction about what is good. In the spirit of liberal and classical theorists of virtue from Aristotle to John Locke to Alasdair MacIntyre, the virtue of true tolerance is much more than a readiness to follow known rules; it includes a developed ability to distinguish good rules from bad, and to choose rightly even where there are no rules or where rules seem to contradict each other. Accessibly written and intended for a wide readership, True Tolerance will be of special interest to political theorists and activists, and to sociologists and philosophers.

Monotheism and Tolerance

Monotheism and Tolerance PDF Author: Robert Erlewine
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253221560
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Monotheism and Tolerance suggests a way to deal with the intractable problem of religiously motivated and justified violence.

William James, Moral Philosophy, and the Ethical Life

William James, Moral Philosophy, and the Ethical Life PDF Author: Jacob L. Goodson
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739190148
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
Virtue theory, natural law, deontology, utilitarianism, existentialism: these are the basic moral theories taught in “Ethics,” “History of Philosophy,” and “Introduction to Philosophy” courses throughout the United States. When the American philosopher William James (1842 – 1910) find his way into these conversations, there is uncertainty about where his thinking fits. While utilitarianism has become the default position for teaching James’s pragmatism and radical empiricism, this default position fails to address and explain James’s multiple criticisms of John Stuart Mill’s formulaic approach to questions concerning the moral life. Through close readings of James’s writings, the chapters in William James, Moral Philosophy, and the Ethical Life catalogue the ways in whichJames wants to avoid the following: (a) the hierarchies of Christian natural law theory, (b) the moral calculus of Mill’s utilitarianism, (c) the absolutism and principle-ism of Immanuel Kant’s deontology, and (d) the staticity of the virtues found in Aristotle’s moral theory. Elaborating upon and clarifying James’s differences from these dominant moral theories is a crucial feature of this collection. This collection, is not, however, intended to be wholly negative – that is, only describing to readers what James’s moral theory is not. It seeks to articulate the positive features of James’s ethics and moral reasoning: what does it mean to an ethical life, and how should we theorize about morality?

The Power of Tolerance

The Power of Tolerance PDF Author: Wendy Brown
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231170181
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 113

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Book Description
We invoke the ideal of tolerance in response to conflict, but what does it mean to answer conflict with a call for tolerance? Is tolerance a way of resolving conflicts or a means of sustaining them? Does it transform conflicts into productive tensions, or does it perpetuate underlying power relations? To what extent does tolerance hide its involvement with power and act as a form of depoliticization? Wendy Brown and Rainer Forst debate the uses and misuses of tolerance, an exchange that highlights the fundamental differences in their critical practice despite a number of political similarities. Both scholars address the normative premises, limits, and political implications of various conceptions of tolerance. Brown offers a genealogical critique of contemporary discourses on tolerance in Western liberal societies, focusing on their inherent ties to colonialism and imperialism, and Forst reconstructs an intellectual history of tolerance that attempts to redeem its political virtue in democratic societies. Brown and Forst work from different perspectives and traditions, yet they each remain wary of the subjection and abnegation embodied in toleration discourses, among other issues. The result is a dialogue rich in critical and conceptual reflections on power, justice, discourse, rationality, and identity.

The Intolerance of Tolerance

The Intolerance of Tolerance PDF Author: D. A. Carson
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802831702
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
Carson traces the subtle but enormous shift in the way we have come to understand tolerance over recent years--from defending the rights of those who hold different beliefs to affirming all beliefs as equally valid and correct. He looks back at the history of this shift and discusses its implications for culture today, especially its bearing on democracy, discussions about good and evil, and Christian truth claims. --from publisher description

Why Tolerate Religion?

Why Tolerate Religion? PDF Author: Brian Leiter
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140085234X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
Why it's wrong to single out religious liberty for special legal protections This provocative book addresses one of the most enduring puzzles in political philosophy and constitutional theory—why is religion singled out for preferential treatment in both law and public discourse? Why are religious obligations that conflict with the law accorded special toleration while other obligations of conscience are not? In Why Tolerate Religion?, Brian Leiter shows why our reasons for tolerating religion are not specific to religion but apply to all claims of conscience, and why a government committed to liberty of conscience is not required by the principle of toleration to grant exemptions to laws that promote the general welfare.

Good Enough

Good Enough PDF Author: Daniel S. Milo
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674504623
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
In this spirited and irreverent critique of Darwin’s long hold over our imagination, a distinguished philosopher of science makes the case that, in culture as well as nature, not only the fittest survive: the world is full of the “good enough” that persist too. Why is the genome of a salamander forty times larger than that of a human? Why does the avocado tree produce a million flowers and only a hundred fruits? Why, in short, is there so much waste in nature? In this lively and wide-ranging meditation on the curious accidents and unexpected detours on the path of life, Daniel Milo argues that we ask these questions because we’ve embraced a faulty conception of how evolution—and human society—really works. Good Enough offers a vigorous critique of the quasi-monopoly that Darwin’s concept of natural selection has on our idea of the natural world. Darwinism excels in accounting for the evolution of traits, but it does not explain their excess in size and number. Many traits far exceed the optimal configuration to do the job, and yet the maintenance of this extra baggage does not prevent species from thriving for millions of years. Milo aims to give the messy side of nature its due—to stand up for the wasteful and inefficient organisms that nevertheless survive and multiply. But he does not stop at the border between evolutionary theory and its social consequences. He argues provocatively that the theory of evolution through natural selection has acquired the trappings of an ethical system. Optimization, competitiveness, and innovation have become the watchwords of Western societies, yet their role in human lives—as in the rest of nature—is dangerously overrated. Imperfection is not just good enough: it may at times be essential to survival.