Author: Simon Lee
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448129710
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 281
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Book Description
Professor Simon Lee explores five acute moral dilemmas of the new millennium, each of which has caused un-ease among liberals and conservatives alike. His variation on the old adage that hard cases make bad law is to say that hard cases make for un-easy ethics. If you do not feel uneasy about your answer then you have not understood the questions posed by a series of dilemmas. First, he unravels the moral thinking behind opposing views of the case of the Siamese twins, which attracted worldwide attention in the summer and autumn of 2000, showing how the Archbishop of Westminster argued on ethical principles while the judges responded by using hypothetical 'hard cases'. Second, he explores sharply conflicting reactions to the release in the summer of 2001 of the 'child child killers' of the little boy James Bulger, asking how he find space for atonement. Third, he traces the moral dilemmas within the stop-start Northern Irish peace process which has seen so many twists and turns in the past couple of years. Fourth, he examines the ethics of business and government behaviour in the year of collapses from rural industry to Railtrack. Finally, he offers one of the first considered ethical analyses of contrasting responses to the terror attacks in the USA on 11 September 2001. Ranging across philosophy, law and theology, this analysis of hard cases and un-easy ethics culminates in a novel interpretation of politics' elusive Third Way.
Author: Julia Driver
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139430025
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 160
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Book Description
The predominant view of moral virtue can be traced back to Aristotle. He believed that moral virtue must involve intellectual excellence. To have moral virtue one must have practical wisdom - the ability to deliberate well and to see what is morally relevant in a given context. Julia Driver challenges this classical theory of virtue, arguing that it fails to take into account virtues which do seem to involve ignorance or epistemic defect. Some 'virtues of ignorance' are counterexamples to accounts of virtue which hold that moral virtue must involve practical wisdom. Modesty, for example, is generally considered to be a virtue even though the modest person may be making an inaccurate assessment of his or her accomplishments. Driver argues that we should abandon the highly intellectualist view of virtue and instead adopt a consequentialist perspective which holds that virtue is simply a character trait which systematically produces good consequences.
Author: Michael J Sandel
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674043065
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 177
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Book Description
Breakthroughs in genetics present us with a promise and a predicament. The promise is that we will soon be able to treat and prevent a host of debilitating diseases. The predicament is that our newfound genetic knowledge may enable us to manipulate our nature—to enhance our genetic traits and those of our children. Although most people find at least some forms of genetic engineering disquieting, it is not easy to articulate why. What is wrong with re-engineering our nature? The Case against Perfection explores these and other moral quandaries connected with the quest to perfect ourselves and our children. Michael Sandel argues that the pursuit of perfection is flawed for reasons that go beyond safety and fairness. The drive to enhance human nature through genetic technologies is objectionable because it represents a bid for mastery and dominion that fails to appreciate the gifted character of human powers and achievements. Carrying us beyond familiar terms of political discourse, this book contends that the genetic revolution will change the way philosophers discuss ethics and will force spiritual questions back onto the political agenda. In order to grapple with the ethics of enhancement, we need to confront questions largely lost from view in the modern world. Since these questions verge on theology, modern philosophers and political theorists tend to shrink from them. But our new powers of biotechnology make these questions unavoidable. Addressing them is the task of this book, by one of America’s preeminent moral and political thinkers.
Author: Mark Gibney
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742535893
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 218
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Book Description
In 'Five Uneasy Pieces', Mark Gibney offers an assessment of the role of the US in the wider world, contrasting the policies that have been adopted with those that he argues would constitute a more ethically based relationship with other nations.
Author: Carl F. H. Henry
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 146742398X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 116
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Book Description
Originally published in 1947, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism has since served as the manifesto of evangelical Christians serious about bringing the fundamentals of the Christian faith to bear in contemporary culture. In this classic book Carl F. H. Henry, the father of modern fundamentalism, pioneered a path for active Christian engagement with the world -- a path as relevant today as when it was first staked out. Now available again and featuring a new foreword by Richard J. Mouw, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism offers a bracing world-and-life view that calls for boldness on the part of the evangelical community. Henry argues that a reformation is imperative within the ranks of conservative Christianity, one that will result in an ecumenical passion for souls and in the power to meaningfully address the social and intellectual needs of the world.
Author: Rachel Sherman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691195161
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329
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Book Description
A surprising and revealing look at how today’s elite view their wealth and place in society From TV’s “real housewives” to The Wolf of Wall Street, our popular culture portrays the wealthy as materialistic and entitled. But what do we really know about those who live on “easy street”? In this penetrating book, Rachel Sherman draws on rare in-depth interviews that she conducted with fifty affluent New Yorkers—from hedge fund financiers and artists to stay-at-home mothers—to examine their lifestyle choices and understanding of privilege. Sherman upends images of wealthy people as invested only in accruing social advantages for themselves and their children. Instead, these liberal elites, who believe in diversity and meritocracy, feel conflicted about their position in a highly unequal society. As the distance between rich and poor widens, Uneasy Street not only explores the lives of those at the top but also sheds light on how extreme inequality comes to seem ordinary and acceptable to the rest of us.
Author: Anita L. Allen
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780847673285
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
'Anita L. Allen breaks new ground...A stunning indictment of women's status in contemporary society, her book provides vital original scholarly research and insight.' |s-NEW DIRECTIONS FOR WOMEN
Author: Martin Blumenthal-Barby
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801467381
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
In Inconceivable Effects, Martin Blumenthal-Barby reads theoretical, literary and cinematic works that appear noteworthy for the ethical questions they raise. Via critical analysis of writers and filmmakers whose projects have changed our ways of viewing the modern world—including Hannah Arendt, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, the directors of Germany in Autumn, and Heiner Müller—these essays furnish a cultural base for contemporary discussions of totalitarian domination, lying and politics, the relation between law and body, the relation between law and justice, the question of violence, and our ways of conceptualizing "the human." A consideration of ethics is central to the book, but ethics in a general, philosophical sense is not the primary subject here; instead, Blumenthal-Barby suggests that whatever understanding of the ethical one has is always contingent upon a particular mode of presentation (Darstellung), on particular aesthetic qualities and features of media. Whatever there is to be said about ethics, it is always bound to certain forms of saying, certain ways of telling, certain modes of narration. That modes of presentation differ across genres and media goes without saying; that such differences are intimately linked with the question of the ethical emerges with heightened urgency in this book.
Author: Daniel A. Bell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139459066
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
This book is the product of a multi-year dialogue between leading human rights theorists and high-level representatives of international human rights NGOs (INGOs). It is divided into three parts that reflect the major ethical challenges discussed at the workshops: the ethical challenges associated with interaction between relatively rich and powerful northern-based human rights INGOs and recipients of their aid in the South; whether and how to collaborate with governments that place severe restrictions on the activities of human rights INGOs; and the tension between expanding the organization's mandate to address more fundamental social and economic problems and restricting it for the sake of focusing on more immediate and clearly identifiable violations of civil and political rights. Each section contains contributions by both theorists and practitioners of human rights.
Author: Sandra Shapshay
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190906804
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
This book articulates and defends an interpretation of Schopenhauer's ethics as an original and credible contribution to the history of ethics. It presents Schopenhauer's ethics of compassion in direct tension with his resignationism and aims to show surprising continuities with Kant's ethics.
