Mere Morality

Mere Morality PDF Author: Lewis B. Smedes
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 9780802802576
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Lewis Smedes has written a penetrating study in ethics based on the five "moral" commandments--those pertaining to honor of parents, lying, stealing, adultery, and murder. Smedes examines what the commandments actually tell us to do and why, and how they can be understood amid the ambiguities of everyday living.

Mere Morality

Mere Morality PDF Author: Lewis B. Smedes
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 9780802802576
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Lewis Smedes has written a penetrating study in ethics based on the five "moral" commandments--those pertaining to honor of parents, lying, stealing, adultery, and murder. Smedes examines what the commandments actually tell us to do and why, and how they can be understood amid the ambiguities of everyday living.

Mere Morality

Mere Morality PDF Author: Dan Barker
Publisher: Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA)
ISBN: 1634311795
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
What drives us to be good? How do we even know how to be good? Philosophers and theologians have dealt with such questions for millennia, but Dan Barker thinks the answers are not so complicated. In Mere Morality, he argues there's no need to appeal to supernatural commandments or the fear of some higher power when considering morality. Stripping "good" and "evil" down to the basics, he offers a simple compass for navigating life's most difficult moral and ethical dilemmas.

Mere Christianity Study Guide

Mere Christianity Study Guide PDF Author: Steven Urban
Publisher: Brown Chair Books
ISBN: 0997841710
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description


Ordinary People

Ordinary People PDF Author: Judith Guest
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780140065176
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
One of the great bestseller of our time: the novel that inspired Robert Redford’s Oscar-winning film starring Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore In Ordinary People, Judith Guest’s remarkable first novel, the Jarrets are a typical American family. Calvin is a determined, successful provider and Beth an organized, efficient wife. They had two sons, Conrad and Buck, but now they have one. In this memorable, moving novel, Judith Guest takes the reader into their lives to share their misunderstandings, pain, and ultimate healing. Ordinary People is an extraordinary novel about an "ordinary" family divided by pain, yet bound by their struggle to heal. "Admirable...touching...full of the anxiety, despair, and joy that is common to every human experience of suffering and growth." -The New York Times "Rejoice! A novel for all ages and all seasons." -The Washington Post Book World

Mere Christianity

Mere Christianity PDF Author: C. S. Lewis
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 0060652888
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
A forceful and accessible discussion of Christian belief that has become one of the most popular introductions to Christianity and one of the most popular of Lewis's books. Uncovers common ground upon which all Christians can stand together.

Morality for Humans

Morality for Humans PDF Author: Mark Johnson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022611354X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
“A welcome renewal and defense of John Dewey's ethical naturalism, which Johnson claims is the only morality ‘fit for actual human beings.’” —Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews What is the difference between right and wrong? This is no easy question to answer, yet we constantly try to make it so, frequently appealing to absolutes, whether drawn from God, universal reason, or societal authority. Combining cognitive science with a pragmatist philosophical framework, Mark Johnson argues that appealing solely to absolute principles is not only scientifically unsound but even morally suspect. He shows that the standards for the kinds of people we should be and how we should treat one another are frequently subject to change. Taking context into consideration, he offers a nuanced, naturalistic view of ethics that sees us creatively adapt our standards according to given needs, emerging problems, and social interactions. Ethical naturalism is not just a revamped form of relativism. Indeed, Johnson attempts to overcome the absolutist-versus-relativist impasse that has been one of the most intractable problems in the history of philosophy. Much of our moral thought, he shows, is automatic and intuitive, gut feelings that we attempt to justify with rational analysis and argument. However, good moral deliberation is not limited to intuitive judgments supported after the fact by reasoning. Johnson points out a crucial third element: we imagine how our decisions will play out, how we or the world would change with each action we might take. Plumbing this imaginative dimension of moral reasoning, he provides a psychologically sophisticated view of moral problem solving, one perfectly suited for the embodied, culturally embedded, and ever-developing human creatures that we are.

Taking Morality Seriously

Taking Morality Seriously PDF Author: David Enoch
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019161856X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
In Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism David Enoch develops, argues for, and defends a strongly realist and objectivist view of ethics and normativity more broadly. This view—according to which there are perfectly objective, universal, moral and other normative truths that are not in any way reducible to other, natural truths—is familiar, but this book is the first in-detail development of the positive motivations for the view into reasonably precise arguments. And when the book turns defensive—defending Robust Realism against traditional objections—it mobilizes the original positive arguments for the view to help with fending off the objections. The main underlying motivation for Robust Realism developed in the book is that no other metaethical view can vindicate our taking morality seriously. The positive arguments developed here—the argument from the deliberative indispensability of normative truths, and the argument from the moral implications of metaethical objectivity (or its absence)—are thus arguments for Robust Realism that are sensitive to the underlying, pre-theoretical motivations for the view.

Kant: Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason

Kant: Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason PDF Author: Immanuel Kant
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521599641
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason is a key element of the system of philosophy which Kant introduced with his Critique of Pure Reason, and a work of major importance in the history of Western religious thought. It represents a great philosopher's attempt to spell out the form and content of a type of religion that would be grounded in moral reason and would meet the needs of ethical life. It includes sharply critical and boldly constructive discussions on topics not often treated by philosophers, including such traditional theological concepts as original sin and the salvation or 'justification' of a sinner, and the idea of the proper role of a church. This volume presents it and three short essays that illuminate it in new translations by Allen Wood and George di Giovanni, with an introduction by Robert Merrihew Adams that locates it in its historical and philosophical context.

The Myth of Morality

The Myth of Morality PDF Author: Richard Joyce
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139430939
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
In The Myth of Morality, Richard Joyce argues that moral discourse is hopelessly flawed. At the heart of ordinary moral judgements is a notion of moral inescapability, or practical authority, which, upon investigation, cannot be reasonably defended. Joyce argues that natural selection is to blame, in that it has provided us with a tendency to invest the world with values that it does not contain, and demands that it does not make. Should we therefore do away with morality, as we did away with other faulty notions such as witches? Possibly not. We may be able to carry on with morality as a 'useful fiction' - allowing it to have a regulative influence on our lives and decisions, perhaps even playing a central role - while not committing ourselves to believing or asserting falsehoods, and thus not being subject to accusations of 'error'.

Braintrust

Braintrust PDF Author: Patricia S. Churchland
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691180970
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
A provocative new account of how morality evolved What is morality? Where does it come from? And why do most of us heed its call most of the time? In Braintrust, neurophilosophy pioneer Patricia Churchland argues that morality originates in the biology of the brain. She describes the "neurobiological platform of bonding" that, modified by evolutionary pressures and cultural values, has led to human styles of moral behavior. The result is a provocative genealogy of morals that asks us to reevaluate the priority given to religion, absolute rules, and pure reason in accounting for the basis of morality. Moral values, Churchland argues, are rooted in a behavior common to all mammals—the caring for offspring. The evolved structure, processes, and chemistry of the brain incline humans to strive not only for self-preservation but for the well-being of allied selves—first offspring, then mates, kin, and so on, in wider and wider "caring" circles. Separation and exclusion cause pain, and the company of loved ones causes pleasure; responding to feelings of social pain and pleasure, brains adjust their circuitry to local customs. In this way, caring is apportioned, conscience molded, and moral intuitions instilled. A key part of the story is oxytocin, an ancient body-and-brain molecule that, by decreasing the stress response, allows humans to develop the trust in one another necessary for the development of close-knit ties, social institutions, and morality. A major new account of what really makes us moral, Braintrust challenges us to reconsider the origins of some of our most cherished values.