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The great reversal : how we let technology take control of the planet
\"Every day, we are presented with new technologies that can influence human thought and action, such as psychopharmaceuticals, new generation performance enhancing drugs, elective biotechnology, and gastric bypass surgery. Have we let technology go too far in this respect? In The Great Reversal, David Edward Tabachnick contends that this question may not be unique to contemporary society. Through an assessment of the great works of philosophy and politics, Tabachnick explores the largely unrecognized history of technology as an idea.
Book
Aristotle's discovery of the human : piety and politics in the Nicomachean ethics
Aristotle's Discovery of the Human offers a fresh, illuminating, and accessible analysis of one of the Western philosophical tradition's most important texts.
In Aristotle's Discovery of the Human, noted political theorist Mary P. Nichols explores the ways in which Aristotle brings the gods and the divine into his \"philosophizing about human affairs\" in his Nicomachean Ethics. Her analysis shows that, for Aristotle, both piety and politics are central to a flourishing human life. Aristotle argues that piety provides us not only an awareness of our kinship to the divine, and hence elevates human life, but also an awareness of a divinity that we cannot entirely assimilate or fathom. Piety therefore supports a politics that strives for excellence at the same time that it checks excess through a recognition of human limitation.
Proceeding through each of the ten books of the Ethics, Nichols shows that this prequel to Aristotle's Politics is as theoretical as it is practical. Its goal of improving political life and educating citizens and statesmen is inseparable from its pursuit of the truth about human beings and their relation to the divine. In the final chapter, which turns to contemporary political debate, Nichols's suggestion of the possibility of supplementing and deepening liberalism on Aristotelian grounds is supported by the account of human nature, virtue, friendship, and community developed throughout her study of the Ethics.
eBook
The pursuit of happiness : how classical writers on virtue inspired the lives of the founders and defined America
\"The Declaration of Independence identified \"the pursuit of happiness\" as one of our unalienable rights, along with life and liberty. Jeffrey Rosen, the president of the National Constitution Center, profiles six of the most influential founders--Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton--to show what pursuing happiness meant in their lives. By reading the classical Greek and Roman moral philosophers who inspired the Founders, Rosen shows us how they understood the pursuit of happiness as a quest for being good, not feeling good--the pursuit of lifelong virtue, not short-term pleasure. Among those virtues were the habits of industry, temperance, moderation, and sincerity, which the Founders viewed as part of a daily struggle for self-improvement, character development, and calm self-mastery. They believed that political self-government required personal self-government. For all six Founders, the pursuit of virtue was incompatible with enslavement of African Americans, although the Virginians betrayed their own principles. The Pursuit of Happiness is more than an elucidation of the Declaration's famous phrase; it is a revelatory journey into the minds of the Founders, and a deep, rich, and fresh understanding of the foundation of our democracy\"-- Amazon.
Book
Ecological Moral Character
An ecological model through which we can imagine
Aquinas' vision of moral character
The images we use to think about moral character are powerful.
They inform our understanding of the moral virtues and the ways in
which moral character develops. However, this aspect of virtue
ethics is rarely discussed.
In Ecological Moral Character, Nancy M. Rourke creates
an ecological model through which we can form images of moral
character. She integrates concepts of ecology with Aquinas' vision
and describes the dynamics of a moral character in terms of the
processes and functions that take place in an ecosystem. The
virtues, the passions, the will, and the intellect, are also
described in terms of this model.
Ecological Moral Character asks readers to choose
deliberately the models we use to imagine moral character and
offers this ecological virtue model as a vital framework for a
period of environmental crisis.
eBook
Thoreau's Living Ethics
Thoreau's Living Ethics is the first full, rigorous account of Henry Thoreau's ethical philosophy. Focused on Walden but ranging widely across his writings, the study situates Thoreau within a long tradition of ethical thinking in the West, from the ancients to the Romantics and on to the present day. Philip Cafaro shows Thoreau grappling with important ethical questions that agitated his own society and discusses his value for those seeking to understand contemporary ethical issues. Cafaro's particular interest is in Thoreau's treatment of virtue ethics: the branch of ethics centered on personal and social flourishing. Ranging across the central elements of Thoreau's philosophy-life, virtue, economy, solitude and society, nature, and politics-Cafaro shows Thoreau developing a comprehensive virtue ethics, less based in ancient philosophy than many recent efforts and more grounded in modern life and experience. He presents Thoreau's evolutionary, experimental ethics as superior to the more static foundational efforts of current virtue ethicists. Another main focus is Thoreau's environmental ethics. The book shows Thoreau not only anticipating recent arguments for wild nature's intrinsic value, but also demonstrating how a personal connection to nature furthers self-development, moral character, knowledge, and creativity. Thoreau's life and writings, argues Cafaro, present a positive, life-affirming environmental ethics, combining respect and restraint with an appreciation for human possibilities for flourishing within nature.
eBook
Character as Moral Fiction
Everyone wants to be virtuous, but recent psychological investigations suggest that this may not be possible. Mark Alfano challenges this theory and asks, not whether character is empirically adequate, but what characters human beings could have and develop. Although psychology suggests that most people do not have robust character traits such as courage, honesty and open-mindedness, Alfano argues that we have reason to attribute these virtues to people because such attributions function as self-fulfilling prophecies - children become more studious if they are told that they are hard-working and adults become more generous if they are told that they are generous. He argues that we should think of virtue and character as social constructs: there is no such thing as virtue without social reinforcement. His original and provocative book will interest a wide range of readers in contemporary ethics, epistemology, moral psychology and empirically informed philosophy.
eBook
Virtue Ethics
Christine Swanton offers a new, comprehensive theory of virtue ethics which addresses the major concerns of modern ethical theory from a character-based perspective. The book departs in significant ways from classical virtue ethics and neo-Aristotelianism, employing insights from Nietzsche and other sources, resulting in a highly distinctive and or.
eBook
The Structures of Virtue and Vice
A new ethics for understanding the social forces that
shape moral character.
It is easy to be vicious and difficult to be virtuous in today's
world, especially given that many of the social structures that
connect and sustain us enable exploitation and disincentivize
justice. There are others, though, that encourage virtue.
In his book Daniel J. Daly uses the lens of virtue and vice to
reimagine from the ground up a Catholic ethics that can better
scrutinize the social forces that both affect our moral character
and contribute to human well-being or human suffering.
Daly's approach uses both traditional and contemporary sources,
drawing on the works of Thomas Aquinas as well as incorporating
theories such as critical realist social theory, to illustrate the
nature and function of social structures and the factors that
transform them. Daly's ethics focus on the relationship between
structure and agency and the different structures that enable and
constrain an individual's pursuit of the virtuous life. His
approach defines with unique clarity the virtuous structures that
facilitate a love of God, self, neighbor, and creation, and the
vicious structures that cultivate hatred, intemperance, and
indifference to suffering. In doing so, Daly creates a Catholic
ethical framework for responding virtuously to the problems caused
by global social systems, from poverty to climate change.
Daly uses the lens of virtue and vice to reimagine a Catholic
ethics that can better scrutinize the social forces that both
affect our moral character and contribute to human well-being or
human suffering, creating a framework to respond virtuously to
problems caused by global social systems, from poverty to climate
change.
eBook
The Seven Democratic Virtues
The insurrection of January 6, 2021, demonstrated conclusively
that tribalism in the United States has become dangerous. The
\"other side\" is no longer viewed as a well-intentioned opponent but
as an existential threat. If we don't change course, American
democracy is far from assured.
This book outlines specific steps that average citizens can take
to back the nation away from the brink. Instead of looking to
political leaders, institutions, or policy for solutions to extreme
partisanship, Christopher Beem argues that concerned citizens can
and must take up the cause. He spells out seven civic practices we
can all follow that will help us work against our antidemocratic
tendencies and reorient the nation toward the \"more perfect union\"
of our Founders. Beem's road map to restore our democracy draws on
thinkers from Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas to James Madison, Hannah
Arendt, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Empathetic and eminently reasonable, The Seven Democratic
Virtues presents practical advice for what each of us can do
to change the political discourse and save our democracy. This is
necessary reading for our politics today-and in the future.
eBook