Provides a helpful overview of the complicated contemporary debates about globalization. This book argues that our moral task is to ensure that globalization proceeds in ways that honour creation and life, and that any theory of globalization ought to be grounded in values that emphasize a democratized understanding of power.
What is the Good Life? Learn from some of the greatest minds in Greek, Jewish, and Christian thought. Comparing their thought reveals a new apex reached in the age-old question concerning the relationship of Jerusalem and Athens, faith and reason. Few have been more influential in Judaism and Christianity than Moses Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas, yet Aristotle influenced them both in significant ways. By adopting and adapting some of Aristotle’s best thinking, we can appreciate Maimonides’ and Aquinas’ search for the Good Life from their respective views, ranging from the fall to human perfectibility. This examines human nature, the human telos, and how each would prescribe the route to the Good Life. For all three, it is ultimately about the knowledge of God. But what does that mean? The comparative approach is more illuminating than if considered in isolation. Comparatively, Aristotle’s approach may be characterized as informational, Maimonides’ as instructional, and Aquinas’ as pneumatic-relational. The role of faith as a virtue in both Maimonides and Aquinas makes a substantive difference over Aristotle’s in philosophical and practical ways. It is used to exploit their accounts of the human fall, moral perfection, and ultimate human perfection—the knowledge of God.
The great German novelist Thomas Mann implored readers to resist the persistent and growing militarism of the mid-twentieth century. To whom should we turn for guidance during this current era of global violence, political corruption, economic inequality, and environmental degradation? For more than two millennia, the world's great thinkers have held that the ethically "good life" is the highest purpose of human existence. Renowned political philosopher Fred Dallmayr traces the development of this notion, finding surprising connections among Aristotelian ethics, Abrahamic and Eastern religious traditions, German idealism, and postindustrial social criticism. In Search of the Good Life does not offer a blueprint but rather invites readers on a cross-cultural quest. Along the way, the author discusses the teachings of Aristotle, Confucius, Nicolaus of Cusa, Leibniz, and Schiller, in addition invoking more recent writings of Gadamer and Ricoeur, as guideposts and sources of hope during our troubled times. Among contemporary themes Dallmayr discusses are the role of the classics in education, proper and improper ways of spreading democracy globally, the possibility of transnational citizenship, the problem of politicized evil, and the role of religion in our predominantly secular culture. Dallmayr restores the notion of the good life as a hallmark of personal conduct, civic virtue, and political engagement, and as the road map to enduring peace. In Search of the Good Life seeks to arouse complacent and dispirited citizens, guiding them out of the distractions of shallow amusements and perilous resentments in the direction of mutual learning and civic pedagogy -- a direction that will enable them to impose accountability on political leaders who stray from fundamental ethical standards.
Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995), French phenomenological philosopher and Talmudic commentator, is regarded as perhaps the greatest ethical philosopher of our time. While Levinas enjoys prominence in the philosophical and scholarly community, especially in Europe, there are few if any books or articles written that take Levinas's extremely difficult to understand, if not obtuse, philosophy and apply it to the everyday lives of real people struggling to give greater meaning and purpose, especially ethical meaning, to their personal lives. This book attempts to fill in the large gap in the Levinas literature, mainly through using a Levinasian-inspired, ethically-infused psychoanalytic approach.
Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff, the Sol and Anne Dorff Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Rector of American Jewish University in Los Angeles, is one of today’s leading Jewish ethicists. In Search of a Good Life presents influential essays by Dorff and explains his contribution to Jewish religious thought in the second half of the 20th century.
This is a booklet that is a great tool for Christians to give to seekers. The booklet presents readers with a dozen different life stories relating questions that a majority of people struggle with in their lives. Christians can give this booklet to seekers to speak to the question of the meaning of life as it relates to various audiences—successful businessmen and businesswomen, students, people recovering from disasters, parents struggling with decisions related to their special-needs child, and more. This booklet invites the reader to take seriously the search for purpose, meaning, and truth in life.
One of the founding fathers of bioethics describes the development of the field and his thinking on some of the crucial issues of our time. Daniel Callahan helped invent the field of bioethics more than forty years ago when he decided to use his training in philosophy to grapple with ethical problems in biology and medicine. Disenchanted with academic philosophy because of its analytical bent and distance from the concerns of real life, Callahan found the ethical issues raised by the rapid medical advances of the 1960s—which included the birth control pill, heart transplants, and new capacities to keep very sick people alive—to be philosophical questions with immediate real-world relevance. In this memoir, Callahan describes his part in the founding of bioethics and traces his thinking on critical issues including embryonic stem cell research, market-driven health care, and medical rationing. He identifies the major challenges facing bioethics today and ruminates on its future. Callahan writes about founding the Hastings Center—the first bioethics research institution—with the author and psychiatrist Willard Gaylin in 1969, and recounts the challenges of running a think tank while keeping up a prolific flow of influential books and articles. Editor of the famous liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal in the 1960s, Callahan describes his now-secular approach to issues of illness and mortality. He questions the idea of endless medical “progress” and interventionist end-of-life care that seems to blur the boundary between living and dying. It is the role of bioethics, he argues, to be a loyal dissenter in the onward march of medical progress. The most important challenge for bioethics now is to help rethink the very goals of medicine.
$24.95 hardcover · 1-58685-021-07˘ x 9 in, 256 pp, 50 Color Photographs, 32 Black & White Photographs and Line Drawings, Rights: W, Non-Fiction/ArcheologyWho were the first Americans? Where did they come from? When did they arrive? In this dramatic reconstruction of the daily lives of the earliest Americans, leading anthropologist Kenneth Tankersley tackles those questions, explaining how people survived the Ice Age and forever altered the course of human history. Drawing on more than two decades of fieldwork around the world, Tankersley takes readers on an exciting journey into America's most ancient human past-from the deep recesses of underground caverns in the East to the mountains and deserts of the West-providing a behind-the-scenes look at the search, discovery, and examination of Ice Age sites and artifacts. Based on the author's unique mix of archaeology, anthropology, and history, In Search of Ice Age Americans provides the most current theories and up-to-date answers to the fundamental questions of our past. This is the first book to tell the real stories behind America's most important archaeological discoveries by those who made them-farmers, teenagers, and cowboys-and through the oral traditions of Native Americans, the diaries of early European explorers, and the journals of America's founding fathers. This book is a must-read for anyone, young or old, interested in America's history. Kenneth B. Tankersley is a member of the Department of Art and Archaeology at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and a research associate of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. His research has been featured on National Geographic's Explorer, the Discovery Channel, All Things Considered, and Nova. He lives in Highland Heights, Kentucky.Douglas Preston has written extensively about America's past in books such as Dinosaurs in the Attic, Cities of Gold, and Talking to the Ground. He is best known for his archaeological suspense mysteries including The Relic, Riptide, and Reliquary. He has contributed to motion picture and television projects, as well as The New Yorker, National Geographic, and Harper's magazines. Preston is a research associate at the Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe and a board member of the School of American Research. He divides his time between Sante Fe and Italy.
The great German novelist Thomas Mann implored readers to resist the persistent and growing militarism of the mid-twentieth century. To whom should we turn for guidance during this current era of global violence, political corruption, economic inequality, and environmental degradation? For more than two millennia, the worldÕs great thinkers have held that the ethically Ògood lifeÓ is the highest purpose of human existence. Renowned political philosopher Fred Dallmayr traces the development of this notion, finding surprising connections among Aristotelian ethics, Abrahamic and Eastern religious traditions, German idealism, and postindustrial social criticism. In Search of the Good Life does not offer a blueprint but rather invites readers on a cross-cultural quest. Along the way, the author discusses the teachings of Aristotle, Confucius, Nicolaus of Cusa, Leibniz, and Schiller, in addition invoking more recent writings of Gadamer and Ricoeur, as guideposts and sources of hope during our troubled times. Among contemporary themes Dallmayr discusses are the role of the classics in education, proper and improper ways of spreading democracy globally, the possibility of transnational citizenship, the problem of politicized evil, and the role of religion in our predominantly secular culture. Dallmayr restores the notion of the good life as a hallmark of personal conduct, civic virtue, and political engagement, and as the road map to enduring peace. In Search of the Good Life seeks to arouse complacent and dispirited citizens, guiding them out of the distractions of shallow amusements and perilous resentments in the direction of mutual learning and civic pedagogyÑa direction that will enable them to impose accountability on political leaders who stray from fundamental ethical standards.
