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What motiviates altruism? How essential is altruism to the human experience? Is altruism readily accessible to the ordinary person? Exploring these questions through the lenses of biology, psychology, philosophy, and religion, this book argues for the existence of altruism against competing theories that view benevolence as self-interest in disguise. The authors consider the role of genetics and evolutionary biology: psychological states that induce altt behaior;phlsohcal teories of altruism in normative ethics such as Kantian, utilitarian, and Aristotelian models of moral action; and accounts of love of the neighbor in Christianity and Buddhism. Using the insights of these varying perspectives, the authors offer a new comprehensive definition of altruism that affirms humanity's benevolent nature.
Rarely does a new theological position emerge to account well for life in the world, including not only goodness and beauty but also tragedy and randomness. Drawing from Scripture, science, philosophy and various theological traditions, Thomas Jay Oord offers a novel theology of providence—essential kenosis—that emphasizes God's inherently noncoercive love in relation to creation.
The first book-length study of international law through the lens of altruism.
This book explores the unprecedented challenge of involuntary singleness for women, and the implications of disregarding this challenge for the Christian (and particularly, baptistic) communities of faith. It argues that these communities not only fail involuntarily single women, but also in so doing, suffer a serious detriment to their own communal health and Christian witness. Taking the challenge of involuntary singleness as a test case, this book explores the method of convictional theology and argues for a holistic framework that can draw together the personal, communal, and visionary spheres of human existence. Although primarily a work of theological ethics, it also draws from a number of different disciplines, including cultural studies and sociology as well as intersections of science and theology.
At the heart of Christian ethics is the biblical commandment to love God and to love one's neighbor as oneself. But what is the meaning of love? Scholars have wrestled with this question since the recording of the Christian gospels, and in recent decades teachers and students of Christian ethics have engaged in vigorous debates about appropriate interpretations and implications of this critical norm. In Love and Christian Ethics, nearly two dozen leading experts analyze and assess the meaning of love from a wide range of perspectives. Chapters are organized into three areas: influential sources and exponents of Western Christian thought about the ethical significance of love, perennial theoretical questions attending that consideration, and the implications of Christian love for important social realities. Contributors bring a richness of thought and experience to deliver unprecedentedly broad and rigorous analysis of this central tenet of Christian ethics and faith. William Werpehowski provides an afterword on future trajectories for this research. Love and Christian Ethics is sure to become a benchmark resource in the field.
The past decade has witnessed a renaissance in scientific approaches to the study of morality. Once understood to be the domain of moral psychology, the newer approach to morality is largely interdisciplinary, driven in no small part by developments in behavioural economics and evolutionary biology, as well as advances in neuroscientific imaging capabilities, among other fields. To date, scientists studying moral cognition and behaviour have paid little attention to virtue theory, while virtue theorists have yet to acknowledge the new research results emerging from the new science of morality. Theology and the Science of Moral Action explores a new approach to ethical thinking that promotes dialogue and integration between recent research in the scientific study of moral cognition and behaviour—including neuroscience, moral psychology, and behavioural economics—and virtue theoretic approaches to ethics in both philosophy and theology. More particularly, the book evaluates the concept of moral exemplarity and its significance in philosophical and theological ethics as well as for ongoing research programs in the cognitive sciences.
Organs for Sale is an extended case study of a lively public moral debate that delves into how a society assigns worth as well as what ought to be for sale and why.
Moral Theory: An Introduction explores some of the historically most important and currently debated moral theories about the nature of the right and the good, including divine command theory, relativism, natural law theory, consequentialism, egoism, Kant’s ethics, ethics of prima facie duties, contractualism, virtue ethics and care ethics. Providing an introduction to moral theory that explains and critically examines the theories of such classical philosophers as Aristotle, Aquinas, Bentham, Kant, Mill, and Ross, this book acquaints students with the work of contemporary moral philosophers. Each chapter has been revised and updated. The third edition includes a new chapter on moral contractualism and an extensively revised chapter on virtue ethics and care ethics. Additionally, the book discusses recent work by moral psychologists making an impact on moral theory.
The idea of moral evil has always held a special place in philosophy and theology because the existence of evil has implications for the dignity of the human and the limits of human action. Andrew Michael Flescher proposes four interpretations of evil, drawing on philosophical and theological sources and using them to trace through history the moral traditions that are associated with them. The first model, evil as the presence of badness, offers a traditional dualistic model represented by Manicheanism. The second, evil leading to goodness through suffering, presents a theological interpretation known as theodicy. Absence of badness—that is, evil as a social construction—is the third mo...
Nearly 120,000 people are in need of healthy organs in the United States.. Every ten minutes a new name is added to this list, while each day eight people die waiting for an organ to become available. Worse, the gap between those in need of an organ and the number of available donors is growing: our traditional reliance on cadaveric organ donation is insufficient, and in recent years there has been a decline in the number of living donors as well as in the percentage of living donors relative to overall kidney donors. Some transplant surgeons and policy advocates suggest a market solution and legalizing the sale of organs, Andrew Michael Flescher objects to this approach, citing concerns abo...