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This 1996 book is the result of a uniquely productive union of philosophy, psychoanalysis and anthropology, and explores the complexity and importance of emotions. Michael Stocker places emotions at the very centre of human identity, life and value. He lays bare how our culture's idealisation of rationality pervades the philosophical tradition and leads those who wrestle with serious ethical and philosophical problems into distortion and misunderstanding. Professor Stocker shows how important are the social and emotional contexts of ethical dilemmas and inner conflicts, and he challenges philosophical theories that try to overgeneralise and over-simplify by leaving out the particulars of each situation. In offering a realistic account of emotions and an in-depth analysis of how psychological factors affect judgments of all kind, this book will interest a broad range of readers across the disciplines of philosophy and psychology.
Plural values and conflicting values are often held to be conceptually problematic, threatening the very possibility of ethics, or at least of rational ethics. This book rejects this view. The author first demonstrates why it is so important to understand the issues raised by plural and conflicting values. This includes a full discussion of Aristotle's treatment of the issues. He then goes on to show that plurality and conflict are commonplace and generally unproblematic features of our everyday choice and action, and that they do allow for a sound and rational ethic.
Throughout history, hearing and sound perception have been typically framed in the context of how sound conveys information and how that information influences the listener. "Hear Where We Are" inverts this premise and examines how humans and other hearing animals use sound to establish acoustical relationships with their surroundings. This simple inversion reveals a panoply of possibilities by which we can re-evaluate how hearing animals use, produce, and perceive sound. Nuance in vocalizations become signals of enticement or boundary setting; silence becomes a field ripe in auditory possibilities; predator/prey relationships are infused with acoustic deception, and sounds that have been co...
A reappraisal on the emphasis on duty in Immanuel Kant's ethics is long overdue. Marcia W. Baron evaluates and for the most part defends Kantian ethics against two frequent criticisms: that duty plays too large a role, leaving no room for the supererogatory; and that Kant places too much value on acting from duty. The author first argues that Kant's distinction between perfect and imperfect duties provides a plausible and intriguing alternative to contemporary approaches to charity, self-sacrifice, heroism, and saintliness. She probes the differences between the supererogationist and the Kantian, exploring the motivation between the former's position and bringing to light sharply divided vie...
There has been a marked revival of interest among philosophers in the topic of friendship. This collection of fifteen essays presents an admirable range of the diverse contemporary approaches to friendship within philosophy. The book is divided into three sections. The first centers on the nature of friendship, the difference between friendship and other personal loves, and the importance of friendship in the individual's life. The second section discusses the moral significance of friendship and the response of various ethical theories and theorists (Aristotelian, Christian, Kantian, and consequentialist) to the phenomenon of friendship. The last section deals with the importance of persona...
This volume is an edited collection of original papers on the theme of "Values, Rational Choice, and the Will". The editor is a Stanford-trained moral philosopher, and the organizer of a conference held on April 1-3, 2004. The conference succeeded in bringing together a wide range of essays that dealt with most of the central questions of moral philosophy today, in both normative ethics and meta-ethics, theoretical and applied ethics, and especially in moral psychology.
Narratives have always played a prominent role in both bioethics and medicine; the fields have attracted much storytelling, ranging from great literature to humbler stories of sickness and personal histories. And all bioethicists work with cases--from court cases that shape policy matters to case studies that chronicle sickness. But how useful are these various narratives for sorting out moral matters? What kind of ethical work can stories do--and what are the limits to this work? The new essays in Stories and Their Limits offer insightful reflections on the relationship between narratives and ethics.
Problems of individual moral choice have always been closely bound up with the larger normative concerns of political theory. There are several reasons for this continuing connection. First, the value conflicts involved in private moral choice often find themselves reproduced on the public stage: for example, states may find it difficult to do right by both justice and mercy in much the same way individuals do. Second, we frequently find conflicts among the values at stake in individual life and public life, such that the moral choice we must make is between private and public goods. Loosely speaking, choices which express these conflicts are what philosophers call moral dilemmas: choices in...
What are our reasons for acting? Morality purports to give us these reasons, and so do norms of prudence and the laws of society. The theory of practical reason assesses the authority of these potentially competing claims, and for this reason philosophers with a wide range of interests have converged on the topic of reasons for action. This volume contains eleven essays on practical reason by leading and emerging philosophers. Topics include the differences between practical and theoretical rationality, practical conditionals and the wide-scope ought, the explanation of action, the sources of reasons, and the relationship between morality and reasons for action. The volume will be essential reading for all philosophers interested in ethics and practical reason.
Today’s wholesale lack of trust in our institutions is a problem with deep roots in liberalism, and it cannot be solved by tweaking a liberal paradigm in which different conceptions of the good create conflict that is resolved by a sovereign state without reference to a nonexclusive common good. Ultimately, the essence of liberalism is contained in the language of values which serve as wedges to divide people. Philip J. Harold takes this problem head-on with a thoroughgoing survey, reaching back to the early modern era, to uncover the nature of liberalism’s basic assumptions and diagnose its breakdown. As opposed to traditional liberal denial of a good superior to individual interest, Ha...