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Moral evaluations of actions are only appropriate for actions within the moral domain. Actions outside of the moral domain are amoral actions. In Why Suicide Is Amoral: A Philosophical Account, Robyn Gaier emphasizes the role of agency in determining whether an action is within the moral domain. If an agent lacks either deliberative agency or moral agency, then their action is amoral. An agent lacks deliberative agency if they cannot evaluate and act upon reasons, and moral agency if they cannot act upon moral reasons. Actions in which such agencies are compromised are also amoral actions. In treating actions of suicide, while granting their diversity, this book traces them to the loss or threat of loss of basic psychological needs. Gaier argues that when basic psychological needs are lost or under threat, an agent’s deliberative agency, moral agency, or both are either lacking or compromised. Hence, actions of suicide are amoral, and it is a conceptual mistake to attempt the moral evaluation of actions of suicide. Furthermore, when we regard actions of suicide as within the moral domain, we perpetuate a social stigma against suicide.
This book analyzes the social and contextual causes of suicide, the existential and philosophical reasons for committing suicide, and the prevention strategies that modern fictional literature places at our disposal. They go through the review of Modern fictional literature, in the American and European geographical framework, following the rationales that modern literature based on fiction can serve the purpose of understanding better the phenomenon of suicide, its most inaccessible impulses, and that has the potential to prevent suicide. From the turn of the 20th century to the present, debates over the meaning of suicide became a privileged site for efforts to discover the reasons why peo...
This volume is the continuation of the book Suicide in Modern Literature, edited by Josefa Ros Velasco. Considering the positive reception of this book, Ros Velasco launches the second part, entitled The Contemporary Writer and their Suicide. This time, leading representatives of various disciplines analyze the literary, philosophical, and biographical works of contemporary writers worldwide who attempted to commit suicide or achieved their goal, looking for covert and overt clues about their intentions in their writings. This book aims to continue shedding light on the social and structural causes that lead to suicide and on the suicidal mind, but also to show that people assiduous to writi...
Why should we avoid doing moral wrong? The inability of philosophy to answer this question in a compelling manner—along with the moral skepticism and ethical confusion that ensue—result, Stephen Darwall argues, from our failure to appreciate the essentially interpersonal character of moral obligation. After showing how attempts to vindicate morality have tended to change the subject—falling back on nonmoral values or practical, first-person considerations—Darwall elaborates the interpersonal nature of moral obligations: their inherent link to our responsibilities to one another as members of the moral community. As Darwall defines it, the concept of moral obligation has an irreducibl...
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The notion of conscience remains one of the most widely used moral concepts and a cornerstone of ordinary moral thinking. This book explores where this widespread confidence in conscience stems from, examining the history of conscience as a moral concept and its characteristic moral phenomenology. Jason Howard provides a comprehensive reassessment of the function of conscience in moral life, detailing along the way the manifold problems that arise when we believe our conscience is more reliable than is actually warranted. The result is a step-by-step evaluation of our most accepted assumptions. Howard goes on to argue, from a phenomenological perspective, that conscience is indispensable for understanding moral experience. He capitalizes on a dialectical perspective developed by Hegel and Ricoeur, in which conscience is seen as the recognition of the other, and integrates this with work in the philosophy of emotion, arguing that conscience is best seen in terms of the function it serves in moderating the moral emotions of shame, guilt and pride.
Only the most naïve or tendentious among us would deny the extent and intensity of suffering in the world. Can one hold, consistently with the common view of suffering in the world, that there is an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good God? This book argues that one can. Wandering in Darkness first presents the moral psychology and value theory within which one typical traditional theodicy, namely, that of Thomas Aquinas, is embedded. It explicates Aquinas's account of the good for human beings, including the nature of love and union among persons. Eleonore Stump also makes use of developments in neurobiology and developmental psychology to illuminate the nature of such union. Stump then ...
Focusing on why neoliberalism gained such a unique strong hold in the United States, philosopher Bruce N. Waller in this book traces the source back to the country’s origins and the entwined core values of the nation’s Founding Fathers. Their extreme commitment to private property rights (as evinced in a unanimous vote for the Constitution’s Fugitive Slave Clause), an aversion to widespread democracy, and a deep belief in the uniquely just nature of their new country together created the ideal conditions for neoliberalism’s growth and success. Waller also provides a clear analysis of the moral and psychological conditions so hospitable to neoliberalism, including the compatibility of...
Belief in moral responsibility enjoys widespread support, both among philosophers and in popular culture. Moral responsibility for our characters and our acts is often regarded as beyond doubt or question, and, although the belief seems to be a cultural universal, it is particularly powerful in the USA and the UK. This book explores the deep psychological factors at the source of the profound commitment to belief in moral responsibility. Philosophers have developed legions of arguments in support of moral responsibility, but even philosophical champions of those arguments acknowledge that they are not conclusive and certainly not strong enough to account for the powerful belief in moral responsibility; and because those philosophical arguments are not widely known, they cannot be the source of the popular belief in moral responsibility. Belief in moral responsibility is rooted in forces that run much deeper than justifications favored by both philosophers and the layperson. This book is a quest to uncover those deeper sources, showing that the roots of the common belief in moral responsibility run deep, and they include powerful factors that rarely rise to consciousness.
Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and the Desire to be a God explores the hidden corridors of the moral responsibility system to discover why that system is so widely accepted and passionately defended. The moral responsibility system has obvious charms: it provides justification for our powerful strike-back motives, transforms selfishness into the virtuous defense of our justly deserved special benefits, draws a radical distinction between humans and the other species we exploit, and protects our nonconscious belief in a just world. Those charms notwithstanding, the resilience and endurance of the moral responsibility system indicates a hidden force that not only binds together the pieces of...