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Every church, every organization, has experienced them: betrayal, deception, grumbling, envy, exclusion. They make life together difficult and prevent congregations from developing the skills, virtues, and practices they need to nurture sturdy, life-giving communities. In Living into Community Christine Pohl explores four specific Christian practices -- gratitude, promise-keeping, truth-telling, and hospitality -- that can counteract those destructive forces and help churches and individuals build and sustain vibrant communities. Drawing on a wealth of personal and professional experience and interacting with the biblical, historical, and moral traditions, Pohl thoughtfully discusses each practice, including its possible complications and deformations, and points to how these essential practices can be better cultivated within communities and families.
ÿ"The public rationality of Christian faith is demonstrated in the way that Christian convictions make contributions to the contents and substance of intellectual, pluralistic public discourses on themes like economic justice and human rights. The impact of Christian faith for all walks of life, from the most intimate individual life to the most social, global and cosmic life, are dealt with in this great work of Public Theology from the African soil." - Prof Nico Koopman
The book analyzes, synthesizes, and evaluates the insights of the world's outstanding thinkers, prophets, and literary masters on the good, the morally right, and the lovely (part one); the question whether the world operates on the basis of such universal laws as the logos, the tao, and the principle of polarity (part two); what there is and isn't in the world, including such categories as existence, reality, being, and nonbeing (part three); and pre-eminently credible and enriching beliefs about truth, wisdom, and what it all means (part four). Emphasis is placed on the divergent views of such intellectual giants as Confucius and Laotse in ancient China; the classical Hindu philosophers from ancient times to Gandhi and Tagore; patriarchs and prophets quoted in Scripture; Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages; Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, and Kant; and nineteenth- and twentieth-century luminaries such as Bentham, Mill, Peirce, James, Dewey, Sartre, and Wittgenstein. The differences and resemblances of their cogitations are portrayed as a conversation of the ages on questions of persistent concern.
G.E. Moore's work shaped twentieth century ethics. But while his metaethical doctrines have seen decades of debate, little attention has been paid to his normative theory. Yet Moore broke fresh and important ground in elaborating an indirect, sophisticated, and non-hedonistic form of utilitarianism. Moore on Right and Wrong is a critical reconstruction and exposition of this neglected side of his ethical thought. It situates his normative ethics with respect to traditional utilitarianism and assesses Moore's case for consequentialism. The final chapters explore in detail the implications of Moore's theory for individual moral conduct -- in particular, his denial of self-evident moral rules; his skepticism about knowledge of one's duty; his attempt to establish the validity of certain moral rules; and his account of what moral agents should do in situations where such rules apply and in situations where they do not.
This work defends an interrelated set of theses in value-theory, normative ethics and meta-ethics. The three Parts correspond to these three areas. Part One (Value) defends a biocentric theory of moral standing, and then the coherence and objectivity of belief in intrinsic value, despite recent objections. Intrinsic value is located in the flourishing of living creatures; specifically, a neo-Aristotelian, species-relative account is supplied of wellbeing or flourishing, in terms of the development of the essential capacities of one's species. There follows a theory of priorities, or of relative intrinsic value, in which the satisfaction of basic needs takes priority over other needs and over...
Phenomenologists or Continental thinkers argue for the subject-object continuum. For phenomenology, subjectivity is of the object, and object is for the subject. This book applies that continuum to the holistic foundations of work or specialization. The author devotes a chapter to each of eight cultural applications of the subject-object continuum. Chapter One examines the specialist-generalist continuum meaning specialization for general education. That continuum comprises the framework for the remaining seven chapters. Those seven include production for community, design for user, automation for user, computing for society, taxation for society, information for manufacturing, and procedure...
This volume contains all of the presidential addresses given before the American Society for Value Inquiry since its first meeting in 1970. Contributions are by Richard Brandt*, Virgil Aldrich*, John W. Davis*, the late Robert S. Hartman*, James B. Wilbur*, the late William H. Werkmeister, Robert E. Carter, the late William T. Blackstone, Gene James, Eva Hauel Cadwallader, Richard T. Hull, Norman Bowie*, Stephen White*, Burton Leiser+, Abraham Edel, Sidney Axinn, Robert Ginsberg, Patricia Werhane, Lisa M. Newton, Thomas Magnell, Sander Lee, John M. Abbarno, Ruth Miller Lucier, and Tom Regan*. Autobiographical sketches* by all of the living contributors and one recently deceased, biographical statements of the remainder, together with photographic portraits of all the contributors*, make this volume a unique record of value inquiry during the past quarter century.(*previously unpublished or unpublished in the present form / +substantial new material added)
This book argues that the secret to the political miracle achieved in South Africa is a comprehensive change in the conception of justice as guiding political institutions. Pursuing justice is a moral imperative that has practical value as a cost-efficient way of dealing with conflict. This case study in applied ethics and social theory patiently explains how justice in the new South Africa restores humanity and establishes lasting peace, whereas injustice in apartheid South Africa led to conflict and dehumanization.
This book philosophically explores a wide range of subjects relating to evil and human wickedness, including the nature of evil, explaining evil, evil and moral responsibility, and responding to evil.