Politics Innocence And The Limits Of Goodness

Author : Peter Johnson
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000706613
Total Pages : 361 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Politics, Innocence, and the Limits of Goodness written by Peter Johnson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-21 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1988. Moral innocence is of enduring interest because it seems to embody our ideals in their purest form. The place of moral innocence in politics is the central theme of Peter Johnson’s subtle and original book. Are there moral dispositions which are not only incompatible with politics but actually endanger it? If it is sometimes necessary to act badly in order to achieve desirable objectives, what moral standpoints would exclude such a course at action? Peter Johnson demonstrates convincingly why philosophical accounts of morality, past and present, are unable to explain moral innocence: its full impact on politics can only be grasped by putting aside traditional theories. Literature provides the key to a deeper understanding of the relationship between politics and morality. Melville’s Billy Budd, Shakespeare’s Henry VI, and Graham Greene’s The Quiet American reveal moral innocence at work in political circumstances of great intensity. Through these and other literary figures, we see at last the specific character of moral innocence and why it is connected with political disaster. This closely reasoned yet deeply passionate book illuminates a problem of great contemporary interest and nowhere more so than in American public life. Original in theme and content, it confronts central issues of concern to the modern mind, not simply to academics, both teachers and taught, but to all those interested in how they might be governed.

Author : Peter Johnson
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780608203515
Total Pages : 293 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Politics, Innocence and the Limits of Goodness written by Peter Johnson and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : John Kekes
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501721860
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Moral Wisdom and Good Lives written by John Kekes and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this profound and yet accessible book, John Kekes discusses moral wisdom: a virtue essential to living a morally good and personally satisfying life. He advances a broad, nontechnical argument that considers the adversities inherent in the human condition and assists in the achievement of good lives. The possession of moral wisdom, Kekes asserts, is a matter of degree: more of it makes lives better, less makes them worse. Exactly what is moral wisdom, however, and how should it be sought? Ancient Greek and medieval Christian philosophers were centrally concerned with it. By contrast, modern Western sensibility doubts the existence of a moral order in reality; and because we doubt it, and have developed no alternatives, we have grown dubious about the traditional idea of wisdom. Kekes returns to the classical Greek sources of Western philosophy to argue for the contemporary significance of moral wisdom. He develops a proposal that is eudaimonistic—secular, anthropocentric, pluralistic, individualistic, and agonistic. He understands moral wisdom as focusing on the human effort to create many different forms of good lives. Although the approach is Aristotelian, the author concentrates on formulating and defending a contemporary moral ideal. The importance of this ideal, he shows, lies in increasing our ability to cope with life's adversities by improving our judgment. In chapters on moral imagination, self-knowledge, and moral depth, Kekes calls attention to aspects of our inner life that have been neglected because of our cultural inattention to moral wisdom. He discusses these inner processes through the tragedies of Sophocles, which can inspire us with their enduring moral significance and help us to understand the importance of moral wisdom to living a good life.

Author : Andrea T. Baumeister
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134794460
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Literature and the Political Imagination written by Andrea T. Baumeister and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume shows how modern political theory can be enriched through an engagement with works of literature. It uses the resources of literature to explore issues such as nationalism, liberal philosophy, utopiansim, narrative and the role of theory in political thought. A variety of approaches are adopted and the aim is to show some of the many and diverse ways in which literature may enrich political theorising, as well as considering some of the problems to which this may give rise. The theorists discussed include Richard Rorty, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and Martha Nussbaum. There are literary references from Greek tradegy, Jonathan Swift, Brian Moore, Elizabeth Bowen and contemporary feminist utopian fiction. All the contributors have a long-standing interest in the relations between literature and moral and political thought. They are concerned not to be restricted by conventional academic boundaries and are not united by any party-line or uniformity of intellectual commitments. This volume will be of great interest to all students engaged in the study of politics and literature.

Author : Elizabeth S. Dodd
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317172930
Total Pages : 255 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Boundless Innocence in Thomas Traherne's Poetic Theology written by Elizabeth S. Dodd and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-16 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The seventeenth-century poet and divine Thomas Traherne finds innocence in every stage of existence. He finds it in the chaos at the origins of creation as well as in the blessed order of Eden. He finds it in the activities of grace and the hope of glory, but also in the trials of misery and even in the abyss of the Fall. Boundless Innocence in Thomas Traherne’s Poetic Theology traces innocence through Traherne’s works as it transgresses the boundaries of the estates of the soul. Using grammatical and literary categories it explores various aspects of his poetic theology of innocence, uncovering the boundless desire which is embodied in the yearning cry: ’Were all Men Wise and Innocent...’ Recovering and reinterpreting a key but increasingly neglected theme in Traherne’s poetic theology, this book addresses fundamental misconceptions of the meaning of innocence in his work. Through a contextual and theological approach, it indicates the unexplored richness, complexity and diversity of this theme in the history of literature and theology.

Author : Elizabeth Hankins Wolgast
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780804721035
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Ethics of an Artificial Person written by Elizabeth Hankins Wolgast and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We can freely cross disciplinary boundaries, as well as the line between theory and practice, and allow practices to cast their light back on the theory and show us its deficiencies. In short, this approach reorients some much-discussed issues of professional, business, and military ethics and reveals them as variations on one deeply rooted theme. The author does not treat current institutions as final and unalterable. If these arrangements frustrate moral evaluation, she finds that an argument for change. To make intelligent changes, however, we need a clear view of the reasoning that makes them seem natural and inevitable. That is what this book attempts to do. In the process, the author also reexamines the concept of "person." Not all cultures put so much stress on the idea as Western - and particularly American - cultures do. If we wish to keep this emphasis, then here is another argument for change

Author : John Kekes
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022663907X
Total Pages : 263 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book How Should We Live? written by John Kekes and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-03-08 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is your highest ideal? What code do you live by? We all know that these differ from person to person. Artists, scientists, social activists, farmers, executives, and athletes are guided by very different ideals. Nonetheless for hundreds of years philosophers have sought a single, overriding ideal that should guide everyone, always, everywhere, and after centuries of debate we’re no closer to an answer. In How Should We Live?, John Kekes offers a refreshing alternative, one in which we eschew absolute ideals and instead consider our lives as they really are, day by day, subject to countless vicissitudes and unforeseen obstacles. Kekes argues that ideal theories are abstractions from the realities of everyday life and its problems. The well-known arenas where absolute ideals conflict—dramatic moral controversies about complex problems involved in abortion, euthanasia, plea bargaining, privacy, and other hotly debated topics—should not be the primary concerns of moral thinking. Instead, he focuses on the simpler problems of ordinary lives in ordinary circumstances. In each chapter he presents the conflicts that a real person—a schoolteacher, lawyer, father, or nurse, for example—is likely to face. He then uses their situations to shed light on the mundane issues we all must deal with in everyday life, such as how we use our limited time, energy, or money; how we balance short- and long-term satisfactions; how we deal with conflicting loyalties; how we control our emotions; how we deal with people we dislike; and so on. Along the way he engages some of our most important theorists, including Donald Davidson, Thomas Nagel, Christine Korsgaard, Harry Frankfurt, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Bernard Williams, ultimately showing that no ideal—whether autonomy, love, duty, happiness, or truthfulness—trumps any other. No single ideal can always guide how we overcome the many different problems that stand in the way of living as we should. Rather than rejecting such ideals, How Should We Live? offers a way of balancing them by a practical and pluralistic approach—rather than a theory—that helps us cope with our problems and come closer to what our lives should be.

Author : Noel Preston
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134647956
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Ethics and Political Practice written by Noel Preston and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scrutinizing the practice of legislators and politicians from an ethical perspective, this work looks closely at various methods to facilitate ethical conduct.

Author : Maureen Whitebrook
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136367330
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Identity, Narrative and Politics written by Maureen Whitebrook and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-04 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Identity, Narrative and Politics argues that political theory has barely begun to develop a notion of narrative identity; instead the book explores the sophisticated ideas which emerge from novels as alternative expressions of political understanding. This title uses a broad international selection of Twentieth Century English language works, by writers such as Nadine Gordimer and Thomas Pynchon. The book considers each novel as a source of political ideas in terms of content, structure, form and technique. The book assumes no prior knowledge of the literature discussed, and will be fascinating reading for students of literature, politics and cultural studies.

Author : David Runciman
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691180857
Total Pages : 300 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Political Hypocrisy written by David Runciman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-10 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What kind of hypocrite should voters choose as their next leader? The question seems utterly cynical. But, as David Runciman suggests, it is actually much more cynical to pretend that politics can ever be completely sincere. Political Hypocrisy is a timely, and timeless, book on the problems of sincerity and truth in politics, and how we can deal with them without slipping into hypocrisy ourselves. Runciman draws on the work of some of the great truth-tellers in modern political thought--Hobbes, Mandeville, Jefferson, Bentham, Sidgwick, and Orwell--and applies his ideas to different kinds of hypocritical politicians from Oliver Cromwell to Hillary Clinton. He argues that we should accept hypocrisy as a fact of politics--the most dangerous form of political hypocrisy is to claim to have a politics without hypocrisy. Featuring a new foreword that takes the story up to Donald Trump, this book examines why, instead of vainly searching for authentic politicians, we should try to distinguish between harmless and harmful hypocrisies and worry only about the most damaging varieties.