Ethics History

The electrifying, forgotten history of Robert Heath's brain pacemaker, investigating the origins and ethics of one of today's most promising medical breakthroughs: deep brain stimulation The technology invented by psychiatrist Robert G. Heath in the 1950s and '60s has been described as among the...

Empathy: A History tells the fascinating and largely unknown story of the first appearance of “empathy” in 1908 and tracks its shifting meanings over the following century. Despite empathy’s ubiquity today, few realize that it began as a translation of Einfühlung or “in-feeling” in German psychological aesthetics that described how spectators projected their own feelings and movements into objects of art and nature. Remarkably, this early conception of empathy transformed into its opposite over the ensuing decades.

Myths, as Mary Midgley argues in this powerful audiobook, are everywhere. In political thought they sit at the heart of theories of human nature and the social contract; in economics in the pursuit of self interest; and in science the idea of human beings as machines, which originates in the 17th century, is a today a potent force. Far from being the opposite of science, however, Midgley argues that myth is a central part of it. Myths are neither lies nor mere stories, but a network of powerful symbols for interpreting the world.

"Candid, empathetic portraits of silenced men, women, and children." --Kirkus Widely acclaimed photographer and writer Chris Arnade shines new light on America's poor, drug-addicted, and forgotten--both urban and rural, blue state and red state--and indicts the elitists who've left them behind...

Discover the secret to a meaningful and fulfilled life through the ancient wisdom of King Solomon.

One of the most influential Roman perspectives on religion came from a nonreligious belief system that is finding new adherents even today: Stoicism. How did the Stoics think about religion? In How to Think About God, Philip Freeman presents vivid new translations of Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods and The Dream of Scipio. In these brief works, Cicero offers a Stoic view of belief, divinity, and human immortality, giving eloquent expression to the religious ideas of one of the most popular schools of Roman and Greek philosophy.

In 2004 Kentaro Toyama, an award-winning computer scientist, moved to India to start a new research group for Microsoft. Its mission: to explore novel technological solutions to the world's persistent social problems. But after a decade of designing technologies for humanitarian causes, Toyama concluded that no technology, however dazzling, could cause social change on its own.

If recent history has taught us anything, it's that sometimes the best guide to leadership is the negative example. But that insight is hardly new. Nearly 2,000 years ago, Suetonius wrote Lives of the Caesars, perhaps the greatest negative leadership book of all time. In How to Be a Bad Emperor, Josiah Osgood provides crisp new translations of Suetonius's briskly paced, darkly comic biographies of the Roman emperors Julius Caesar, Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero. Entertaining and shocking, these ancient anti-role models show how power inflames leaders' worst tendencies.

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice For decades, affirmative action reshaped not just American higher education but the broader society, opening doors that had been closed for centuries and transforming who entered the pathways to power. But the Supreme Court in 2023 killed...

"A call to arms and to action, for anyone with a conscience, anyone alarmed about the decline of our democracy." — New York Times-bestselling author Wendell Potter "Powerful...His extensively reported tales of individual whistleblowers and their often cruel fates are compelling...They reveal...

Author Quintus Curtius continues his explorations in history, biography, and philosophy to extract inspiring, timeless lessons for modern listeners. The pervasive themes include courage in adversity, character and fate, moral problems, and the transcendent search for life's lessons. Special attention is given to Stoicism, Platonism, and the quest for meaning in a turbulent world.

In this magisterial volume Charles E. Curran surveys the historical development of Catholic moral theology in the United States from its 19th century roots to the present day. He begins by tracing the development of pre-Vatican II moral theology that, with the exception of social ethics, had the limited purpose of training future confessors to know what actions are sinful and the degree of sinfulness.

In The Paradox of Progress, Dr. Michael M. Karch delves into the ethical complexities of AI’s rapid evolution. Drawing from a career spanning three decades in robotics, orthopedic surgery, and international disaster response, Dr. Karch investigates AI’s far-reaching impact and initiates critical discussion about its duality. This is a compelling exploration through historical precedents of progress and AI’s challenges today, including fears of data bias, deep fakes, technological hegemony, and job displacement.

This audiobook explains why AI is unique, what legal and ethical problems it could cause, and how we can address them. It argues that AI is unlike any other previous technology, owing to its ability to take decisions independently and unpredictably. This gives rise to three issues: responsibility - who is liable if AI causes harm; rights - the disputed moral and pragmatic grounds for granting AI legal personality; and the ethics surrounding the decision-making of AI.

Examines how student protest against structural inequalities on campus pushes academic institutions to reckon with their legacy built on slavery and stolen Indigenous lands Using campus social justice movements as an entry point, Leigh Patel shows how the struggles in higher education often...

From longtime New York Times columnist Bob Herbert comes a wrenching portrayal of ordinary Americans struggling for survival in a nation that has lost its way In his eighteen years as an opinion columnist for The New York Times, Herbert championed the working poor and the middle class. After...

It is widely understood that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution completely revolutionized the study of biology. Yet, according to David Sloan Wilson, the Darwinian revolution won’t be truly complete until it is applied more broadly—to everything associated with the words “human,”...

One of America's preeminent thinkers provides the clearest statement yet on the nature and magnitude of the political and economic dangers posed by America's new monopolies. Americans are obsessed with liberty, mad about liberty. On any day, we can tune into arguments about how much liberty we...

India's is a tale of private success and public failure. Prosperity is, indeed, spreading across the country even as governance failure pervades public life. But how could a nation become one of the world's fastest-growing economies when it's governed by a weak, ineffective state? And wouldn't...

In 1964, American judge Potter Stewart famously said, ‘I can’t define pornography, but I know it when I see it.’ Over fifty years later, the reverberations of these words are still being felt across the world. Be it proposed porn bans, religious morality or women’s rights, the assumption...