Science Ethics

An exploration of everything Kant's philosophy can teach us about being the best people we can be, from using our human reasoning to its fullest potential to being affably drunk at dinner parties.

We live in an age of unprecedented prosperity, yet everywhere we see signs that our pursuit of happiness has proven fruitless. Dissatisfied, we seek change for the sake of change - even if it means undermining the foundations of our common life. In Why We Are Restless, Benjamin and Jenna Storey offer a profound and beautiful reflection on the roots of this malaise and examine how we might begin to cure ourselves.

El banquete o El simposio es un diálogo platónico escrito por Platón sobre los años 385 - 370 AC y es uno de los diálogos más trabajados, apreciado tanto por su contenido filosófico como por su contenido literario. Versa sobre el amor. Esta obra, junto al Fedro, conformó la idea de amor platónico.

El Libro de los Cinco Anillos (en japonés 五輪書 [Go-rin no sho]) es un tratado sobre el kentutsu escrito por Miyamoto Musashi en su vejez - durante su retiro de ermitaño en la cueva de Reignando en 1643 - y finalizado el 19 de mayo de 1645, pocas semanas antes de su muerte. El libro está dedicado a su pupilo Terao Magonojo Se considera un tratado clásico sobre la estrategia militar de Japón, en una línea semejante a El Arte de la Guerra, escrito por el estratega chino Sun Tzu.

Epictetus was one of the main voices of the philosophy of the Stoa, and as such most influentia. His "Enchiridion", or handbook, is a manual for practical philosophy. It offers carefully worded instructions for an ethical, sustained way of life. A very old text - but true to this very day and age!

Hoy día podemos comprar casi cualquier cosa con nuestros teléfonos de última generación sin mover el culo del sofá de nuestra casa, comunicarnos al instante con una persona que se encuentre al otro lado del planeta, medios de transporte inimaginables hace tan sólo 100 años que han acercado los continentes, calefacción en invierno, aire acondicionado en verano, televisión por cable, Internet de alta velocidad. Todas estas comodidades nos hacen vivir dormidos en un cómodo sueño de seguridad perpetua totalmente falso.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky is best known as the cofounder of theosophy, which is essentially a selective conflation of Hindu and Buddhist ideas combined with Blavatsky's idiosyncratic system of cosmology. The Voice of the Silence, first published in 1889, is described by the author as "chosen fragments from the Book of the Golden Precepts, for the daily use of disciples".

Effective altruism is built upon the simple, but profound, idea that living a fully ethical life involves doing the "most good you can do". Such a life requires an unsentimental view of charitable giving: To be a worthy recipient of our support, an organization must be able to demonstrate that it will do more good with our money or our time than other options open to us. Singer introduces us to an array of remarkable people who are restructuring their lives in accordance with these ideas and shows how living altruistically often leads to greater personal fulfillment.

Experiencing grief at the death of a person we love or who matters to us—as universal as it is painful—is central to the human condition. Surprisingly, however, philosophers have rarely examined grief in any depth. In Grief, Michael Cholbi presents a groundbreaking philosophical exploration of this complex emotional event, offering valuable new insights about what grief is, whom we grieve, and how grief can ultimately lead us to a richer self-understanding and a fuller realization of our humanity.

In his dialogues, the Stoic philosopher Seneca outlines his thoughts on how to live in a troubled world. Tutor to the young emperor Nero, Seneca wrote practical philosophical exercises that draw upon contemporary Roman life and illuminate the intellectual concerns of the day. The dialogues also have much to say to the modern listener, as they range widely across subjects such as the shortness of life, tranquility of mind, anger, mercy, happiness, and grief at the loss of a loved one.

Living the Good Life presents a brief introduction to virtue and vice, self-control and weakness, misery and happiness. The book contrasts the thought of Aquinas with popular views, such as moral relativism, values clarification, utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, and situation ethics. Following the Socratic dictum "know thyself," Steven J. Jensen investigates the interior workings of the human mind, revealing the interplay of reason, will, and emotions.

A caustic criticism of nearly every philosophic predecessor and a challenge of traditionally held views on right and wrong, Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil paved the way for modern philosophical thought. Through nearly three hundred transformative aphorisms, Nietzsche presents a worldview in which neither truth nor morality are absolutes, and where good and evil are not opposites but counterparts that stem from the same desires.

The Critique of Practical Reason was published in 1788, seven years after Immanuel Kant's major work, Critique of Pure Reason. In it, Kant sets out his moral philosophy - and it proved a seminal text in the history of the subject. He argues that the summum bonum (the highest good) of life is that rather than just pursuing happiness, people should inhabit a moral dimension that enables them to deserve the happiness that God can give. Though much shorter than Critique of Pure Reason, this is the sourcebook for Kant’s ethical doctrines.

"It takes an entire lifetime to learn how to die", wrote the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca (c. 4 BC-65 AD). He counseled readers to "study death always", and took his own advice, returning to the subject again and again in all his writings, yet he never treated it in a complete work. How to Die gathers in one volume, for the first time, Seneca's remarkable meditations on death and dying. Edited and translated by James S. Romm, How to Die reveals a provocative thinker who speaks with a startling frankness about the need to accept death or even, under certain conditions, to seek it out.

Can octopuses feel pain and pleasure? What about crabs, shrimps, insects, or spiders? How do we tell whether a person unresponsive after severe brain injury might be suffering? When does a fetus in the womb start to have conscious experiences? Could there even be rudimentary feelings in miniature models of the human brain, grown from human stem cells? And what about AI? These are questions about the edge of sentience, and they are subject to enormous, disorienting uncertainty. We desperately want certainty, but it is out of reach.

The Will to Power is an audiobook of notes compiled from the literary remains of Friedrich Nietzsche. The title derives from a work that Nietzsche himself had intended to write. The "will to power", a prominent concept in his philosophy, describes what Nietzsche believed to be the main driving force in humans.

In How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life, Roberts examines Smith’s forgotten masterpiece, and finds a treasure trove of timeless, practical wisdom. Smith’s insights into human nature are just as relevant today as they were 300 years ago. What does it take to be truly happy? Should we pursue fame and fortune or the respect of our friends and family? How can we make the world a better place?

Here is an audiobook born of the friendship of three gifted teachers that explores the universal human journey and our quest for meaning and understanding. This translation of the French best-seller brings listeners an intimate and insightful conversation between Buddhist monk and author Matthieu Ricard, philosopher Alexandre Jollien, and psychiatrist Dr. Christophe Andre.

Today both reality and entertainment crowd our fields of vision with brutal imagery. The pervasiveness of images of torture, horror, and war has all but demolished the 20th-century hope that such imagery might shock us into a less alienated state, or aid in the creation of a just social order. What to do now? When to look, when to turn away? Genre-busting author Maggie Nelson brilliantly navigates this contemporary predicament, with an eye to the question of whether or not focusing on representations of cruelty makes us cruel.

In 2008, the American economy collapsed, taking with it millions of Americans' jobs, homes, and life savings. The impending financial crisis was devastating, and many are still feeling its effects today. Though the crisis was debilitating, the US government has yet to implement policies that would prevent a repeat of the Great Recession. Nothing Is Too Big to Fail holds a microscope to the very policies and corruption that led to this major economic recession.