Social Ethics

From the science of greenhouse gases to the intricate logic of cap and trade, Broome reveals how the principles that underlie everyday decision making also provide simple and effective ideas for confronting climate change. Climate Matters is an essential contribution to one of the paramount issues of our time.

Step into the mind of one of history's most influential thinkers as Nietzsche takes you on a profound journey through morality, truth, and the nature of human existence. This groundbreaking work, brought to life in captivating audio format, explores Nietzsche's bold and revolutionary ideas that continue to resonate in our modern world.

Why has Christianity, a religion premised upon neighborly love, failed in its attempts to heal social divisions? In this ambitious and wide-ranging work, Willie James Jennings delves deep into the late medieval soil in which the modern Christian imagination grew, to reveal how Christianity's highly refined process of socialization has inadvertently created and maintained segregated societies.

Le "Discours de la méthode" est un texte composite, assez peu méthodique en vérité, qui touche à la morale, à la logique, aux sciences. La méthode proprement dite se résume en peu de règles : "ne recevoir jamais aucune chose pour vraie, que je ne la connusse évidemment être telle" ; "diviser chacune des difficultés que j'examinerais" ; "conduire par ordre mes pensées" et m'assurer, par des "dénombrements si entiers, et des revues si générales", de n'avoir rien omis dans ces "chaînes de raisons", sur le modèle des géomètres.

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.

Discover the groundbreaking philosophy of Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill—a timeless exploration of ethics, happiness, and the greater good. In this influential essay, Mill defends the principle that actions are right if they promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Blending moral insight with logical clarity, Utilitarianism remains essential for students of philosophy, ethics, political science, and anyone seeking to understand how we determine right from wrong. Perfect for deep thinkers and curious minds alike, this classic text continues to shape modern moral debate.

In Feminist, Queer, Crip, Alison Kafer imagines a different future for disability and disabled bodies. Challenging the ways in which ideas about the future and time have been deployed in the service of compulsory able-bodiedness and able-mindedness, Kafer rejects the idea of disability as a predetermined limit.

Contemporary culture trivializes the "seven deadly sins," or vices, as if they have no serious moral or spiritual implications. Glittering Vices clears this misconception by exploring the traditional meanings of gluttony, sloth, lust, and others. It offers a brief history of how the vices were compiled and an eye-opening explication of how each sin manifests itself in various destructive behaviors. Listeners gain practical understanding of how the vices shape our culture today and how to correctly identify and eliminate the...patterns of sin in their own lives.

In this translation of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle’s foundational work on ethics, happiness, and virtue is brought to life in fresh, accessible language designed for 21st-century listeners. Whether you’re a student of philosophy or simply seeking deeper meaning in your everyday decisions, this audiobook delivers powerful insights that resonate across generations.

In the thought-provoking tradition of Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now and Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus, a fascinating and reassuring look at the philosophy, psychology, and practice of optimism, and why being optimistic is a moral obligation—even in the face of seemingly insurmountable...

The dominant cultural worldview is based upon extraction and exploitation practices that have brought us to the precipice of social, environmental, and climate collapse. Braiding poetic storytelling, climate justice analyses, and collective knowledge of Earth-centered cultures, The Story Is in Our Bones opens a portal to restoration and justice beyond the end of a world in crisis.

Today, human exceptionalism is the norm. Despite occasional nods to animal welfare, we prioritize humanity, often neglecting the welfare of a vast number of beings. As a result, we use hundreds of billions of vertebrates and trillions of invertebrates every year for a variety of purposes. We also plan to use animals, AI systems, and other nonhumans at even higher levels in the future. Yet as the dominant species, humanity has a responsibility to ask: Which nonhumans matter, how much do they matter, and what do we owe them in a world reshaped by human activity and technology?

Is there a pill for love? What about an "anti-love drug", to help us get over an ex? This book argues that certain psychoactive substances, including MDMA - the active ingredient in Ecstasy - may help ordinary couples work through relationship difficulties and strengthen their connection. Others may help sever an emotional connection during a breakup. These substances already exist, and they have transformative implications for how we think about love.

Discovering that reason is the defining feature of our species, we named ourselves the “rational animal”. But is this flattering story itself rational? In this sweeping account of irrationality from antiquity to today - from the fifth-century BC murder of Hippasus for revealing the existence of irrational numbers to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump - Justin Smith says the evidence suggests the opposite.

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.

The modern conception of sacrifice is at once cast as a victory of self-discipline over desire and condescended to as destructive and archaic abnegation. But even in the Old Testament, the dual natures of sacrifice, embodying both ritual slaughter and moral rectitude, were at odds. In this analysis, Terry Eagleton makes a compelling argument that the idea of sacrifice has long been misunderstood. Pursuing the complex lineage of sacrifice in a lyrical discourse, Eagleton focuses on the Old and New Testaments, offering a virtuosic analysis of the crucifixion.

This audiobook contains a selection of writings from Fear and Trembling, Either Or, and The Present Moment, written by Soren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard's theological work focuses on Christian ethics, the institution of the Church, the differences between purely objective proofs of Christianity, the infinite qualitative distinction between man and God, and the individual's subjective relationship to the God-Man Jesus the Christ, which came through faith.

In Systems of Survival, Jane Jacobs identifies two distinct moral syndromes—one governing commerce, the other politics—and explores what happens when these two syndromes collide. She looks at business fraud and criminal enterprise, government’s overextended subsidies to agriculture, and transit police who abuse the system the are supposed to enforce, and asks us to consider instances in which snobbery is a virtue and industry a vice.

Noam Chomsky is widely known and deeply admired for being the founder of modern linguistics, one of the founders of the field of cognitive science, and perhaps the most avidly read political theorist and commentator of our time. In these lectures, he presents a lifetime of philosophical reflection on all three of these areas of research to which he has contributed for over half a century.

In the face of continuing advances in medical research and treatment, bioethical questions remain at the heart of many of our society’s difficult moral problems. Since its original publication in 1996, Gilbert Meilaender’s Bioethics has proven itself an effective introduction into this arena, providing thoughtful guidance on today’s most relevant issues, including abortion, assisted reproduction, genetic research, euthanasia, human experimentation, and much more.