Social Ethics

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.

In Do Morals Matter?, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., one of the world's leading scholars of international relations, provides a concise yet penetrating analysis of the role of ethics in US foreign policy during the American era after 1945. Nye works through each presidency from FDR to Trump and scores their foreign policy on three ethical dimensions of their intentions, the means they used, and the consequences of their decisions. Alongside this, he also evaluates their leadership qualities, elaborating on which approaches work and which ones do not.

In Sacrifice, Rene Girard interrogates the Brahmanas of Vedic India, exploring coincidences with mimetic theory that are too numerous and striking to be accidental. The Bible reveals collective violence, similar to that which generates sacrifice everywhere, but instead of making victims guilty, the Bible and the Gospels reveal the persecutors of a single victim. Instead of elaborating myths, they tell the truth absolutely contrary to the archaic sense.

How much faith should we place in what scientists tell us? Is it possible for scientific knowledge to be fully "objective"? What, really, can be defined as science? In the second edition of this very short introduction, Samir Okasha explores the main themes and theories of contemporary philosophy of science and investigates fascinating, challenging questions such as these.

From Stoics to existentialists, in philosophy and literature, discussion of the philosophy of life—of love and death, of courage, fortitude and wisdom—challenges us all to think about what kinds of life are truly worth living. In this summation of a lifetime thinking and writing about this great question, A. C. Grayling explores with clarity and depth the ideas that each of us must use in answering it for ourselves.

Pendant plus de quinze ans, Gilles Deleuze a donné son cours le mardi, de 10 h à 13 h 30, dans une salle ordinaire de l'université Paris VIII. Il était hostile aux amphithéâtres dont il disait qu'ils coupaient tout échange. Au premier rang, les prévoyants arrivaient dès 8 h 30 : étudiants japonais avec magnéto high-tech, retraités ou habitués passionnés. Les suivants se mettaient où ils pouvaient jusqu'à former des grappes autour de la porte. Ce cours était un mélange incroyable de liberté et d'une parole magistrale avec des moments d'inspiration de haute volée.

De Brevitate Vitae (frequently referred to as On the Shortness of Life in English) is a moral essay written by Seneca the Younger, a Roman Stoic philosopher, to his father-in-law Paulinus. The philosopher brings up many Stoic principles on the nature of time, namely that men waste much of it in meaningless pursuits. According to the essay, nature gives man enough time to do what is really important and the individual must allot it properly.

In this lively and illuminating discussion of his landmark research, esteemed primatologist Frans de Waal argues that human morality is not imposed from above but instead comes from within. Moral behavior does not begin and end with religion but is in fact a product of evolution. For many years, de Waal has observed chimpanzees soothe distressed neighbors and bonobos share their food. Now he delivers fascinating fresh evidence for the seeds of ethical behavior in primate societies that further cements the case for the biological origins of human fairness.

Preston Sprinkle jumps into a compelling, passionate study of God’s perspective on violence. Examining both the seemingly angry, violent God of the Old Testament and the peacemaking Jesus of the New, Preston takes us back to Scripture to discern how God has really called His people to think and live in the midst of a violent world. He asks us to join him in inviting God to challenge our presuppositions, to set aside our biases and backgrounds and fears.

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?

A diabolically sinister but clownish villain, Joker is a symbolically rich and philosophically fascinating character. With his enigmatic motivations, infectious irreverence, and selfless devotion to evil, Joker never fails to provoke a host of philosophical questions. Bringing together essays by a diverse panel of acclaimed scholars and philosophers, this engaging book delves into the motivations, psychology, and moral philosophy of the character for whom mayhem and chaos are a source of pure delight.

The Art of Worldly Wisdom was written in 1647. It is a collection of 300 maxims on various topics, each elaborated with a commentary. The sayings offer advice and guidance on how to live well, advance socially, and be a better person.

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.

An inspiring guide from Dolly Chugh, an award-winning social psychologist at the New York University Stern School of Business, on how to confront difficult issues including sexism, racism, inequality, and injustice so that you can make the world (and yourself) better. Many of us believe in equality, diversity, and inclusion. But how do we stand up for those values in our world? The Person You Mean to Be is the smart, "semi-bold" person’s guide to fighting for what you believe in. Dolly reveals the surprising causes of inequality, grounded in the "psychology of good people".

Most of us want to succeed. And most of us want to do the right thing. But we often forget that the way tosucceed is by doing the right thing, as Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe remind us in Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing. When the institutions that shape our society need to change, the people in them typically either make more rules or offer smarter incentives.

Conspiracy theories are as old as politics. But conspiracists today have introduced something new - conspiracy without theory. And the new conspiracism has moved from the fringes to the heart of government with the election of Donald Trump. In A Lot of People Are Saying, Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum reveal how the new conspiracism differs from classic conspiracy theory, why so few officials speak truth to conspiracy, and what needs to be done to resist it.

The essays in The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics have a rather special place in Schopenhauer’s work, both being written as entries to Scandinavian philosophy competitions, one in Norway and one in Sweden.

When The Case for Animal Rights was published in 1983, it rapidly became an acknowledged classic of moral philosophy, and its author, Tom Regan (1938–2017), was recognized as an intellectual leader within the animal rights movement. Twenty years later, Case was reissued with a new and fully considered preface, in which Regan responded to his critics and defended the book's revolutionary position. Now, forty years after its original publication, this foundational text is available as an audiobook.

Evil threatens human reason, for it challenges our hope that the world makes sense. For 18th-century Europeans, the Lisbon earthquake was manifest evil. Today we view evil as a matter of human cruelty, and Auschwitz as its extreme incarnation. Examining our understanding of evil from the Inquisition to contemporary terrorism, Susan Neiman explores who we have become in the three centuries that separate us from the early Enlightenment. In the process, she rewrites the history of modern thought and points philosophy back to the questions that originally animated it.

In the tract on Liberty, Mill is advocating the rights of the individual as against Society at the very opening of an era that was rapidly coming to the conclusion that the individual had no absolute rights against Society. The eighteenth century view is that individuals existed first, each with their own special claims and responsibilities: that they deliberately formed a Social State, either by a contract or otherwise, and that then finally they limited their own action out of regard for the interests of the social organism thus arbitrarily produced.