Download or read book Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays written by Thomas Sowell and published by William Morrow. This book was released on 1987 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collection of columnist Thomas Sowell's controversial columns about issues ranging from homelessness, foreign policy, AIDS, environmentalism, education, law, race and nostalgia.
Download or read book Moral Responsibility and the Boundaries of Community written by Marion Smiley and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-09-15 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question of responsibility plays a critical role not only in our attempts to resolve social and political problems, but in our very conceptions of what those problems are. Who, for example, is to blame for apartheid in South Africa? Is the South African government responsible? What about multinational corporations that do business there? Will uncovering the "true facts of the matter" lead us to the right answer? In an argument both compelling and provocative, Marion Smiley demonstrates how attributions of blame—far from being based on an objective process of factual discovery—are instead judgments that we ourselves make on the basis of our own political and social points of view. She argues that our conception of responsibility is a singularly modern one that locates the source of blameworthiness in an individual's free will. After exploring the flaws inherent in this conception, she shows how our judgments of blame evolve out of our configuration of social roles, our conception of communal boundaries, and the distribution of power upon which both are based. The great strength of Smiley's study lies in the way in which it brings together both rigorous philosophical analysis and an appreciation of the dynamics of social and political practice. By developing a pragmatic conception of moral responsibility, this work illustrates both how moral philosophy can enhance our understanding of social and political practices and why reflection on these practices is necessary to the reconstruction of our moral concepts.
Download or read book Ever Wonder Why written by Thomas Sowell and published by Hoover Press. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Sowell takes aim at a range of legal, social, racial, educational, and economic issues in this latest collection of his controversial, never boring, always thought-provoking essays. From "gun control myths" to "mealy mouth media" to "free lunch medicine," Sowell gets to the heart of the matters we all care about with his characteristically unsparing candor.
Download or read book Pink and Brown People and Other Controversial Essays written by Thomas Sowell and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Against Empathy written by Paul Bloom and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Post Best Book of 2016 We often think of our capacity to experience the suffering of others as the ultimate source of goodness. Many of our wisest policy-makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers agree that the only problem with empathy is that we don’t have enough of it. Nothing could be farther from the truth, argues Yale researcher Paul Bloom. In AGAINST EMPATHY, Bloom reveals empathy to be one of the leading motivators of inequality and immorality in society. Far from helping us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and, ironically, often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it, but to draw instead upon a more distanced compassion. Basing his argument on groundbreaking scientific findings, Bloom makes the case that some of the worst decisions made by individuals and nations—who to give money to, when to go to war, how to respond to climate change, and who to imprison—are too often motivated by honest, yet misplaced, emotions. With precision and wit, he demonstrates how empathy distorts our judgment in every aspect of our lives, from philanthropy and charity to the justice system; from medical care and education to parenting and marriage. Without empathy, Bloom insists, our decisions would be clearer, fairer, and—yes—ultimately more moral. Brilliantly argued, urgent and humane, AGAINST EMPATHY shows us that, when it comes to both major policy decisions and the choices we make in our everyday lives, limiting our impulse toward empathy is often the most compassionate choice we can make.
Download or read book The Unreality of Memory written by Elisa Gabbert and published by FSG Originals. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Terror, disaster, memory, selfhood, happiness . . . leave it to a poet to tackle the unthinkable so wisely and so wittily."* A literary guide to life in the pre-apocalypse, The Unreality of Memory collects profound and prophetic essays on the Internet age’s media-saturated disaster coverage and our addiction to viewing and discussing the world’s ills. We stare at our phones. We keep multiple tabs open. Our chats and conversations are full of the phrase “Did you see?” The feeling that we’re living in the worst of times seems to be intensifying, alongside a desire to know precisely how bad things have gotten—and each new catastrophe distracts us from the last. The Unreality of Memory collects provocative, searching essays on disaster culture, climate anxiety, and our mounting collective sense of doom. In this new collection, acclaimed poet and essayist Elisa Gabbert explores our obsessions with disasters past and future, from the sinking of the Titanic to Chernobyl, from witch hunts to the plague. These deeply researched, prophetic meditations question how the world will end—if indeed it will—and why we can’t stop fantasizing about it. Can we avoid repeating history? Can we understand our moment from inside the moment? With The Unreality of Memory, Gabbert offers a hauntingly perceptive analysis of our new ways of being and a means of reconciling ourselves to this unreal new world. "A work of sheer brilliance, beauty and bravery.” *—Andrew Sean Greer, author of Less
Download or read book Compassion Vs Guilt written by Thomas Sowell and published by . This book was released on 1994-03-02 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Empathy Exams written by Leslie Jamison and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From personal loss to phantom diseases, The Empathy Exams is a bold and brilliant collection, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize A Publishers Weekly Top Ten Essay Collection of Spring 2014 Beginning with her experience as a medical actor who was paid to act out symptoms for medical students to diagnose, Leslie Jamison's visceral and revealing essays ask essential questions about our basic understanding of others: How should we care about each other? How can we feel another's pain, especially when pain can be assumed, distorted, or performed? Is empathy a tool by which to test or even grade each other? By confronting pain—real and imagined, her own and others'—Jamison uncovers a personal and cultural urgency to feel. She draws from her own experiences of illness and bodily injury to engage in an exploration that extends far beyond her life, spanning wide-ranging territory—from poverty tourism to phantom diseases, street violence to reality television, illness to incarceration—in its search for a kind of sight shaped by humility and grace.
Download or read book Roads to Dystopia Sociological Essay on the Post Modern Condition c written by Stanford M. Lyman and published by University of Arkansas Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Jukebox and Other Essays on Storytelling written by Peter Handke and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1994 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his "Essay on Tiredness," Handke transforms an everyday experience - often precipitated by boredom - into a fascinating exploration of the world of slow motion, differentiating degrees of fatigue, the types of weariness, its rejuvenating effects, as well as its erotic, cultural, and political implications.
Download or read book Discovering Eve written by Carol Meyers and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1991-01-10 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking study looks beyond biblical texts, which have had a powerful influence over our views of women's roles and worth, in order to reconstruct the typical everyday lives of women in ancient Israel. Meyers argues that biblical sources alone do not give a true picture of ancient Israelite women because urban elite males wrote the vast majority of the scriptural texts and the stories of women in the Bible concern exceptional individuals rather than ordinary Israelite women. Analyzing the biblical material in light of recent archaeological discoveries about rural village life in ancient Palestine, Meyers depicts Israelite women not as submissive chattel in an oppressive patriarchy, but rather as strong and significant actors within their families and society.
Download or read book When I Was a Child I Read Books written by Marilynne Robinson and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2012-03-13 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marilynne Robinson has built a sterling reputation as a writer of sharp, subtly moving prose, not only as a major American novelist, but also as a rigorous thinker and incisive essayist. In When I Was a Child I Read Books she returns to and expands upon the themes which have preoccupied her work with renewed vigor. In "Austerity as Ideology," she tackles the global debt crisis, and the charged political and social political climate in this country that makes finding a solution to our financial troubles so challenging. In "Open Thy Hand Wide" she searches out the deeply embedded role of generosity in Christian faith. And in "When I Was a Child," one of her most personal essays to date, an account of her childhood in Idaho becomes an exploration of individualism and the myth of the American West. Clear-eyed and forceful as ever, Robinson demonstrates once again why she is regarded as one of our essential writers.
Download or read book Late Talking Children written by Thomas Sowell and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-08-04 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The painful and baffling mystery as to why some obviously bright children do not begin talking until long after the "normal" time is explored in this book through personal experiences and the findings of scientific research. The author's own experiences as the father of such a child led to the formation of a goup of more than fifty sets of parents of similar children. The anguish and frustration of these parents as they try to cope with children who do not talk and institutions that do not understand them is a remarkable and moving human story. Fortunately, some of these children turn out to have not only normal intelligence but even outstanding abilities, especially in highly analytical fields such as mathematics and computers. These fascinating stories of late-talking children and the remarkable families from which they come are followed by explorations of scientific research that throw light on unusual development patterns.
Download or read book Toleration and other essays written by Voltaire and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2021-11-05 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Voltaire writes a long essay questioning the Jean Calas case, reflecting on Christianity and remembering the earthquake in Lisbon. Voltaire, novelist, dramatist, poet, and philosopher was one of the most renowned figures of the Age of Enlightenment.
Download or read book The Tyranny of Guilt written by Pascal Bruckner and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why the West must overcome its guilty conscience to foster a better global future Fascism, communism, genocide, slavery, racism, imperialism—the West has no shortage of reasons for guilt. And, indeed, since the Holocaust and the end of World War II, Europeans in particular have been consumed by remorse. But Pascal Bruckner argues that guilt has now gone too far. It has become a pathology, and even an obstacle to fighting today's atrocities. Bruckner, one of France's leading writers and public intellectuals, argues that obsessive guilt has obscured important realities. The West has no monopoly on evil, and has destroyed monsters as well as created them—leading in the abolition of slavery, renouncing colonialism, building peaceful and prosperous communities, and establishing rules and institutions that are models for the world. The West should be proud—and ready to defend itself and its values. In this, Europeans should learn from Americans, who still have sufficient self-esteem to act decisively in a world of chaos and violence. Lamenting the vice of anti-Americanism that grips so many European intellectuals, Bruckner urges a renewed transatlantic alliance, and advises Americans not to let recent foreign-policy misadventures sap their own confidence. This is a searing, provocative, and psychologically penetrating account of the crude thought and bad politics that arise from excessive bad conscience.
Download or read book How to Think Straight written by Antony Flew and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Practical reasoning and clear thinking are essential for everyone if we are to make sense of the information we receive each day. Being able to quickly know the difference between valid and invalid arguments, the contradictory versus the contrary, vagueness and ambiguity, contradiction and self-contradiction, the truthful and the fallacious, separates clear thinkers from the crowd. How to Think Straight lays the foundation for critical reasoning by showing many ways in which our thinking goes awry. Celebrated philosopher Antony Flew entertainingly instructs on the many and varied faults that occur in argument, the power of reason, how to challenge assertions and find evidence, and how not to be persuaded by half-truths. Flew also examines poor reasoning, and why we should be concerned with finding the truth. Lucid, terse, and sensible, with study questions and exercises to help along the way, this enlightening second edition will help you develop the skills necessary to argue and reason effectively by following a few simple, easy-to-remember directions.
Download or read book Shame and Guilt written by June Price Tangney and published by Guilford Press. This book was released on 2003-11-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume reports on the growing body of knowledge on shame and guilt, integrating findings from the authors' original research program with other data emerging from social, clinical, personality, and developmental psychology. Evidence is presented to demonstrate that these universally experienced affective phenomena have significant implications for many aspects of human functioning, with particular relevance for interpersonal relationships. --From publisher's description.
