Download or read book What We Owe to Each Other written by T. M. Scanlon and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2000-11-15 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we judge whether an action is morally right or wrong? If an action is wrong, what reason does that give us not to do it? Why should we give such reasons priority over our other concerns and values? In this book, T. M. Scanlon offers new answers to these questions, as they apply to the central part of morality that concerns what we owe to each other. According to his contractualist view, thinking about right and wrong is thinking about what we do in terms that could be justified to others and that they could not reasonably reject. He shows how the special authority of conclusions about right and wrong arises from the value of being related to others in this way, and he shows how familiar moral ideas such as fairness and responsibility can be understood through their role in this process of mutual justification and criticism. Scanlon bases his contractualism on a broader account of reasons, value, and individual well-being that challenges standard views about these crucial notions. He argues that desires do not provide us with reasons, that states of affairs are not the primary bearers of value, and that well-being is not as important for rational decision-making as it is commonly held to be. Scanlon is a pluralist about both moral and non-moral values. He argues that, taking this plurality of values into account, contractualism allows for most of the variability in moral requirements that relativists have claimed, while still accounting for the full force of our judgments of right and wrong.
Download or read book What We Owe Each Other written by Minouche Shafik and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-23 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the leading policy experts of our time, an urgent rethinking of how we can better support each other to thrive Whether we realize it or not, all of us participate in the social contract every day through mutual obligations among our family, community, place of work, and fellow citizens. Caring for others, paying taxes, and benefiting from public services define the social contract that supports and binds us together as a society. Today, however, our social contract has been broken by changing gender roles, technology, new models of work, aging, and the perils of climate change. Minouche Shafik takes us through stages of life we all experience—raising children, getting educated, falling ill, working, growing old—and shows how a reordering of our societies is possible. Drawing on evidence and examples from around the world, she shows how every country can provide citizens with the basics to have a decent life and be able to contribute to society. But we owe each other more than this. A more generous and inclusive society would also share more risks collectively and ask everyone to contribute for as long as they can so that everyone can fulfill their potential. What We Owe Each Other identifies the key elements of a better social contract that recognizes our interdependencies, supports and invests more in each other, and expects more of individuals in return. Powerful, hopeful, and thought-provoking, What We Owe Each Other provides practical solutions to current challenges and demonstrates how we can build a better society—together.
Download or read book What Social Classes Owe Each Other written by William Graham Sumner and published by Ludwig von Mises Institute. This book was released on 1966 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book What We Owe the Future written by William MacAskill and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2022-08-16 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Instant New York Times Bestseller “This book will change your sense of how grand the sweep of human history could be, where you fit into it, and how much you could do to change it for the better. It's as simple, and as ambitious, as that.” —Ezra Klein An Oxford philosopher makes the case for “longtermism” — that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time. The fate of the world is in our hands. Humanity’s written history spans only five thousand years. Our yet-unwritten future could last for millions more — or it could end tomorrow. Astonishing numbers of people could lead lives of great happiness or unimaginable suffering, or never live at all, depending on what we choose to do today. In What We Owe The Future, philosopher William MacAskill argues for longtermism, that idea that positively influencing the distant future is a key moral priority of our time. From this perspective, it’s not enough to reverse climate change or avert the next pandemic. We must ensure that civilization would rebound if it collapsed; counter the end of moral progress; and prepare for a planet where the smartest beings are digital, not human. If we make wise choices today, our grandchildren’s grandchildren will thrive, knowing we did everything we could to give them a world full of justice, hope and beauty.
Download or read book On What We Owe to Each Other written by Philip Stratton-Lake and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2004-06-18 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Five leading moral philosophers assess various aspects of T.M. Scanlon’s moral theory as laid out in his seminal work, What We Owe to Each Other. An assessment of T.M. Scanlon’s seminal work What We Owe to Each Other. Written by five leading moral philosophers. Contributes to debates initiated by Scanlon on value theory, normative ethics, and metaethics. Includes a response by T.M. Scanlon in which he clarifies and develops his views.
Download or read book A Concise Introduction to Ethics written by Russ Shafer-Landau and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019-07-08 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Concise Introduction to Ethics offers a condensed and exceptionally well-written introduction to the essential moral theories. Based on Russ Shafer-Landau's best-selling primer on ethical theory, The Fundamentals of Ethics, this briefer volume retains the longer one's content advantage over competing books by addressing issues that other texts omit, including the good life (value theory), natural law, and prima facie duties. It also incorporates discussion questions and case studies at the end of each chapter, giving students the opportunity to apply ethical theories to real-world moral problems. A perfect companion to Shafer-Landau's anthology, The Ethical Life, this volume's compact size and low price make A Concise Introduction to Ethics an ideal complement to any course where it is important that students understand moral theories.
Download or read book Innovation in Real Places written by Dan Breznitz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of Balsillie Prize for Public Policy Winner of Donner Prize A challenge to prevailing ideas about innovation and a guide to identifying the best growth strategy for your community. Across the world, cities and regions have wasted trillions of dollars on blindly copying the Silicon Valley model of growth creation. Since the early years of the information age, we've been told that economic growth derives from harnessing technological innovation. To do this, places must create good education systems, partner with local research universities, and attract innovative hi-tech firms. We have lived with this system for decades, and the result is clear: a small number of regions and cities at the top of the high-tech industry but many more fighting a losing battle to retain economic dynamism. But are there other models that don't rely on a flourishing high-tech industry? In Innovation in Real Places, Dan Breznitz argues that there are. The purveyors of the dominant ideas on innovation have a feeble understanding of the big picture on global production and innovation. They conflate innovation with invention and suffer from techno-fetishism. In their devotion to start-ups, they refuse to admit that the real obstacle to growth for most cities is the overwhelming power of the real hubs, which siphon up vast amounts of talent and money. Communities waste time, money, and energy pursuing this road to nowhere. Breznitz proposes that communities instead focus on where they fit in the four stages in the global production process. Some are at the highest end, and that is where the Clevelands, Sheffields, and Baltimores are being pushed toward. But that is bad advice. Success lies in understanding the changed structure of the global system of production and then using those insights to enable communities to recognize their own advantages, which in turn allows to them to foster surprising forms of specialized innovation. As he stresses, all localities have certain advantages relative to at least one stage of the global production process, and the trick is in recognizing it. Leaders might think the answer lies in high-tech or high-end manufacturing, but more often than not, they're wrong. Innovation in Real Places is an essential corrective to a mythology of innovation and growth that too many places have bought into in recent years. Best of all, it has the potential to prod local leaders into pursuing realistic and regionally appropriate models for growth and innovation.
Download or read book You Don t Owe Anyone written by Caroline Garnet McGraw and published by Broadleaf Books . This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You Don't Owe Anyone is for perfectionists, workaholics, people pleasers, and strivers who feel stuck in the try-hard cycle. Sharing her experiences as a life coach and recovering perfectionist, Caroline Garnet McGraw shows us how we can free ourselves from the weight of expectations and encourages us to move our lives forward without apology. Inspired by the author's viral essay "You Don't Owe Anyone an Interaction," this book invites us to make surprising choices that can help us get unstuck. Rather than offering more ways to effect change through sheer effort, these personal stories serve as a compassionate witness, a reflection of our own perfectionistic tendencies. They also are a wakeup call jolting us out of our martyr mentality and inspiring us to move in new, positive directions. Through simple, accessible coaching practices, You Don't Owe Anyone shows us what it looks like to refuse to over-function in the old ways. It invites us to make the same surprising choices that have helped McGraw and her clients move past perfectionism, empowering us to quiet our fears and heal our hearts.
Download or read book How We Show Up written by Mia Birdsong and published by Hachette Go. This book was released on 2020-06-02 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Invitation to Community and Models for Connection After almost every presentation activist and writer Mia Birdsong gives to executives, think tanks, and policy makers, one of those leaders quietly confesses how much they long for the profound community she describes. They have family, friends, and colleagues, yet they still feel like they're standing alone. They're "winning" at the American Dream, but they're lonely, disconnected, and unsatisfied. It seems counterintuitive that living the "good life"--the well-paying job, the nuclear family, the upward mobility--can make us feel isolated and unhappy. But in a divided America, where only a quarter of us know our neighbors and everyone is either a winner or a loser, we've forgotten the key element that helped us make progress in the first place: community. In this provocative, groundbreaking work, Mia Birdsong shows that what separates us isn't only the ever-present injustices built around race, class, gender, values, and beliefs, but also our denial of our interdependence and need for belonging. In response to the fear and discomfort we feel, we've built walls, and instead of leaning on each other, we find ourselves leaning on concrete. Through research, interviews, and stories of lived experience, How We Show Up returns us to our inherent connectedness where we find strength, safety, and support in vulnerability and generosity, in asking for help, and in being accountable. Showing up--literally and figuratively--points us toward the promise of our collective vitality and leads us to the liberated well-being we all want.
Download or read book The Second Person Standpoint written by Stephen Darwall and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-30 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why should we avoid doing moral wrong? The inability of philosophy to answer this question in a compelling manner—along with the moral skepticism and ethical confusion that ensue—result, Stephen Darwall argues, from our failure to appreciate the essentially interpersonal character of moral obligation. After showing how attempts to vindicate morality have tended to change the subject—falling back on non-moral values or practical, first-person considerations—Darwall elaborates the interpersonal nature of moral obligations: their inherent link to our responsibilities to one another as members of the moral community. As Darwall defines it, the concept of moral obligation has an irreducibly second-person aspect; it presupposes our authority to make claims and demands on one another. And so too do many other central notions, including those of rights, the dignity of and respect for persons, and the very concept of person itself. The result is nothing less than a fundamental reorientation of moral theory that enables it at last to account for morality’s supreme authority—an account that Darwall carries from the realm of theory to the practical world of second-person attitudes, emotions, and actions.
Download or read book Ordinary Vices written by Judith N. Shklar and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1984 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The seven deadly sins of Christianity represent the abysses of character, whereas Shklar's "ordinary vices"--cruelty, hypocrisy, snobbery, betrayal, and misanthropy--are merely treacherous shoals, flawing our characters with mean-spiritedness and inhumanity. Shklar draws from a brilliant array of writers--Moliere and Dickens on hypocrisy, Jane Austen on snobbery, Shakespeare and Montesquieu on misanthropy, Hawthorne and Nietzsche on cruelty, Conrad and Faulkner on betrayal--to reveal the nature and effects of the vices. She examines their destructive effects, the ambiguities of the moral problems they pose to the liberal ethos, and their implications for government and citizens: liberalism is a difficult and challenging doctrine that demands a tolerance of contradiction, complexity, and the risks of freedom.
Download or read book I Owe You One written by Sophie Kinsella and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "A gem of a novel."--Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Spark of Light and Small Great Things From the author of Surprise Me comes an irresistible story of love and empowerment about a young woman with a complicated family, a handsome man who might be "the one," and an IOU that changes everything. Fixie Farr has always lived by her father's motto: "Family first." And since her dad passed away, leaving his charming housewares store in the hands of his wife and children, Fixie spends all her time picking up the slack from her siblings instead of striking out on her own. The way Fixie sees it, if she doesn't take care of her father's legacy, who will? It's simply not in Fixie's nature to say no to people. So when a handsome stranger in a coffee shop asks her to watch his laptop for a moment, she not only agrees--she ends up saving it from certain disaster. To thank Fixie for her quick thinking, the computer's owner, Sebastian, an investment manager, scribbles an IOU on a coffee sleeve and attaches his business card. Fixie laughs it off--she'd never actually claim an IOU from a stranger. Would she? But then Fixie's childhood crush, Ryan, comes back into her life, and his lack of a profession pushes all of Fixie's buttons. As always, she wants nothing for herself--but she'd love Seb to give Ryan a job. No sooner has Seb agreed than the tables are turned once more and a new series of IOUs between Seb and Fixie--from small favors to life-changing moments--ensues. Soon Fixie, Ms. Fixit for everyone else, is torn between her family and the life she really wants. Does she have the courage to take a stand? Will she finally grab the life, and love, she really wants? Praise for I Owe You One "This book is a shot of pure joy!"--Jenny Colgan, author of The Bookshop on the Corner "A humorous exploration of family life, finding love and the difficulties of coming into one's own as a young professional woman . . . The entertaining cast of characters . . . will certainly remind readers why nineteen years after her first hit Kinsella remains one of the reigning queens of women's fiction."--The Washington Post "I Owe You One is another impossibly delightful story by Sophie Kinsella, a must-read for her die-hard fans and new readers alike."--PopSugar
Download or read book Fellow Creatures written by Christine Marion Korsgaard and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a compelling new view of our moral relationships to the other animals
Download or read book On What Matters written by Derek Parfit and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-09 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Derek Parfit presents the third volume of On What Matters, his landmark work of moral philosophy. Parfit develops further his influential treatment of reasons, normativity, the meaning of moral discourse, and the status of morality. He engages with his critics, and shows the way to resolution of their differences. This volume is partly about what it is for things to matter, in the sense that we all have reasons to care about these things. Much of the book discusses three of the main kinds of meta-ethical theory: Normative Naturalism, Quasi-Realist Expressivism, and Non-Metaphysical Non-Naturalism, which Derek Parfit now calls Non-Realist Cognitivism. This third theory claims that, if we use the word 'reality' in an ontologically weighty sense, irreducibly normative truths have no mysterious or incredible ontological implications. If instead we use 'reality' in a wide sense, according to which all truths are truths about reality, this theory claims that some non-empirically discoverable truths-such as logical, mathematical, modal, and some normative truths-raise no difficult ontological questions. Parfit discusses these theories partly by commenting on the views of some of the contributors to Peter Singer's collection Does Anything Really Matter? Parfit on Objectivity. Though Peter Railton is a Naturalist, he has widened his view by accepting some further claims, and he has suggested that this wider version of Naturalism could be combined with Non-Realist Cognitivism. Parfit argues that Railton is right, since these theories no longer deeply disagree. Though Allan Gibbard is a Quasi-Realist Expressivist, he has suggested that the best version of his view could be combined with Non-Realist Cognitivism. Parfit argues that Gibbard is right, since Gibbard and he now accept the other's main meta-ethical claim. It is rare for three such different philosophical theories to be able to be widened in ways that resolve their deepest disagreements. This happy convergence supports the view that these meta-ethical theories are true. Parfit also discusses the views of several other philosophers, and some other meta-ethical and normative questions.
Download or read book Sustaining Democracy written by Robert B. Talisse and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy is not easy. Citizens who disagree sharply about politics must nonetheless work together as equal partners in the enterprise of collective self-government. Ideally, this work would be conducted under conditions of mutual civility, with opposed citizens nonetheless recognizing one another's standing as political equals. But when the political stakes are high, and the opposition seems to us severely mistaken, why not drop the democratic pretences of civil partnership, and simply play to win? Why seek to uphold properly democratic relations with those who embrace political ideas that are flawed, irresponsible, and out of step with justice? Why sustain democracy with political foes? Drawing on extensive social science research concerning political polarization and partisan identity, Robert B. Talisse argues that when we break off civil interactions with our political opponents, we imperil relations with our political allies. In the absence of engagement with our political critics, our alliances grow increasingly homogeneous, conformist, and hierarchical. Moreover, they fracture and devolve amidst internal conflicts. In the end, our political aims suffer because our coalitions shrink and grow ineffective. Why sustain democracy with our foes? Because we need them if we are going to sustain democracy with our allies and friends.
Download or read book The Good Place and Philosophy written by Steven A. Benko and published by Open Court Publishing. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Good Place is a fantasy-comedy TV show about the afterlife. Eleanor dies and finds herself in the Good Place, which she understands must be mistake, since she has been anything but good. In the surprise twist ending to Season One, it is revealed that this is really the Bad Place, but the demon who planned it was frustrated, because the characters didn’t torture each other mentally as planned, but managed to learn how to live together. In ,i>The Good Place and Philosophy, twenty-one philosophers analyze different aspects of the ethical and metaphysical issues raised in the show, including: ● Indefinitely long punishment can only be justified as a method of ultimately improving vicious characters, not as retribution. ● Can individuals retain their identity after hundreds of reboots? ● Comparing Hinduism with The Good Place, we can conclude that Hinduism gets things five percent correct. ● Looking at all the events in the show, it follows that humans don’t have free will, and so people are being punished and rewarded unjustly. ● Is it a problem that the show depicts torture as hilarious? This problem can be resolved by considering the limited perspective of humans, compared with the eternal perspective of the demons. ● The Good Place implies that even demons can develop morally. ● The only way to explain how the characters remain the same people after death is to suppose that their actual bodies are transported to the afterlife. ● Since Chidi knows all the moral theories but can never decide what to do, it must follow that there is something missing in all these theories. ● The show depicts an afterlife which is bureaucratic, therefore unchangeable, therefore deeply unjust. ● Eleanor acts on instinct, without thinking, whereas Chidi tries to think everything through and never gets around to acting; together these two characters can truly act morally. ● The Good Place shows us that authenticity means living for others. ● The Good Place is based on Sartre’s play No Exit, with its famous line “Hell is other people,” but in fact both No Exit and The Good Place inform us that human relationships can redeem us. ● In The Good Place, everything the humans do is impermanent since it can be rebooted, so humans cannot accomplish anything good. ● Kant’s moral precepts are supposed to be universal, but The Good Place shows us it can be right to lie to demons. ● The show raises the question whether we can ever be good except by being part of a virtuous community.
Download or read book What Do We Owe to Refugees written by David Owen and published by Polity. This book was released on 2020-03-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who are refugees? Who, if anyone, is responsible for protecting them? What forms should this protection take? In a world of people fleeing from civil wars, state failure, and environmental disasters, these are ethically and politically pressing questions. In this book, David Owen reveals how the contemporary politics of refuge is structured by two rival historical pictures of refugees. In reconstructing this history, he advocates an understanding of refugeehood that moves us beyond our current impasse by distinguishing between what is owed to refugees in general and what is owed to different types of refugee. He provides an account of refugee protection and the forms of international cooperation required to implement it that is responsive to the claims of both refugees and states. At a time when refugee protection is once again prominent on the international agenda, this book offers a guide to understanding the challenges this topic raises and shows why addressing it matters for all of us.
