Are we missing out on blessings from God by ignoring the Lord?'s Day? Joey Pipa investigates and presents his conclusions it could change the way you think about Sunday

    -from "Memoir on Pauperism" Inspired by a trip to England at a time when that nation was in the throes of political, social, and economic strife and poverty was rampant, political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville developed his theories on civil society as it relates to its poorest members and set them down in this 1835 essay. With keen insight, he explains: .why the richest nations have the most paupers .why private charity is more likely to alleviate poverty than government aid .how good intentions backfire to produce a chronically dependent underclass. The political and economic situations Tocqueville examines are immediately recognizable as one that haunts the world's richest nations today, and his lessons are still to be learned. This is an important book for our unsteady times. Also available from Cosimo Classics: Tocqueville's Selected Letters on Politics and Society. French writer ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE (1805-1859) was born in Paris and practiced law before embarking on travels in America to study the young nation's political experiment. The result, the two-volume Democracy in America (1835, 1840), is considered a classic discourse on 19th-century America.

    Lead attorney for Terri Schiavo, the author explains how Terri Schiavo's death changed his life, why it should never have happened, and why value of life issues are critical for Christians to understand.

    Abelard's major ethical writings: Ethics, or 'Know Yourself', & Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew & a Christian, are presented here in a student edition including cross-references, explanatory notes, a full table of references, bibliography & index.

    That does not mean that his head was in the clouds, or that the particular sciences lacked interest for him. Not at all--he felt a lively concern for theological debate, he was a mathematician of the first rank, he made original contributions to physics, he gave a realistic attention to moral psychology. But he was incapable of looking at the objects of any special enquiry without seeing them as aspects or parts of one intelligible universe. He strove constantly after system, and the instrument on which his effort relied was the speculative reason. He embodied in an extreme form the spirit of his age. Nothing could be less like the spirit of ours. To many people now alive metaphysics means a body of wild and meaningless assertions resting on spurious argument. A professor of metaphysics may nowadays be held to deal handsomely with theduties of his chair if he is prepared to handle metaphysical statements at all, though it be only for the purpose of getting rid of them, by showing them up as confused forms of something else. A chair in metaphysical philosophy becomes analogous to a chair in tropical diseases: what is taught from it is not the propagation but the cure.Confidence in metaphysical construction has ebbed and flowed through philosophical history; periods of speculation have been followed by periods of criticism. The tide will flow again, but it has not turned yet, and [8] such metaphysicians as survive scarcely venture further than to argue a case for the possibility of their art. It would be an embarrassing task to open an approach to Leibnitian metaphysics from the present metaphysical position, if there is a present position. If we want an agreed starting-point, it will have to be historical.The historical importance of Leibniz's ideas is anyhow unmistakable. If metaphysical thinking is nonsensical, its empire over the human imagination must still be confessed; if it is as chimerical a science as alchemy, it is no less fertile in by-products of importance. And if we are to consider Leibniz historically, we cannot do better than take up his _Theodicy_, fortwo reasons. It was the only one of his main philosophical works to be published in his lifetime, so that it was a principal means of his direct influence; the Leibniz his own age knew was the Leibniz of the _Theodicy_. Then in the second place, the _Theodicy_ itself is peculiarly rich in historical material. It reflects the world of men and books which Leibnizknew; it expresses the theological setting of metaphysical speculation which still predominated in the first years of the eighteenth century........

    Beginning with an examination of the relationship between Hegel and Goethe, Lowith discusses how Hegel's students, particularly Marx and Kierkegaard, interpreted----or reinterpreted----their master's thought, and proceeds with an in-depth assessment of the other important philosophers, from Feuerbach, Stirner, and Schelling to Nietzsche.

    Most animal rights theory focuses on the intrinsic capacities or interests of animals, and the moral status and moral rights that these intrinsic characteristics give rise to. Zoopolis shifts the debate from the realmof moral theory and applied ethics to the realm of political theory, focusing on the relational obligations that arise from the varied ways that animals relate to human societies and institutions. Building on recent developments in the political theory of group-differentiated citizenship, Zoopolisintroduces us to the genuine political animal. It argues that different types of animals stand in different relationships to human political communities. Domesticated animals should be seen as full members of human-animal mixed communities, participating in the cooperative project of sharedcitizenship. Wilderness animals, by contrast, form their own sovereign communities entitled to protection against colonization, invasion, domination and other threats to self-determination. Liminal animals who are wild but live in the midst of human settlement (such as crows or raccoons) should beseen as denizens, resident of our societies, but not fully included in rights and responsibilities of citizenship. To all of these animals we owe respect for their basic inviolable rights. But we inevitably and appropriately have very different relations with them, with different types ofobligations. Humans and animals are inextricably bound in a complex web of relationships, and Zoopolis offers an original and profoundly affirmative vision of how to ground this complex web of relations on principles of justice and compassion.

    This book explores some of the most historically important and currently debated moral theories about the nature of the right and good. After introducing students in the first chapter to some of the main aims and methods of evaluating a moral theory, the remaining chapters are devoted to an examination of various moral theories including the divine command theory, moral relativism, natural law theory, Kant's moral theory, moral pluralism, virtue ethics, and moral particularism. Providing an introduction to moral theory that explains and critically examines the theories of such classical moral philosophers as Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Bentham, Mill, and Ross, this book acquaints students with the work of contemporary moral philosophers.

    When Christie Blatchford wandered into a Toronto courtroom in 1978 for the start of the first criminal trial she would cover as a newspaper reporter, little did she know she was also at the start of a self-imposed life sentence. In this book, Christie Blatchford revisits trials from throughout her career and asks the hard questions--about judges playing with the truth--through editing of criminal records, whitewashing of criminal records, pre-trial rulings that kick out evidence the jury can't hear. She discusses bad or troubled judges--how and why they get picked, and what can be done about them. And shows how judges are handmaidens to the state, as in the Bernardo trial when a small-town lawyer and an intellectual writer were pursued with more vigor than Karla Homolka. For anyone interested in the political and judicial fabric of this country, Life Sentence is a remarkable, argumentative, insightful and hugely important book.

    A. Cohen's Gifford Lectures, delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 1996. Focusing on Marxism and Rawlsian liberalism, Cohen draws a connection between these thought systems and the choices that shape a person's life. In the case of Marxism, the relevant life is his own: a communist upbringing in the 1940s in Montreal, which induced a belief in a strongly socialist egalitarian doctrine. The narrative of Cohen's reckoning with that inheritance develops through a series of sophisticated engagements with the central questions of social and political philosophy.In the case of Rawlsian doctrine, Cohen looks to people's lives in general. He argues that egalitarian justice is not only, as Rawlsian liberalism teaches, a matter of rules that define the structure of society, but also a matter of personal attitude and choice. Personal attitude and choice are, moreover, the stuff of which social structure itself is made. Those truths have not informed political philosophy as much as they should, and Cohen's focus on them brings political philosophy closer to moral philosophy, and to the Judeo-Christian ethical tradition, than it has recently been.

    Two long essays: “The Idea of a Christian Society” (on the direction of religious thought toward criticism of political and economic systems) and “Notes towards the Definition of Culture” (on culture, its meaning, and the dangers threatening the legacy of the Western world).

    This collection of lectures--originally compiled by Raymond Queneau and edited for its English-language translation by Allan Bloom--shows the intensity of Kojeve's study and thought and the depth of his insight into Hegel's Phenomenology. More important--for Kojeve was above all a philosopher and not an ideologue--this profound and venturesome work on Hegel will expose the readers to the excitement of discovering a great mind in all its force and power.

    Far from representing the rejection of morality, selfishness, in Rand�s view, actually demands the practice of a systematic code of ethics. This book explains the fundamental virtues that Rand considers vital for a person to achieve his objective well-being: rationality, honesty, independence, justice, integrity, productiveness, and pride. Tara Smith examines what each of these virtues consists in, why it is a virtue, and what it demands of a person in practice.

    His uniqueness lies not only in the fact that at the young age of 19 and a half, he travelled to snow clad Himalayas from Kerala, and there he met and lived for several years with a ‘real-time’ yogi, Babaji, but also that he should undertake such an unusual and adventurous exploration, given his non-Hindu birth and antecedents.The metamorphosis of Mumtaz Ali Khan into Sri ‘M’, a yogi with profound knowledge of the Upanishads and deep personal insights, born of first hand experiences with higher levels of consciousness is indeed a fascinating story.The bonus for those interested in the secrets of yoga, meditation and sankhyan metaphysics is that Sri ‘M’ is still living and easily reachable. He leads a normal life, married with two children, wears no special robes and conducts himself without pomp or paraphernalia.Someone who met him recently said, “I expected a flashy godman and instead I saw a jean clad gentleman with a smile of his face, ready to discuss my problems. In five minutes flat, I said to myself, this is no ordinary man. The peace and tranquility that enters your system is tangible”.

    Supreme Court. Now, in the 35th anniversary edition of this remarkably influential book, Christopher D. Stone updates his original thesis and explores the impact his ideas have had on the courts, the academy, and society as a whole. At the heart of the book is an eminently sensible, legally sound, and compelling argument that the environment should be granted legal rights. For the new edition, Stone explores a variety of recent cases and current events--and related topics such as climate change and protecting the oceans--providing a thoughtful survey of the past and an insightful glimpse at the future of the environmental movement. This enduring work continues to serve as the definitive statement as to why trees, oceans, animals, and the environment as a whole should be bestowed with legal rights, so that the voiceless elements in nature are protected for future generations.