The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left's Assault on Our Culture and Values


Tammy Bruce - 2003
    Through the pages of The Death of Right and Wrong, author, activist, and pundit Tammy Bruce takes you inside the chilling world of the Left—a place where morals and decency have been turned on their heads and the crisp distinction between Right and Wrong has been blurred into a mushy, gray mess.In this world, the Gay Elite exploit our children—under the guise of tolerance and education—to satisfy their sexual obsessions.In this world, the Black Elite laud convicted murderers as community heroes and award-winning “artists.”In this world, the Feminist Elite fawn over a woman who mercilessly killed all five of her children.And much more that will offend your sense of decency and threaten your basic values.Ms. Bruce smashes the facades of “Tolerance,” “Understanding,” and other Leftist slogans to reveal the ugly truth of their agenda. As a gay activist and former president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization of Women, she witnessed firsthand the Left’s attempts to undermine our millennia-old code of morals and values, aided by politically biased media and academia. And if the news headlines of today are any indication, they’re winning the culture war. Unless we act now, we are doomed at the hands of special interest groups on the Left who want nothing more than to undermine our ability to judge right from wrong in order to foist their own selfish, anything-goes society on the rest of us. This book reveals what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, and what we can do to restore decency in our society.You’ll discover powerful tools in these pages to help you understand the psychology of the Left—what makes them tick and, more importantly, how to stop them from eroding our values completely. Full of controversial opinions and countless examples ripped from the headlines, The Death of Right and Wrong is a powerful, eye-opening book that you won’t want to be without.From the Hardcover edition.

The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a Divided World


Michael Ignatieff - 2017
    The Ordinary Virtues presents Ignatieff's discoveries and his interpretation of what globalization--and resistance to it--is doing to our conscience and our moral understanding.Through dialogues with favela dwellers in Brazil, South Africans and Zimbabweans living in shacks, Japanese farmers, gang leaders in Los Angeles, and monks in Myanmar, Ignatieff found that while human rights may be the language of states and liberal elites, the moral language that resonates with most people is that of everyday virtues: tolerance, forgiveness, trust, and resilience. These ordinary virtues are the moral operating system in global cities and obscure shantytowns alike, the glue that makes the multicultural experiment work. Ignatieff seeks to understand the moral structure and psychology of these core values, which privilege the local over the universal, and citizens' claims over those of strangers.Ordinary virtues, he concludes, are antitheoretical and anti-ideological. They can be cheerfully inconsistent. When order breaks down and conflicts break out, they are easily exploited for a politics of fear and exclusion--reserved for one's own group and denied to others. But they are also the key to healing, reconciliation, and solidarity on both a local and a global scale.

Buddhist Ethics: A Very Short Introduction


Damien Keown - 2005
    Numerous introductory books have appeared in recent years to cater for this growing interest, but almost none devotes attention to the specifically ethical dimension of the tradition. For complex cultural and historical reasons, ethics has not received as much attention in traditional Buddhist thought as it has in the West, and publications on the subject are few and far between. Here, Damien Keown, author of Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction , illustrates how Buddhism might approach a range of fascinating moral issues ranging from abortion and suicide to cloning. Readership: Students and general readers with an interest in Buddhism, ethics, or comparative religion. Anyone seeking a clear and straightforward answer to the question 'What is the Buddhist view on X?', or who read and enjoyed Keown's VSI to Buddhism.

The Moral of the Story: An Introduction to Ethics


Nina Rosenstand - 1994
    Through storytelling and story analysis, using examples from fiction and film, this work shows how ethical theories are applied to real life. Reflecting the social and political climate, it covers topics like courage, terrorism, and just war.

One World: The Ethics of Globalization


Peter Singer - 2002
    Peter Singer discusses climate change, the role of the World Trade Organization, human rights and humanitarian intervention, and foreign aid, showing how a global ethic rather than a nationalistic approach can provide illuminating answers to important problems.The book encompasses four main global issues: climate change, the role of the World Trade Organization, human rights and humanitarian intervention, and foreign aid. Singer addresses each vital issue from an ethical perspective and offers alternatives to the state-centric approach that characterizes international theory and relations today. Posing a bold challenge to narrow or nationalistic views, Singer presents a realistic, new way of looking at contemporary global issues—through a prism of ethics.

The Reasons of Love


Harry G. Frankfurt - 2004
    Caring provides us with stable ambitions and concerns; it shapes the framework of aims and interests within which we lead our lives. The most basic and essential question for a person to raise about the conduct of his or her life is not what he or she should care about but what, in fact, he or she cannot help caring about.The most important form of caring, Frankfurt writes, is love, a nonvoluntary, disinterested concern for the flourishing of what is loved. Love is so important because meaningful practical reasoning must be grounded in ends that we do not seek only to attain other ends, and because it is in loving that we become bound to final ends desired for their own sakes.Frankfurt argues that the purest form of love is self-love. This sounds perverse, but self-love--as distinct from self-indulgence--is at heart a disinterested concern for whatever it is that the person loves. The most elementary form of self-love is nothing more than the desire of a person to love. Insofar as this is true, self-love is simply a commitment to finding meaning in our lives.

The Happiness Myth: Why What We Think Is Right Is Wrong


Jennifer Michael Hecht - 2007
    Our rules for living are more like the history of pop songs. They make weird sense only to the people of each given time period. They aren't true. This book shows you how past myths functioned, and likewise how our myths of today function, and thus lets you out of the trap of thinking you have to pay heed to any of them."The Happiness Myth is a fascinating cultural history that both reveals our often silly assumptions about how we pursue happiness today and offers up real historical lessons that have stood the test of time. Hecht delivers memorable insights into the five practical means we choose to achieve happiness: wisdom, drugs, money, bodies, and celebration.Hecht liberates us from today's scolding, quasi-scientific messages that insist there is only one way to care for our minds and bodies. Hecht looks at contemporary happiness advice and explains why much of it doesn't work. "Modern culture," she writes, "is misrepresenting me and spending a lot of money to do it."Rich with hilarious anecdotes about both failed and successful paths to happiness, Hecht's book traces a common thread of advice—she calls it "sour charm wisdom"—that we can still apply today to create authentic, lasting happiness.

Patanjali Yoga Sutra


Sri Sri Ravi Shankar - 2010
    Sri Sri brought to light the profound wisdom contained in Patanjali's Sanskrit passages. The audience was a group of course participants tucked in Weggis, Switzerland. Amidst the bliss of so much knowledge, somebody had the awareness to record those precious talks. This book is a compilation of talks from the session.

Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations


Michael Walzer - 1976
    He studies a variety of conflicts over the course of history, as well as the testimony of those who have been most directly involved--participants, decision makers, and victims. In his introduction to this new edition, Walzer specifically addresses the moral issues surrounding the war in and occupation of Iraq, reminding us once again that "the argument about war and justice is still a political and moral necessity."

Free Will


Gary Watson - 1982
    This volume brings together some of the most influential contributions to the topic of free will during the past 50 years, as well as some notable recent work.

A History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Greece and Rome, From the Pre-Socratics to Plotinus


Frederick Charles Copleston - 1946
    J. Ayer in a fabled debate about the existence of God and the possibility of metaphysics, knew that seminary students were fed a woefully inadequate diet of theses and proofs, and that their familiarity with most of history's great thinkers was reduced to simplistic caricatures. Copleston set out to redress the wrong by writing a complete history of Western philosophy, one crackling with incident and intellectual excitement -- and one that gives full place to each thinker, presenting his thought in a beautifully rounded manner and showing his links to those who went before and to those who came after him. The result of Copleston's prodigious labors is a history of philosophy that is unlikely ever to be surpassed. Thought magazine summed up the general agreement among scholars and students alike when it reviewed Copleston's A History of Philosophy as "broad-minded and objective, comprehensive and scholarly, unified and well proportioned... We cannot recommend [it] too highly."

Ministerial Ethics: Moral Formation for Church Leaders


Joe E. Trull - 2004
    The authors seek to explain the unique moral role of the minister and the ethical responsibilities of the vocation and to provide "a clear statement of the ethical obligations contemporary clergy should assume in their personal and professional lives." Trull and Carter deal with such areas as family life, confidentiality, truth-telling, political involvement, working with committees, and relating to other church staff members. First published in 1993, this edition has been thoroughly updated throughout and contains expanded sections on theological foundations, the role of character, confidentiality, and the timely topic of clergy sexual abuse. Appendices describing various denominational ministerial codes of ethics are included.

The Ant and the Ferrari


Kerry Spackman - 2012
    this is one of those rare books that will change your beliefs - and in doing so will change your life. tHE ANt AND tHE FERRARI offers readers a clear, navigable path through the big questions that confront us all today. What is the meaning of life? Can we be ethical beings in today's world? Can we know if there is life after death? Is there such a thing as Absolute truth? What caused the Big Bang and why should you care?

Parmenides of Elea: Fragments


Parmenides
    He also includes the first complete translation into English of the contexts in which the fragments have been transmitted to us, and of the ancient testimonia regarding Parmenides' life and thought. All of the fragments have been translated in full and are arranged in the order that has become canonical since the publication of the fifth edition of Diels-Rranz's Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Alternative renderings are provided for passages whose meaning is disputed or where major questions of interpretation hinge upon the text or translation adopted.In an extended introductory essay, Gallop offers guidance on the background of the poem, and a continuous exposition of it, together with a critical discussion of its basic argument. The volume also includes an extensive bibliography, a glossary of key terms in the poem, and a section on sources and authorities.

Introducing Philosophy for Everyday Life: A Practical Guide


Trevor Curnow - 2012
    And by improving the quality of your thinking, you can improve the quality of your life. It will make you more aware of what you think and why—and how you can change what you think.