The Gift


Shad Helmstetter - 2005
    The Gift is the inspiring story of women and men who are changing their own lives - by helping other people change theirs. This beautifully-written book helps you put the 12 best personal growth concepts ever discovered into practice - in your personal life and in your career.

Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle


Tzvetan Todorov - 1981
    

The Character Gap: How Good Are We?


Christian B. Miller - 2017
    We may not be saints, but we are still honest, relatively kind, and mostly trustworthy. Miller argues here that we are badly mistaken in thinking this. Hundreds of recent studies in psychology tell a differentstory: that we all have serious character flaws that prevent us from being as good as we think we are - and that we do not even recognize that these flaws exist. But neither are most of us cruel or dishonest. Instead, Miller argues, we are a mixed bag. On the one hand, most of us in a group ofbystanders will do nothing as someone cries out for help in an emergency. Yet it is also true that there will be many times when we will selflessly come to the aid of a complete stranger - and resist the urge to lie, cheat, or steal even if we could get away with it. Much depends on cues in oursocial environment. Miller uses this recent psychological literature to explain what the notion of character really means today, and how we can use this new understanding to develop a character better in sync with the kind of people we want to be.

What is Good?


A.C. Grayling - 2003
    Grayling answers the most important question - How do we live a good life?One of the most fundamental questions in our life is to find out what we value - what principles we want to live by and which codes we will use to guide our behaviour. Most of us want to live a good life. But what, in today's secular society, does 'good' actually mean?To classical Greeks, the acquisition of knowledge, the enjoyment of the senses, creativity and beauty were all aspects of life to strive for. Then came the volcanic declarations of St Paul and his fundamentalist ideas on sin and human nature. In WHAT IS GOOD?, A.C. Grayling examines these and other proposals on how to live a good life, from the 'heroic' ideals of the Greek poets to Kant's theories on freedom and the UN Declaration on Human Rights.

Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach


Martha C. Nussbaum - 2011
    For the past twenty-five years, Nussbaum has been working on an alternate model to assess human development: the Capabilities Approach. She and her colleagues begin with the simplest of questions: What is each person actually able to do and to be? What real opportunities are available to them? The Capabilities Approach to human progress has until now been expounded only in specialized works. Creating Capabilities, however, affords anyone interested in issues of human development a wonderfully lucid account of the structure and practical implications of an alternate model.

Causing Death and Saving Lives


Jonathan Glover - 1977
    The moral problems of abortion, infanticide, suicide, euthanasia, capital punishment, war and other life-or-death choices.

The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce


Deirdre Nansen McCloskey - 2006
    And for a millennium and a half, the philosophers and theologians of Europe have scorned the marketplace. The bourgeois life, capitalism, Mencken’s “booboisie” and David Brooks’s “bobos”—all have been, and still are, framed as being responsible for everything from financial to moral poverty, world wars, and spiritual desuetude. Countering these centuries of assumptions and unexamined thinking is Deirdre McCloskey’s The Bourgeois Virtues, a magnum opus that offers a radical view: capitalism is good for us.McCloskey’s sweeping, charming, and even humorous survey of ethical thought and economic realities—from Plato to Barbara Ehrenreich—overturns every assumption we have about being bourgeois. Can you be virtuous and bourgeois? Do markets improve ethics? Has capitalism made us better as well as richer? Yes, yes, and yes, argues McCloskey, who takes on centuries of capitalism’s critics with her erudition and sheer scope of knowledge. Applying a new tradition of “virtue ethics” to our lives in modern economies, she affirms American capitalism without ignoring its faults and celebrates the bourgeois lives we actually live, without supposing that they must be lives without ethical foundations. High Noon, Kant, Bill Murray, the modern novel, van Gogh, and of course economics and the economy all come into play in a book that can only be described as a monumental project and a life’s work. The Bourgeois Virtues is nothing less than a dazzling reinterpretation of Western intellectual history, a dead-serious reply to the critics of capitalism—and a surprising page-turner.

On Violence


Hannah Arendt - 1970
    Arendt also reexamines the relationship between war, politics, violence, and power. “Incisive, deeply probing, written with clarity and grace, it provides an ideal framework for understanding the turbulence of our times.”The Nation

Ends and Means


Aldous Huxley - 1937
    s/t: An Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals & into the Methods Employed for Their RealizationGoals, roads & contemporary starting point The nature of explanation Efficacy & limitations of large-scale social reformSocial reform & violenceThe planned society Nature of the modern stateCentralization & decentralizationDecentralization & self-governmentWar Individual work for reform InequalityEducation Religious practicesBeliefsEthics

Don't Believe Everything You Think: The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking


Thomas Kida - 2006
    In a complex society where success - in all facets of life - often requires the ability to evaluate the validity of many conflicting claims, the critical-thinking skills examined in this informative and engaging book will prove invaluable.

The Morality of Law


Lon L. Fuller - 1965
    Fuller extends and clarifies his definition of the relation between law and morality put forward in the first (1964) edition of The Morality of Law. His original argument distinguishes between the morality of duty and the morality of aspiration, both of which bear on the design and operation of social institutions: the former by setting the necessary preconditions of any purposive social endeavor, the latter by suggesting the directions for such endeavor.                                                                                                                                                                                   In the revised edition, Fuller takes accurate aim at the school of legal philosophy called the New Analytical Jurists and continues his long-running debate with his major intellectual antagonist, H.L.A. Hart. Although the author calls the new chapter "A Reply to Critics," his expressed reason for undertaking it indicates that it is more than that: "As critical reviews of my book came in, I myself became increasingly aware of the extent to which the debate did indeed depend on 'starting points' - not on what the disputants said, but on what they considered it unnecessary to say, not on articulated principles but on tacit assumptions. What was needed, therefore, it seemed to me, was to bring these tacit assumptions to more adequate expression than either side has so far been able to do." There is no question that Mr. Fuller here gives the assumptions of his side adequate expression.                                                                                                                                                                                                                           “The volume must be regarded as an important contribution of general interest to the study of the nature and function of law…Trenchant comment abounds throughout the book, and there is an immense amount of the most valuable material here, as well as considerable food for the thought…his book deserves to reach a very wide audience.” – Law Times.“The book is a provocative one which is certain to excite much academic comment here and abroad.” – Harvard Law Record.“Although fully intelligible to the undergraduate, this book is likely to receive its warmest reception form advanced students of the philosophy of law, who will welcome the relief provided from the frequently sterile tone of much recent work in the field.” – Choice

Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain


Michael S. Gazzaniga - 2011
    Gazzaniga has been called the “father of cognitive neuroscience.” In his remarkable book, Who’s in Charge?, he makes a powerful and provocative argument that counters the common wisdom that our lives are wholly determined by physical processes we cannot control. His well-reasoned case against the idea that we live in a “determined” world is fascinating and liberating, solidifying his place among the likes of Oliver Sacks, Antonio Damasio, V.S. Ramachandran, and other bestselling science authors exploring the mysteries of the human brain

If God, Why Evil?: A New Way to Think about the Question


Norman L. Geisler - 2011
    A trusted apologist provides a fresh, balanced approach to understanding how a loving God can preside over a world filled with evil and suffering

Freedom Evolves


Daniel C. Dennett - 2003
    Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly original arguments—drawing upon evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy—that far from being an enemy of traditional explorations of freedom, morality, and meaning, the evolutionary perspective can be an indispensable ally. In Freedom Evolves, Dennett seeks to place ethics on the foundation it deserves: a realistic, naturalistic, potentially unified vision of our place in nature.

Ethics and Data Science


Mike Loukides - 2018
    Yet, ethical principles for working with data have been available for decades. The real issue today is how to put those principles into action. With this report, authors Mike Loukides, Hilary Mason, and DJ Patil examine practical ways for making ethical data standards part of your work every day. To help you consider all of possible ramifications of your work on data projects, this report includes: A sample checklist that you can adapt for your own procedures Five framing guidelines (the Five C’s) for building data products: consent, clarity, consistency, control, and consequences Suggestions for building ethics into your data-driven culture Now is the time to invest in a deliberate practice of data ethics, for better products, better teams, and better outcomes. Get a copy of this report and learn what it takes to do good data science today.