Selected Writings On Ethics And Politics

Celebrated today for his groundbreaking work in logic and the foundations of mathematics, Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848) was best known in his own time as a leader of the reform movement in his homeland (Bohemia, then part of the Austrian Empire). As professor of religious science at the Charles University in Prague from 1805 to 1819, Bolzano was a highly visible public intellectual, a courageous and determined critic of abuses in Church and State. Based in large part on a carefully argued utilitarian practical philosophy, he developed a non-violent program for the reform of the authoritarian institutions of the Empire, which he himself set in motion through his teaching and other activities. Rarely has a philosopher had such a great impact on the political culture of his homeland. This volume contains a substantial collection of Bolzano's writings on ethics and politics, translated into English for the first time. It includes a complete translation of the treatise On the Best State, his principal writings on ethics, an essay on the contemporary situation in Ireland, and a selection of his Exhortations, dealing with such topics as enlightenment, civil disobedience, the status of women, anti-Semitism and Czech-German relations in Bohemia. It will be of particular interest to students of central European philosophy and history, and more generally to philosophers and historians of ideas.

Thomas Williams presents the most extensive collection of John Duns Scotus's work on ethics and moral psychology available in English. John Duns Scotus: Selected Writings on Ethics includes extended discussions-and as far as possible, complete questions-on divine and human freedom, the moral attributes of God, the relationship between will and intellect, moral and intellectual virtue, practical reasoning, charity, the metaphysics of goodness and rightness, the various acts, affections, and passions of the will, justice, the natural law, sin, marriage and divorce, the justification for private property, and lying and perjury. Relying on the recently completed critical edition of the Ordinatio and other critically edited texts, this collection presents the most reliable and up-to-date versions of Scotus's work in an accessible and philosophically informed translation.

Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the most creative and important philosophers working today. This volume presents a selection of his classic essays on ethics and politics collected together for the first time, focussing particularly on the themes of moral disagreement, moral dilemmas, and truthfulness and its importance. The essays range widely in scope, from Aristotle and Aquinas and what we need to learn from them, to our contemporary economic and social structures and the threat which they pose to the realization of the forms of ethical life. They will appeal to a wide range of readers across philosophy and especially in moral philosophy, political philosophy, and theology.

This volume presents a selection of Alasdair MacIntyre's classic essays on ethics and politics, focussing particularly on the themes of moral disagreement, moral dilemmas, and truthfulness and its importance. They will appeal to a wide range of readers across philosophy and especially in moral philosophy, political philosophy, and theology.

Hannah Arendt is one of the most important political theorists of the 20th century. This book focuses on how, against the professionalized discourses of theory, Arendt insists on the greater political importance of the ordinary activity of thinking.

The book shows ... how Mead's social psychology evolved gradually into a theory of self-consciousness and its social gestalt, an epistemology, and finally a philosophy of history and a realistic ontology of objective relativity.

Aristotle is the most influential philosopher of practice, and Knight's new book explores the continuing importance of Aristotelian philosophy. First, it examines the theoretical bases of what Aristotle said about ethical, political and productive activity. It then traces ideas of practice through such figures as St Paul, Luther, Hegel, Heidegger and recent Aristotelian philosophers, and evaluates Alasdair MacIntyre's contribution. Knight argues that, whereas Aristotle's own thought legitimated oppression, MacIntyre's revision of Aristotelianism separates ethical excellence from social elitism and justifies resistance. With MacIntyre, Aristotelianism becomes revolutionary. MacIntyre's case for the Thomistic Aristotelian tradition originates in his attempt to elaborate a Marxist ethics informed by analytic philosophy. He analyses social practices in teleological terms, opposing them to capitalist institutions and arguing for the cooperative defence of our moral agency. In condensing these ideas, Knight advances a theoretical argument for the reformation of Aristotelianism and an ethical argument for social change.

Ethics, Politics and Justice in Dante presents new research by international scholars on the themes of ethics, politics and justice in the works of Dante Alighieri, including chapters on Dante’s modern ‘afterlife’. Together the chapters explore how Dante’s writings engage with the contemporary culture of medieval Florence and Italy, and how and why his political and moral thought still speaks compellingly to modern readers. The collection’s contributors range across different disciplines and scholarly traditions – history, philology, classical reception, philosophy, theology – to scrutinise Dante’s Divine Comedy and his other works in Italian and Latin, offering a multi-faceted approach to the evolution of Dante’s political, ethical and legal thought throughout his writing career. Certain chapters focus on his early philosophical Convivio and on the accomplished Latin Eclogues of his final years, while others tackle knotty themes relating to judgement, justice, rhetoric and literary ethics in his Divine Comedy, from hell to paradise. The closing chapters discuss different modalities of the public reception and use of Dante’s work in both Italy and Britain, bringing the volume’s emphasis on morality, political philosophy, and social justice into the modern age of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.