On the Moral Nature of the Universe

On the Moral Nature of the Universe PDF

Author: Nancey C. Murphy

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published:

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 9781451408423

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Ellis and Murphy show how contemporary sciences actually support a religiously based ethic of nonviolence, not by appealing to the Enlightment's mechanismic Creator God or revelation's Father God but by discerning the transcendent ground in the laws of nature, the emergence of intelligent freedom, and the echoes of "knoetic" self-giving in cosmology and biology.

The Arc of the Moral Universe and Other Essays

The Arc of the Moral Universe and Other Essays PDF

Author: Joshua Cohen

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 427

ISBN-13: 0674055608

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In this collection of essays, Joshua Cohen locates ideas about democracy in three far-ranging contexts. First, he explores the relationship between democratic values and history. He then discusses democracy in connection with the views of defining political theorists in the democratic tradition: John Locke, John Rawls, Noam Chomsky, Juergen Habermas, and Susan Moller Okin. Finally, he examines the place of democratic ideals in a global setting, suggesting an idea of “global public reason”—a terrain of political justification in global politics in which shared reason still plays an essential role.All the essays are linked by his overarching claim that political philosophy is a practical subject intended to orient and guide conduct in the social world. Cohen integrates moral, social-scientific, and historical argument in order to develop this stance, and he further confronts the question of whether a society conceived in liberty and dedicated to equality can endure. At Gettysburg, President Lincoln forcefully stated the question and expressed both hope and concern over this same struggle about an affirmative answer. By enabling us to trace the arc of the moral universe, the essays in this volume—along with the companion collection, Philosophy, Politics, Democracy—give us some reasons for sharing that hope.

The Moral Arc

The Moral Arc PDF

Author: Michael Shermer

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2015-01-20

Total Pages: 675

ISBN-13: 0805096930

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Bestselling author Michael Shermer's exploration of science and morality that demonstrates how the scientific way of thinking has made people, and society as a whole, more moral From Galileo and Newton to Thomas Hobbes and Martin Luther King, Jr., thinkers throughout history have consciously employed scientific techniques to better understand the non-physical world. The Age of Reason and the Enlightenment led theorists to apply scientific reasoning to the non-scientific disciplines of politics, economics, and moral philosophy. Instead of relying on the woodcuts of dissected bodies in old medical texts, physicians opened bodies themselves to see what was there; instead of divining truth through the authority of an ancient holy book or philosophical treatise, people began to explore the book of nature for themselves through travel and exploration; instead of the supernatural belief in the divine right of kings, people employed a natural belief in the right of democracy. In The Moral Arc, Shermer will explain how abstract reasoning, rationality, empiricism, skepticism--scientific ways of thinking--have profoundly changed the way we perceive morality and, indeed, move us ever closer to a more just world.

Purpose in the Universe

Purpose in the Universe PDF

Author: Tim Mulgan

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2015-10-22

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 0191066575

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Two familiar worldviews dominate Western philosophy: materialist atheism and the benevolent God of the Abrahamic faiths. Tim Mulgan explores a third way. Ananthropocentric Purposivism claims that there is a cosmic purpose, but human beings are irrelevant to it. Purpose in the Universe develops a philosophical case for Ananthropocentric Purposivism that it is at least as strong as the case for either theism or atheism. The book borrows traditional theist arguments to defend a cosmic purpose. These include cosmological, teleological, ontological, meta-ethical, and mystical arguments. It then borrows traditional atheist arguments to reject a human-centred purpose. These include arguments based on evil, diversity, and the scale of the universe. Mulgan also highlights connections between morality and metaphysics, arguing that evaluative premises play a crucial and underappreciated role in metaphysical debates about the existence of God, and Ananthropocentric Purposivism mutually supports an austere consequentialist morality based on objective values. He concludes that, by drawing on a range of secular and religious ethical traditions, a non-human-centred cosmic purpose can ground a distinctive human morality. Our moral practices, our view of the moral universe, and our moral theory are all transformed if we shift from the familiar choice between a universe without meaning and a universe where humans matter to the less self-aggrandising thought that, while it is about something, the universe is not about us.

The Point of View of the Universe

The Point of View of the Universe PDF

Author: Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0199603693

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Tests the views and metaphor of 19th-century utilitarian philosopher Henry Sidgwick against a variety of contemporary views on ethics, determining that they are defensible and thus providing a defense of objectivism in ethics and of hedonistic utilitarianism.

The Moral Universe of Shakespeare's Problem Plays

The Moral Universe of Shakespeare's Problem Plays PDF

Author: Vivian Thomas

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-03-30

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 100035010X

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What is it that makes Shakespeare’s problem plays problematic? Many critics have sought for the underlying vision or message of these puzzling and disturbing dramas. Originally published in 1987, the key to Viv Thomas’s new synthesis of the plays is the idea of fracture and dissolution in the universe. From the collapse of ‘degree’ in Troilus and Cressida to the corruption at the heart of innocence in Measure for Measure, to the puzzling status of virtue and valour in All’s Well, the most obvious feature of these plays in their capacity to prompt new questions. In a detailed discussion of each play in turn, the author traces the dominant themes that both distinguish and unite them, and provides numerous insights into the sources, background, texture and morality of the plays.

The Moral Landscape

The Moral Landscape PDF

Author: Sam Harris

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2011-09-13

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 143917122X

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Sam Harris dismantles the most common justification for religious faith--that a moral system cannot be based on science.

The Moral Universe

The Moral Universe PDF

Author: Venerable Fulton J. Sheen

Publisher: Aeterna Press

Published: 1936

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13:

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Knowledge of the moral life is conditioned upon the removal of all prejudice. Not everything that is novel is true, and what is called modern, may be only a new label for an old error. Divinity, which is the basis of true morality, is often where one least expects to find it. Aeterna Press

Strategic Moral Diplomacy

Strategic Moral Diplomacy PDF

Author: Lyn Boyd-Judson

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781565492912

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Strategic Moral Diplomacy addresses the most critical political problem of our time: how to negotiate seemingly incompatible moral values between nations. Normative and rational choice theories tend to simplify the actions and motives of leaders at the best, and paint enemies as immoral or evil at the worst. Boyd-Judson argues that it can be both strategically useful, as well as ethical, to assume an enemy has just moral concerns and give these claims credence. Boyd-Judson uses the US and UN negotiations with Iran, Libya, Zimbabwe and Haiti to illustrate the practical application of strategic moral diplomacy. Through personal interviews with negotiators and those close to them, she unearths the complex moral positions held by those involved and arrives at workable suggestions for future diplomatic dilemmas. Critical to the education of global citizens and future diplomats, Strategic Moral Diplomacy is an irreplaceable teaching tool for discussing social justice, rogue states, and the importance of understanding moral psychology in international relations.