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How Good People Make Tough Choices: Resolving the Dilemmas of Ethical Living (Revised Edition)
Kidder, Rushworth M.
(Paperback)
List Price: $15.99 Sale: $6.23
Should you take a much-needed vacation or save money for the kids' education? Protect the endangered owl or maintain jobs for loggers? Have a heart-to-heart with a lying employee or fire him on the spot? All of us face ethical choices. Sometimes they're easy: One side is wrong and the other is right. But how do we handle the really tough "right vs. right" dilemmas, where each side has strong moral arguments and we can't do both? This book helps us build Ethical Fitness - a values-based decision-making process so definitive that it's now a registered trade mark. Rushworth M. Kidder, founder of the Institute for Global Ethics, teaches us how to think for ourselves in order to resolve ethical dilemmas ranging from the intimately personal to the broadly philosophical. Unique in its approach and rich with illustrative anecdotes - updated with examples of real-world conflicts from today's political realm and from Dr. Kidder's own observations - How Good People Make Tough Choices is an indispensable resource for spotting, understanding, and resolving our toughest decisions.
Animal Liberation: The Definitive Classic of the Animal Movement (P.S.)
Singer, Peter
(Softcover)
List Price: $14.99 Sale: $5.19
Since its original publication in 1975, this groundbreaking work has awakened millions of people to the existence of "speciesism" - our systematic disregard of nonhuman animals - inspiring a worldwide movement to transform our attitudes to animals and eliminate the cruelty we inflict on them. In Animal Liberation, author Peter Singer exposes the chilling realities of today's "factory farms" and product-testing procedures - destroying the spurious justifications behind them, and offering alternatives to what has become a profound environmental and social as well as moral issue. An important and persuasive appeal to conscience, fairness, decency, and justice, it is essential reading for the supporter and the skeptic alike.
Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help
Macfarquhar, Larissa
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.00 Sale: $3.51
What does it mean to devote yourself wholly to helping others? In Strangers Drowning, Larissa MacFarquhar seeks out people living lives of extreme ethical commitment and tells their deeply intimate stories; their stubborn integrity and their compromises; their bravery and their recklessness; their joys and defeats and wrenching dilemmas. A couple adopts two children in distress. But then they think: If they can change two lives, why not four? Or ten? They adopt twenty. But how do they weigh the needs of unknown children in distress against the needs of the children they already have? Another couple founds a leprosy colony in the wilderness in India, living in huts with no walls, knowing that their two small children may contract leprosy or be eaten by panthers. The children survive. But what if they hadn't? How would their parents' risk have been judged? A woman believes that if she spends money on herself, rather than donate it to buy life-saving medicine, then she's responsible for the deaths that result. She lives on a fraction of her income, but wonders: when is compromise self-indulgence and when is it essential? We honor such generosity and high ideals; but when we call people do-gooders there is skepticism in it, even hostility. Why do moral people make us uneasy? Between her stories, MacFarquhar threads a lively history of the literature, philosophy, social science, and self-help that have contributed to a deep suspicion of do-gooders in Western culture. Through its sympathetic and beautifully vivid storytelling, Strangers Drowning confronts us with fundamental questions about what it means to be human. In a world of strangers drowning in need, how much should we help, and how much can we help? Is it right to care for strangers even at the expense of those we are closest to? Moving and provocative, Strangers Drowning challenges us to think about what we value most, and why.
Ethics 101: From Altruism and Utilitarianism to Bioethics and Political Ethics, an Exploration of the Concepts of Right and Wrong (Adams 101)
Boone, Brian
(Hardcover)
List Price: $15.99 Sale: $6.23
Explore the mysteries of morality and the concept of right and wrong with this accessible, engaging guide featuring basic facts along with an overview of modern-day issues ranging from business ethics and bioethics to political and social ethics.Ethics 101 offers an exciting look into the history of moral principles that dictate human behavior. Unlike traditional textbooks that overwhelm, this easy-to-read guide presents the key concepts of ethics in fun, straightforward lessons and exercises featuring only the most important facts, theories, and ideas. Ethics 101 includes unique, accessible elements such as:- Explanations of the major moral philosophies including utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, and eastern philosophers including Avicenna, Buddha, and Confucius.- Classic thought exercises including the trolley problem, the sorites paradox, and agency theory.- Unique profiles of the greatest characters in moral philosophy.- An explanation of modern applied ethics in bioethics, business ethics, political ethics, professional ethics, organizational ethics, and social ethicsFrom Plato to Jean-Paul Sartre and utilitarianism to antirealism, Ethics 101 is jam-packed with enlightening information that you can’t get anywhere else!
Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them
Greene, Joshua
(Paperback)
List Price: $18.00 Sale: $7.11
Our brains were designed for tribal life, for getting along with a select group of others (Us) and for fighting off everyone else (Them). But modern times have forced the world’s tribes into a shared space, resulting in epic clashes of values along with unprecedented opportunities. As the world shrinks, the moral lines that divide us become more salient and more puzzling. We fight over everything from tax codes to gay marriage to global warming, and we wonder where, if at all, we can find our common ground. A grand synthesis of neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy, Moral Tribes reveals the underlying causes of modern conflict and lights the way forward. Greene compares the human brain to a dual-mode camera, with point-and-shoot automatic settings (“portrait,” “landscape”) as well as a manual mode. Our point-and-shoot settings are our emotions—efficient, automated programs honed by evolution, culture, and personal experience. The brain’s manual mode is its capacity for deliberate reasoning, which makes our thinking flexible. Point-and-shoot emotions make us social animals, turning Me into Us. But they also make us tribal animals, turning Us against Them. Our tribal emotions make us fight—sometimes with bombs, sometimes with words—often with life-and-death stakes. An award-winning teacher and scientist, Greene directs Harvard University’s Moral Cognition Lab, which uses cutting-edge neuroscience and cognitive techniques to understand how people really make moral decisions. Combining insights from the lab with lessons from decades of social science and centuries of philosophy, the great question of Moral Tribes is this: How can we get along with Them when what they want feels so wrong to Us? Ultimately, Greene offers a set of maxims for navigating the modern moral terrain, a practical road map for solving problems and living better lives. Moral Tribes shows us when to trust our instincts, when to reason, and how the right kind of reasoning can move us forward. A major achievement from a rising star in a new scientific field, Moral Tribes will refashion your deepest beliefs about how moral thinking works and how it can work better.
The Trolley Problem, or Would You Throw the Fat Man off the Bridge?: A Philosophical Conundrum
Cathcart, Thomas
(Hardcover)
List Price: $14.95 Sale: $5.67
A trolley is careering out of control. Up ahead are five workers; on a spur to the right stands a lone individual. You, a bystander, happen to be standing next to a switch that could divert the trolley, which would save the five, but sacrifice the one - do you pull it? Or say you’re watching from an overpass. The only way to save the workers is to drop a heavy object in the trolley’s path. And you’re standing next to a really fat man….This ethical conundrum - based on British philosopher Philippa Foot’s 1967 thought experiment - has inspired decades of lively argument around the world. Now Thomas Cathcart brings his sharp intelligence, quirky humor, and gift for popularizing serious ideas to “the trolley problem.” Framing the issue as a possible crime that is to be tried in the Court of Public Opinion, Cathcart explores philosophy and ethics, intuition and logic. Along the way he makes connections to the Utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham, Kant’s limits of reason, St. Thomas Aquinas’s fascinating Principle of Double Effect, and more.Read with an open mind, this provocative book will challenge your deepest held notions of right and wrong. Would you divert the trolley? Kill one to save five? Would you throw the fat man off the bridge?
Social and Political Philosophy
Somerville, John (Edt)
(Paperback)
List Price: $14.95 Sale: $5.88
An anthology of basic statements by the most influential social and political philosophers of Western civilization. Includes Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Jefferson, Thoreau, Mill, Marx and Engels, Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, Dewey, and Gandhi.
Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All
Nossel, Suzanne
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.99 Sale: $6.95
A vital, necessary playbook for navigating and defending free speech today by the CEO of PEN America, Dare To Speak provides a pathway for promoting free expression while also cultivating a more inclusive public culture.Online trolls and fascist chat groups. Controversies over campus lectures. Cancel culture versus censorship. The daily hazards and debates surrounding free speech dominate headlines and fuel social media storms. In an era where one tweet can launch—or end—your career, and where free speech is often invoked as a principle but rarely understood, learning to maneuver the fast-changing, treacherous landscape of public discourse has never been more urgent.In Dare To Speak, Suzanne Nossel, a leading voice in support of free expression, delivers a vital, necessary guide to maintaining democratic debate that is open, free-wheeling but at the same time respectful of the rich diversity of backgrounds and opinions in a changing country. Centered on practical principles, Nossel’s primer equips readers with the tools needed to speak one’s mind in today’s diverse, digitized, and highly-divided society without resorting to curbs on free expression.At a time when free speech is often pitted against other progressive axioms—namely diversity and equality—Dare To Speak presents a clear-eyed argument that the drive to create a more inclusive society need not, and must not, compromise robust protections for free speech. Nossel provides concrete guidance on how to reconcile these two sets of core values within universities, on social media, and in daily life. She advises readers how to:• Use language conscientiously without self-censoring ideas• Defend the right to express unpopular views• And protest without silencing speech.Nossel warns against the increasingly fashionable embrace of expanded government and corporate controls over speech, warning that such strictures can reinforce the marginalization of lesser-heard voices. She argues that creating an open market of ideas demands aggressive steps to remedy exclusion and ensure equal participation.Replete with insightful arguments, colorful examples, and salient advice, Dare To Speak brings much-needed clarity and guidance to this pressing—and often misunderstood—debate.
The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap
Taibbi, Matt
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.00 Sale: $6.47
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST, NPR, AND KIRKUS REVIEWS A scathing portrait of an urgent new American crisis Over the last two decades, America has been falling deeper and deeper into a statistical mystery: Poverty goes up. Crime goes down. The prison population doubles. Fraud by the rich wipes out 40 percent of the world's wealth. The rich get massively richer. No one goes to jail. In search of a solution, journalist Matt Taibbi discovered the Divide, the seam in American life where our two most troubling trends--growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration--come together, driven by a dramatic shift in American citizenship: Our basic rights are now determined by our wealth or poverty. The Divide is what allows massively destructive fraud by the hyperwealthy to go unpunished, while turning poverty itself into a crime--but it's impossible to see until you look at these two alarming trends side by side. In The Divide, Matt Taibbi takes readers on a galvanizing journey through both sides of our new system of justice--the fun-house-mirror worlds of the untouchably wealthy and the criminalized poor. He uncovers the startling looting that preceded the financial collapse; a wild conspiracy of billionaire hedge fund managers to destroy a company through dirty tricks; and the story of a whistleblower who gets in the way of the largest banks in America, only to find herself in the crosshairs. On the other side of the Divide, Taibbi takes us to the front lines of the immigrant dragnet; into the newly punitive welfare system which treats its beneficiaries as thieves; and deep inside the stop-and-frisk world, where standing in front of your own home has become an arrestable offense. As he narrates these incredible stories, he draws out and analyzes their common source: a perverse new standard of justice, based on a radical, disturbing new vision of civil rights. Through astonishing--and enraging--accounts of the high-stakes capers of the wealthy and nightmare stories of regular people caught in the Divide's punishing logic, Taibbi lays bare one of the greatest challenges we face in contemporary American life: surviving a system that devours the lives of the poor, turns a blind eye to the destructive crimes of the wealthy, and implicates us all.
Why Can't We Be Good?
Needleman, Jacob
(Paperback)
List Price: $14.95 Sale: $4.79
After nearly forty years of weighing humanity's deepest dilemmas - working in settings ranging from university and high school classrooms to corporate offices and hospitals - bestselling author, philosopher, and religious scholar Jacob Needleman presents the most urgent, deeply felt, and widely accessible work of his career. In Why Can't We Be Good? Needleman identifies the core problem that therapists and social philosophers fail to see. He depicts the individual human as a being who knows what is good, yet who remains mysteriously helpless to innerly adopt the ethical, moral, and religious ideas that are bequeathed to him.
Ten Philosophical Mistakes
Adler, Mortimer J.
(Paperback)
List Price: $12.00 Sale: $4.79
In this delightfully lucid and accessible book, America's foremost philosopher explores the ten errors in the development of modern thought, and examines the serious consequences they have in our everyday lives. From the mistake of identifying happiness with having a good time to the argument over free will and free choice, Adler explains how these errors came about and what we can do to avoid them.
A Guide for the Perplexed
Schumacher, E. F.
(Paperback)
List Price: $14.99 Sale: $5.19
An inspired critique of modern materialistic values and a road map for achieving one true, higher potential from "one of the wisest minds of our time."
President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman
Miller, William Lee
(Paperback)
List Price: $18.00 Sale: $5.19
In his acclaimed book Lincoln's Virtues, William Lee MIller explored Abraham Lincoln's intellectual and moral development. Now he completes his "ethical biography," showing how the amiable and inexperienced backcountry politician was transformed by constitutional alchemy into an oath-bound head of state. Faced with a radical moral contradiction left by the nation's Founders, Lincoln struggled to find a balance between the universal ideals of Equality and Liberty and the monstrous injustice of human slavery.With wit and penetrating sensitivity, Miller brings together the great themes that have become Lincoln's legacy - preserving the United States of America while ending the odious institution that corrupted the nation's meaning - and illuminates his remarkable presidential combination: indomitable resolve and supreme magnanimity.
Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone
Kant, Immanuel
(Softcover)
List Price: $15.50 Sale: $6.15
"Of the many attempts to interpret Christianity solely in ethical terms, Kant's effort seems to me to be the most profound and illuminating. His Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone illuminates primarily the great philosopher's understanding of man's moral life, but also casts light, indirectly and directly, on some of the fundamental beliefs of Christian religion. The book is indispensable to students of ethics, important for theologians, and significant for all who are concerned about the human condition." --H. Richard Niebuhr. SC, 190 pages.
Moral Courage
Kidder, Rushworth M.
(Softcover)
List Price: $13.95 Sale: $5.43
What gives us the strength to stand up for what we believe? The topic of moral courage is front and center in today's culture. Corporate corruption, abusive priests, cheating students, domestic violence - all these remind us that taking ethical stands should be every individual's highest priority. Rushworth Kidder's remarkable book defines key concepts and gives us indispensable tools, equipping us to respond to the increasingly complicated moral challenges we face at work, at home, and in our communities, enabling us to make clear, confident decisions by exploring such questions as: Is the benefit worth the risk? Am I motivated by my desire to uphold my beliefs or to impose them on others? Will my actions create collateral damage among those with no stake in the outcome? While physical courage may no longer be a necessary survival skill in society, moral courage is the true gauge of our maturity and civilization. This essential guidebook will help lead us to a clear understanding of what moral courage is, what it does, and how to get it.
The Common Good
Reich, Robert B.
(Hardcover)
List Price: $22.95 Sale: $8.44
With the warmth and lucidity that have made him one of our most important public voices, Robert B. Reich makes the case for a generous, inclusive understanding of the American project, centering on the moral obligations of citizenship. Rooting his argument in everyday reality and common sense, Reich demonstrates the existence of a common good, and argues that it is this that defines a society or a nation. Societies and nations undergo virtuous cycles that reinforce and build the common good, as well as vicious cycles that undermine it. Over the course of the past five decades, Reich contends, America has been in a slowly accelerating vicious cycle - one that can and must be reversed. But first we need to weigh what really matters, and how we as a country should relate to honor, shame, patriotism, truth, and the meaning of leadership.Powerful, urgent, and utterly vital, this is a heartfelt missive from one of our foremost political thinkers: a fundamental statement about the purpose of society and a cri de coeur to save America's soul.
On Disobedience: Why Freedom Means Saying "No" to Power (Resistance Library)
Fromm, Erich
(Paperback)
List Price: $10.99 Sale: $3.91
By the acclaimed psychologist and author, Erich Fromm's On Disobedience persuasively examines how saying "no" to power is essential to individual meaning and the preservation of a free society.
The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis
Nussbaum, Martha C.
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.00 Sale: $4.39
From one of the world’s most celebrated moral philosophers comes a thorough examination of the current political crisis and recommendations for how to mend our divided country.For decades Martha C. Nussbaum has been an acclaimed scholar and humanist, earning dozens of honors for her books and essays. In The Monarchy of Fear she turns her attention to the current political crisis that has polarized American since the 2016 election.Although today’s atmosphere is marked by partisanship, divisive rhetoric, and the inability of two halves of the country to communicate with one another, Nussbaum focuses on what so many pollsters and pundits have overlooked. She sees a simple truth at the heart of the problem: the political is always emotional. Globalization has produced feelings of powerlessness in millions of people in the West. That sense of powerlessness bubbles into resentment and blame. Blame of immigrants. Blame of Muslims. Blame of other races. Blame of cultural elites. While this politics of blame is exemplified by the election of Donald Trump and the vote for Brexit, Nussbaum argues it can be found on all sides of the political spectrum, left or right.Drawing on a mix of historical and contemporary examples, from classical Athens to the musical Hamilton, The Monarchy of Fear untangles this web of feelings and provides a roadmap of where to go next.
Character: The History of a Cultural Obsession
Garber, Marjorie
(Hardcover)
List Price: $32.00 Sale: $8.63
A spirited, engaging investigation into the concept of character, an enduring human obsession in literature, psychology, politics, and everyday lifeWhat is “character”? How can it be measured, improved, or built? Are character traits fixed or changeable? Is character innate, or can it be taught?Since at least the time of Aristotle, philosophers, theologians, moralists, artists, and scientists have engaged with the enigma of human character. In its oldest usage, “character” derives from a word for engraving or stamping, yet over time, it has come to mean a moral idea, a type, a literary persona, and a physical or physiological manifestation, observable in works of art and scientific experiments. It is an essential term in drama and the focus of self-help books.In Character: The History of a Cultural Obsession, Marjorie Garber points out that character seems more relevant than ever today - the term is omnipresent in discussions of politics, ethics, gender, morality, and the psyche. References to character flaws, character issues, character assassination, and allegations of “bad” and “good” character are inescapable in the media and in contemporary political debates.What connection does “character,” in this moral or ethical sense, have with the concept of a character in a novel or a play? Do our notions about fictional characters help to produce our ideas about moral character? Can character be formed, or taught, in schools, in scouting, in the home? From Plutarch to John Stuart Mill, from Shakespeare to Darwin, from Theophrastus to Freud, from nineteenth-century phrenology to twenty-first-century brain scans, the search for the sources and components of human character still preoccupies us.The question of character arises in virtually every area of modern life. And in each case, there is the same fundamental tension: is it innate or intrinsic to the individual, or something that can be learned or modeled? At a time when both the meaning and the value of this term are put in question, no issue is more important, and no topic more vital, surprising, and fascinating.With her distinctive verve, humor, and vast erudition, Marjorie Garber explores the stakes of these conflations, confusions, and heritages, from ancient Greece to the present day.
Why Honor Matters
Sommers, Tamler
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.00 Sale: $5.00
A controversial call to put honor at the center of morality.To the modern mind, the idea of honor is outdated, sexist, and barbaric. It evokes Hamilton and Burr and pistols at dawn, not visions of a well-organized society. But for philosopher Tamler Sommers, a sense of honor is essential to living moral lives. In Why Honor Matters, Sommers argues that our collective rejection of honor has come at great cost. Reliant only on Enlightenment liberalism, the United States has become the home of the cowardly, the shameless, the selfish, and the alienated. Properly channeled, honor encourages virtues like courage, integrity, and solidarity, and gives a sense of living for something larger than oneself. Sommers shows how honor can help us address some of society's most challenging problems, including education, policing, and mass incarceration. Counterintuitive and provocative, Why Honor Matters makes a convincing case for honor as a cornerstone of our modern society.
On Being Awesome: A Unified Theory of How Not to Suck
Riggle, Nick
(Hardcover)
List Price: $20.00 Sale: $6.95
In this lively treatise, pro-skater-turned-philosopher Nick Riggle presents a theory of awesomeness (and its opposite, suckiness) that’s both sharply illuminating and more timely than ever.
Words I Wish I Wrote
Fulghum, Robert
(Softcover)
List Price: $14.95 Sale: $4.79
Robert Fulghum, one of America's most popular philosophers and author of the modern classic All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten and the recent New York Times bestseller True Love, shares with readers the worlds and wisdom of those who have inspired him throughout his life. SC, 229 pages.
What Would Nietzsche Do?: Philosophical Solutions to Everyday Problems
Weeks, Marcus
(Paperback)
List Price: $19.95 Sale: $6.95
Ever wondered if Schopenhauer could fix your broken heart? Or if Aristotle could convince you that contemporary art is any good? Ever thought of asking John Stuart Mill if he really thinks Shakespeare is better than The Simpsons?Get life advice and a crash-course in philosophy from the greatest minds of every generation, including Plato, de Beauvoir, Marx and many more, in this fascinating guide to the finest philosophers and their theories.
Philosophy of Sport: Key Questions
Ryall, Emily
(Paperback)
List Price: $40.00 Sale: $10.39
Philosophy of Sport: Key Questions provides an accessible and comprehensive guide to the philosophy of sport. Each chapter is framed by a question that explores the main issues, ideas and literature in the field ranging from questions about the nature and value of sport, the sporting body, aesthetics and ethics. Students are given the opportunity to consider significant debates in the philosophy of sport and each chapter is supplemented by independent study questions. Each section also contains short insightful interviews with eminent scholars in order to give a broader understanding of the history and development of the subject.The main themes covered within this text include: the nature of sport; sport and the body; aesthetics and the aesthetic value of sport; a consideration of fair play, rules and the ethos of sport; the nature of competition; the application and effect of technology on sport and introductions to contemporary ethical issues such as doping, violence, disability, patriotism, elitism and sexual equality, as well as a broader reflection on the connection between sport and moral development.
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