Author: Richard Reilly
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1461633397
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 153
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Book Description
Ethics of Compassion places central themes from Buddhist (primarily) and Christian moral teachings within the conceptual framework of Western normative ethics. What results is a viable alternative ethical theory to those offered by utilitarians, Kantian formalists, proponents of the natural law tradition, and advocates of virtue ethics. Ethics of Compassion bridges Eastern and Western cultures, philosophical ethics and religious moral discourse, and notions of acting rightly and of being virtuous.
Author: Jonathan Leighton
Publisher: Algora Publishing
ISBN: 087586872X
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
Six hundred years after Copernicus presented his revolutionary and heretical heliocentric theory, a sunset can still look unexpectedly new. What if the fate of our world depended on a similar shift in perspective?. Synthesizing recent thinking from science, philosophy, psychology and economics with the authorOCOs own reflections on freedom, identity and morality, The Battle for Compassion offers a fresh, sweeping perspective on the human condition and a deep contemplation of the basis for our priorities at this critical moment in our history. The threats to our existence and the persistence of intense suffering are closely intertwined issues with similar underlying causes. Addressing them honestly requires us to reflect detachedly on who we are, probe the boundaries of ethical thinking, and ask some really big questions. What matters? What are the basic forces driving our speciesOCO trajectory, and where are they leading us? And what would it realistically take for us to preserve a future worth living in?. These questions recur as we go through life and experience bliss and pain, the passing of time, the kindness and cruelty of our fellow humans, the monotony of routine and the shock of unanticipated change. This book ponders these pivotal questions and attempts to offer some answers."
Author: Avi Sagi
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319991787
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 209
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Book Description
The book grapples with one of the most difficult questions confronting the contemporary world: the problem of the other, which includes ethical, political, and metaphysical aspects. A widespread approach in the history of the discourse on the other, systematically formulated by Emmanuel Levinas and his followers, has invested this term with an almost mythical quality—the other is everybody else but never a specific person, an abstraction of historical human existence. This book offers an alternative view, turning the other into a real being, through a carefully described process involving two dimensions referred to as the ethic of loyalty to the visible and the ethic of inner retreat. Tracing the course of this process in life and in literature, the book presents a broad and lucid picture intriguing to philosophers and also accessible to readers concerned with questions touching on the meaning of life, ethics, and politics, and particularly relevant to the burning issues surrounding attitudes to immigrants as others and to the relationship with God, the ultimate other.
Author: Charles Goodman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190205326
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 259
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Book Description
"In Consequences of Compassion, Charles Goodman illuminates the relationship between Buddhism and Western ethical theories. Buddhist texts offer an interesting approach to the demands of morality and a powerful critique of what we would identify as the concept of free will - a critique which leads to a hard determinist view of human action. But rather than being a threat to morality, this view supports Buddhist values of compassion, nonviolence, and forgiveness, and leads to a more humane approach to the justification of punishment. Drawing on Buddhist religious values, Goodman argues against the death penalty and mandatory minimum sentences." "Every version of Buddhist ethics, says Goodman, takes the welfare of sentient beings to be the only source of moral obligations. Buddhist ethics can thus be said to be based on compassion in the sense of a motivation to pursue the welfare of others. On this interpretation, the fundamental basis of the various forms of Buddhist ethics is the same as that of the welfarist members of the family of ethical theories that analytic philosophers call "consequentialism." Goodman uses this hypothesis to illuminate a variety of questions. He examines the three types of compassion practiced in Buddhism and argues for their implications for important issues in applied ethics. Goodman argues that the Buddhist tradition can and will ultimately make important contributions to contemporary global conversations about ethical issues while placing Buddhist views into the mainstream of current ethical analysis."--Jacket.
Author: Justin Caouette
Publisher: Moral Psychology of the Emotions
ISBN: 9781786604194
Category : Compassion
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Compassion is widely regarded as an important moral emotion - a fitting response to various cases of suffering and misfortune. Yet contemporary theorists have rarely given it sustained attention. This volume aims to fill this gap by offering answers to a number of questions surrounding this emotion. These questions include: What is the nature of compassion? How does compassion differ from other emotions, such as empathy, pity, or gratitude? Is compassion a virtue? Can we have too much compassion? How does compassion influence other mental states (desires, motivations, beliefs, and intentions) and behaviour? How is compassion influenced by the environment? Must compassion be deserved? Can one be moral while lacking the capacity for compassion? Compassion, like other emotions, has many facets - biological, social, psychological and neural, among others. The contributors to this volume will draw on a variety of disciplines and methods in order to develop a more systematic and comprehensive understanding of this often-neglected moral emotion.
Author: Paul Bloom
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062339354
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
New York Post Best Book of 2016 We often think of our capacity to experience the suffering of others as the ultimate source of goodness. Many of our wisest policy-makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers agree that the only problem with empathy is that we don’t have enough of it. Nothing could be farther from the truth, argues Yale researcher Paul Bloom. In AGAINST EMPATHY, Bloom reveals empathy to be one of the leading motivators of inequality and immorality in society. Far from helping us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and, ironically, often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it, but to draw instead upon a more distanced compassion. Basing his argument on groundbreaking scientific findings, Bloom makes the case that some of the worst decisions made by individuals and nations—who to give money to, when to go to war, how to respond to climate change, and who to imprison—are too often motivated by honest, yet misplaced, emotions. With precision and wit, he demonstrates how empathy distorts our judgment in every aspect of our lives, from philanthropy and charity to the justice system; from medical care and education to parenting and marriage. Without empathy, Bloom insists, our decisions would be clearer, fairer, and—yes—ultimately more moral. Brilliantly argued, urgent and humane, AGAINST EMPATHY shows us that, when it comes to both major policy decisions and the choices we make in our everyday lives, limiting our impulse toward empathy is often the most compassionate choice we can make.
Author: Carlo Leget
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789042924598
Category : Compassion
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Since Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice (1982) the ethics of care has developed as a movement of allied thinkers, in different continents, who have a shared concern and who reflect on similar topics. This shared concern is that care can only be revalued and take its societal place if existing asymmetrical power relations are unveiled, and if the dignity of care givers and care receivers is better guaranteed, socially, politically and personally. In this first volume of a new series leading care ethicists from Europe and the United States focus on the moral significance of two concepts in the debate that ask for further reflection. In discussion with the work of Axel Honneth on recognition and the work of Emmanuel Housset on compassion a contribution is made to a reconsideration of recognition and compassion from an ethics of care perspective. This volume contains contributions by Andries Baart, Estelle Ferrarese, Chris Gastmans, Mieke Grypdonck, Emmanuel Housset, Carlo Leget, Hilde Lindemann, Axel Liegeois, Christa Schnabl, Joan C. Tronto, Annelies van Heijst, Linus Vanlaere, Frans Vosman and Margaret Urban Walker.
Author: Ralph R. Acampora
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 9780822971078
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 238
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Book Description
Most approaches to animal ethics ground the moral standing of nonhumans in some appeal to their capacities for intelligent autonomy or mental sentience. Corporal Compassion emphasizes the phenomenal and somatic commonality of living beings; a philosophy of body that seeks to displace any notion of anthropomorphic empathy in viewing the moral experiences of nonhuman living beings. Ralph R. Acampora employs phenomenology, hermeneutics, existentialism and deconstruction to connect and contest analytic treatments of animal rights and liberation theory. In doing so, he focuses on issues of being and value, and posits a felt nexus of bodily being, termed symphysis, to devise an interspecies ethos. Acampora uses this broad-based bioethic to engage in dialogue with other strains of environmental ethics and ecophilosophy. Corporal Compassion examines the practical applications of the somatic ethos in contexts such as laboratory experimentation and zoological exhibition and challenges practitioners to move past recent reforms and look to a future beyond exploitation or total noninterference--a posthumanist culture that advocates caring in a participatory approach.
Author: Sandra Shapshay
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190906804
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
"This book articulates and defends an interpretation of Schopenhauer's ethics as an original and credible contribution to the history of ethics. It presents Schopenhauer's ethics of compassion as in direct tension with his resignationism and aims to show surprising continuities with Kant's ethics"--
Author: Anthony M. Clohesy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134452365
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 164
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Book Description
The Politics of Empathy argues that empathy is a necessary condition for ethical subjectivity and the emergence of a more compassionate world. One of the reasons empathy is important is because it gives us a sense of what it is like to be someone else. However, to understand its ethical significance we need to look elsewhere. This book claims that empathy is ethically significant because, uniquely, it allows us to reflect critically on the nature of our own lives and sense of identity. More specifically, it allows us to reflect critically on the contingency, finitude and violence that define existence. It is argued that, without this critical reflection, a more ethical and democratic world cannot come into being. Our challenge today therefore is to establish the social and political conditions in which empathy can flourish. This will be a difficult task because powerful political and cultural forces are reinforcing the divisions between us rather than encouraging us to come together in a cosmopolitan community of mutual recognition and solidarity. However, despite these limits, there is hope for a brighter future. The book argues that this can only come about if the Left accepts its responsibility to articulate the contours of a new politics of internationalism and establish the foundations of a sustainable ethical community in which strangers will be accepted unconditionally. This work will be of interest to students and scholars of political theory, multiculturalism and international relations.
