Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing

Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing PDF Author: Winton Russell Bates
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0761872671
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
What does it mean to be a flourishing human in a Western liberal democracy in the twenty-first century? In Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, Winton Bates aims to provide a better framework for thinking about the relationship between freedom, progress, and human flourishing. Bates asserts that freedom enables individuals to flourish in different ways without colliding, allows for a growth of opportunities, and supports personal development by enabling individuals to exercise self-direction. The importance of self-direction is a central theme in the book, and Bates explores throughout why wise and well-informed self-direction is integral to flourishing because it helps individuals attain health and longevity, positive human relationships, psychological well-being, and an ability to live in harmony with nature.

Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing

Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing PDF Author: Winton Russell Bates
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0761872671
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Get Book

Book Description
What does it mean to be a flourishing human in a Western liberal democracy in the twenty-first century? In Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, Winton Bates aims to provide a better framework for thinking about the relationship between freedom, progress, and human flourishing. Bates asserts that freedom enables individuals to flourish in different ways without colliding, allows for a growth of opportunities, and supports personal development by enabling individuals to exercise self-direction. The importance of self-direction is a central theme in the book, and Bates explores throughout why wise and well-informed self-direction is integral to flourishing because it helps individuals attain health and longevity, positive human relationships, psychological well-being, and an ability to live in harmony with nature.

Mathematics for Human Flourishing

Mathematics for Human Flourishing PDF Author: Francis Su
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300237138
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
"The ancient Greeks argued that the best life was filled with beauty, truth, justice, play and love. The mathematician Francis Su knows just where to find them."--Kevin Hartnett, Quanta Magazine" This is perhaps the most important mathematics book of our time. Francis Su shows mathematics is an experience of the mind and, most important, of the heart."--James Tanton, Global Math Project For mathematician Francis Su, a society without mathematical affection is like a city without concerts, parks, or museums. To miss out on mathematics is to live without experiencing some of humanity's most beautiful ideas. In this profound book, written for a wide audience but especially for those disenchanted by their past experiences, an award-winning mathematician and educator weaves parables, puzzles, and personal reflections to show how mathematics meets basic human desires--such as for play, beauty, freedom, justice, and love--and cultivates virtues essential for human flourishing. These desires and virtues, and the stories told here, reveal how mathematics is intimately tied to being human. Some lessons emerge from those who have struggled, including philosopher Simone Weil, whose own mathematical contributions were overshadowed by her brother's, and Christopher Jackson, who discovered mathematics as an inmate in a federal prison. Christopher's letters to the author appear throughout the book and show how this intellectual pursuit can--and must--be open to all.

Economic Freedom and Human Flourishing

Economic Freedom and Human Flourishing PDF Author: Michael R. Strain
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0844750034
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
Is economic liberty necessary for individuals to lead truly flourishing lives? Whether your immediate answer is yes or no, this question is deceptively simple. What do we mean by liberty? What constitutes the flourishing life? How are these related? How is economic liberty related to other goods that affect human flourishing? To answer these questions—and more—this volume brings to bear some of history’s greatest thinkers, interpreted by some of today’s leading scholars of their thought.

Human Flourishing

Human Flourishing PDF Author: Andrew Briggs
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192692631
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
'A careful and thoughtful provocation' (Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury) Ambitiously placed at the intersection of scientific insights and spiritual wisdom, Human Flourishing prompts us to reflect on what constitutes a good life and the choices that can help achieve it. For thousands of years, humans have asked 'Why we are here?' and 'What makes for a good life?' At different times, different answers have held sway. Nowadays, there are more answers proposed than ever. Much of humanity still finds the ultimate answers to such questions in religion. But in countries across the globe, secular views are widely held. In any event, whether religious or secular, individuals, communities and governments still have to make decisions about what people get from life. This book therefore examines what is meant by human flourishing and see what it has to offer for those seeking after truth, meaning and purpose. This is a book written for anyone who wants a future for themselves, their children, and their fellow humans - a future that enables flourishing, pays due consideration to issues of truth and helps us find meaning and purpose in our lives. At a time when most of us are bombarded with messages about what we should or should not do to live healthily, attain a work-life balance and find meaning, a careful consideration of the contributions of both scientific insight and spiritual wisdom provides a new angle. This is therefore a book that not only helps readers clarify their views and see things afresh but also help them improve their own well-being in an age of AI and other new technologies.

Freedom's Progress?

Freedom's Progress? PDF Author: Gerard Casey
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited
ISBN: 1845409612
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 969

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Book Description
In Freedom's Progress?, Gerard Casey argues that the progress of freedom has largely consisted in an intermittent and imperfect transition from tribalism to individualism, from the primacy of the collective to the fragile centrality of the individual person and of freedom. Such a transition is, he argues, neither automatic nor complete, nor are relapses to tribalism impossible. The reason for the fragility of freedom is simple: the importance of individual freedom is simply not obvious to everyone. Most people want security in this world, not liberty. 'Libertarians,' writes Max Eastman, 'used to tell us that "the love of freedom is the strongest of political motives," but recent events have taught us the extravagance of this opinion. The "herd-instinct" and the yearning for paternal authority are often as strong. Indeed the tendency of men to gang up under a leader and submit to his will is of all political traits the best attested by history.' The charm of the collective exercises a perennial magnetic attraction for the human spirit. In the 20th century, Fascism, Bolshevism and National Socialism were, Casey argues, each of them a return to tribalism in one form or another and many aspects of our current Western welfare states continue to embody tribalist impulses. Thinkers you would expect to feature in a history of political thought feature in this book - Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Locke, Mill and Marx - but you will also find thinkers treated in Freedom's Progress? who don't usually show up in standard accounts - Johannes Althusius, Immanuel Kant, William Godwin, Max Stirner, Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, Pyotr Kropotkin, Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker and Auberon Herbert. Freedom's Progress? also contains discussions of the broader social and cultural contexts in which politics takes its place, with chapters on slavery, Christianity, the universities, cities, Feudalism, law, kingship, the Reformation, the English Revolution and what Casey calls Twentieth Century Tribalisms - Bolshevism, Fascism and National Socialism and an extensive chapter on human prehistory.

Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom

Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom PDF Author: Adam Thierer
Publisher: Mercatus Center at George Mason University
ISBN: 1942951248
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Will innovators be forced to seek the blessing of public officials before they develop and deploy new devices and services, or will they be generally left free to experiment with new technologies and business models? In this book, Adam Thierer argues that if the former disposition, “the precautionary principle,” trumps the latter, “permissionless innovation,” the result will be fewer services, lower-quality goods, higher prices, diminished economic growth, and a decline in the overall standard of living. When public policy is shaped by “precautionary principle” reasoning, it poses a serious threat to technological progress, economic entrepreneurialism, and long-run prosperity. By contrast, permissionless innovation has fueled the success of the Internet and much of the modern tech economy in recent years, and it is set to power the next great industrial revolution—if we let it.

Enlightenment Now

Enlightenment Now PDF Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525427570
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.

Development as Freedom

Development as Freedom PDF Author: Amartya Sen
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 030787429X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
By the winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Economics, an essential and paradigm-altering framework for understanding economic development--for both rich and poor--in the twenty-first century. Freedom, Sen argues, is both the end and most efficient means of sustaining economic life and the key to securing the general welfare of the world's entire population. Releasing the idea of individual freedom from association with any particular historical, intellectual, political, or religious tradition, Sen clearly demonstrates its current applicability and possibilities. In the new global economy, where, despite unprecedented increases in overall opulence, the contemporary world denies elementary freedoms to vast numbers--perhaps even the majority of people--he concludes, it is still possible to practically and optimistically restain a sense of social accountability. Development as Freedom is essential reading.

Superabundance

Superabundance PDF Author: Marian L. Tupy
Publisher: Cato Institute
ISBN: 1952223407
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 575

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Book Description
Generations of people have been taught that population growth makes resources scarcer. In 2021, for example, one widely publicized report argued that “The world's rapidly growing population is consuming the planet's natural resources at an alarming rate . . . the world currently needs 1.6 Earths to satisfy the demand for natural resources ... [a figure that] could rise to 2 planets by 2030.” But is that true? After analyzing the prices of hundreds of commodities, goods, and services spanning two centuries, Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley found that resources became more abundant as the population grew. That was especially true when they looked at “time prices,” which represent the length of time that people must work to buy something. To their surprise, the authors also found that resource abundance increased faster than the population―a relationship that they call superabundance. On average, every additional human being created more value than he or she consumed. This relationship between population growth and abundance is deeply counterintuitive, yet it is true. Why? More people produce more ideas, which lead to more inventions. People then test those inventions in the marketplace to separate the useful from the useless. At the end of that process of discovery, people are left with innovations that overcome shortages, spur economic growth, and raise standards of living. But large populations are not enough to sustain superabundance―just think of the poverty in China and India before their respective economic reforms. To innovate, people must be allowed to think, speak, publish, associate, and disagree. They must be allowed to save, invest, trade, and profit. In a word, they must be free.

Homo Florens?

Homo Florens? PDF Author: Nadia Marais
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666767115
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
What does it mean to flourish? Human flourishing lies at the heart of the good news of the gospel, and yet contemporary theologies know not only one way of speaking about what it means to flourish. If we embed our theological grammars of flourishing in the doctrine of salvation, as the doctrine in which theological flourishing talk is arguably rooted and from which rich fruit may be borne, there is not one but various ways in which to speak about what it means to flourish. Yet what governs our speaking? Why do we speak of flourishing as we do? The various conceptions of human flourishing that are outlined in this book – piety, joy, and comfort; being fully alive, healing, and dignity; grace, happiness, and blessing – represent a collection of attempts not only to imagine human flourishing, but also to imagine ways of speaking about human flourishing. Perhaps what theology could offer to the vibrant and robust conversations on human flourishing lies exactly in the reminder to take care about how we speak about that which is truly and deeply human: our longing to flourish.