Moral Politics

What is it exactly that made for the greatness of Western Civilization? Why did it have its ups and downs, and where do things seem headed today? Ultimately, this two-volume series is as much a political-moral teaching as it is a presentation of the details of the West's wonderful (and sometimes tragic) historical record.

This essay discusses the essentials of Rand's ethics and its crucial relevance to America's intellectual, moral, and political crisis. There are overtones applicable to America. It serves as an excellent commentary on the historical and cultural significance of her ethics and the view of man as a moral ideal.

In Do Morals Matter?, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., one of the world's leading scholars of international relations, provides a concise yet penetrating analysis of the role of ethics in US foreign policy during the American era after 1945. Nye works through each presidency from FDR to Trump and scores their foreign policy on three ethical dimensions of their intentions, the means they used, and the consequences of their decisions. Alongside this, he also evaluates their leadership qualities, elaborating on which approaches work and which ones do not.

Ever since its publication in 1651, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan has unsettled and challenged how we understand the World. Condemned and vilified by each new generation, Hobbes' cold political vision continues to see through any number of political and ethical vanities. In his wonderfully stimulating book The New Leviathans, John Gray allows us to understand the World of the 2020s with all its contradictions, moral horrors and disappointments through a new reading of Hobbes' classic work.

The Left has seized on our economic troubles as an excuse to “blame the rich guy” and paint a picture of capitalism and the free market as selfish, greedy, and cruel. Exactly the opposite is true, says Father Robert Sirico in his thought-provoking book Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy. Father Sirico argues that a free economy actually promotes charity, selflessness, and kindness. In Defending the Free Market, he shows why free-market capitalism is not only the best way to ensure individual success and national prosperity but also the surest route to a moral and socially just society.

In The Soul of Care: The Moral Education of a Husband and a Doctor, Kleinman delivers a deeply humane and inspiring story of his life in medicine and his marriage to Joan, and he describes the practical, emotional and moral aspects of caretaking. He also writes about the problems our society faces as medical technology advances and the cost of health care soars but caring for patients no longer seems important.

In What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life, Phil Zuckerman argues that morality does not come from God. Rather, it comes from us: our brains, our evolutionary past, our ongoing cultural development, our social experiences, and our ability to reason, reflect, and be sensitive to the suffering of others.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 B.C.-43 B.C.) is one of the seminal figures in the history of Western philosophy, politics, and letters. On Moral Ends (De Finibus) is considered by many to be his most important work in philosophy. In a series of stimulating dialogues, Cicero seeks to answer the question "What is humanity's Ultimate Good?" by examining the ethical systems of three different schools of thought. In so doing, he reveals powerful and startling truths about wisdom, virtue, and our deepest desires. Quintus Curtius is the pen name of attorney and translator George J. Thomas.

As Erich Fromm points out, ours is "a life between having and being"—between mere having and healthy being, between destructiveness and creativity, between narcissism and productive self-understanding, between passivity and the joy of positive activity. The alternatives of having and being are basic orientations of our character and determine our behavior. The mostly unpublished and unknown texts featured in The Essential Fromm encapsulate the psychologist's views on the fulfilling life.

The 1980s saw the peak of a moral panic over fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. A coalition of moral entrepreneurs that included representatives from the Christian Right, the field of psychology, and law enforcement claimed that these games were not only psychologically dangerous but an occult religion masquerading as a game. Dangerous Games explores both the history and the sociological significance of this panic.

Friedrich Nietzsche cuestiona las bases de la moralidad convencional y desafía al lector a reconsiderar lo que se considera bueno y malo. A través de un análisis de la historia y la psicología, expone cómo los valores morales han evolucionado, influenciados por factores culturales y de poder.

To take a journey, travelers must know where they are, where they are going, and how to get there. Moral theology examines the same three truths. The Christian Moral Life is a guide for moral theology that uses the theme of a journey to explain its key ethical concepts. Based on an examination of the moral methodology in The Bible, the audiobook discusses the importance of participating in divine nature through grace in order to attain eternal happiness.

An extensively updated version of The American Leadership Tradition, Moral Vision is for anyone tired of today’s textbook tendencies to submerge the role of individuals as big economic and demographic waves roll in. History is more than statistics, economics, and group identities. Human beings are more than paper boats riding the rainfall into gutters.

Drawing from the history of social movements in the US, especially the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign, Rev. Barber and the contributors to this volume speak to the most pressing issues of our time, including Black Lives Matter, the fight for a $15 minimum wage, the struggle to protect voting rights, the march for women’s rights, and the movement to overcome poverty and unite the dispossessed across all dividing lines.

Scientists have long counseled against interpreting animal behavior in terms of human emotions, warning that such anthropomorphizing limits our ability to understand animals as they really are. Yet what are we to make of a female gorilla in a German zoo who spent days mourning the death of her baby? Or a wild female elephant who cared for a younger one after she was injured by a rambunctious teenage male?

Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness by William Godwin (1756-1836) was first published in February 1793, the month following the execution of Louis XVI of France. It proved to be immediately popular and influential. Godwin, the son of a Calvinist preacher, was educated at Hoxton Academy, after which, he became a minister to a dissenter congregation in Ware.

Wilson admits in the preface of his book that "virtue has acquired a bad name". However, people make some kind of reference to morality whenever they discuss whether or not someone is nice, dependable, or decent; whether they have a good character; and the aspects of friendship, loyalty, and moderation that are all informed by morality.

This book is an introduction to the field of theological ethics with a Trinitarian perspective that guides pastors, ministry leaders, and students about how to think in a gospel way about the moral formation of persons and communities, about ethical inquiry and action, and about the tone and content of engagement in the public square.

Como sociedad, estamos olvidando que casi todos los sucesos extraordinarios que han tenido lugar en la historia los han llevado a cabo personas que creían en los valores judeocristianos y en el poder de la razón nacido en la Grecia clásica. Estas ideas pueden resumirse en dos nociones relacionadas. La primera, que todos los humanos están hechos a imagen de Dios y la segunda, que los humanos nacen con una capacidad de razonar que les permite explorar el mundo.

This revolutionary treatise starts from one fundamental premise: that our phenomenal consciousness includes direct experience of value. For too long, ethical theorists have looked for value in external states of affairs or reduced value to a projection of the mind onto them. The result, unsurprisingly, is widespread antirealism about ethics. In this book, Sharon Hewitt Rawlette turns our metaethical gaze inward and dares us to consider that value, rather than being something “out there”, is a quality woven into the very fabric of our conscious experience, in a highly objective way.