Taking Life: Three Theories on the Ethics of Killing
Author: Torbjorn Tannsjo File Type: pdf When and why is it right to kill? When and why is it wrong? Torbjorn Tannsjo examines three theories on the ethics of killing in this book deontology, a libertarian moral rights theory, and utilitarianism. The implications of each theory are worked out for different kinds of killing trolley-cases, murder, capital punishment, suicide, assisted death, abortion, killing in war, and the killing of animals. These implications are confronted with our intuitions in relation to them, and our moral intuitions are examined in turn. Only those intuitions that survive an understanding of how we have come to hold them are seen as considered intuitions. The idea is that the theory that can best explain the content of our considered intuitions gains inductive support from them. We must transcend our narrow cultural horizons and avoid certain cognitive mistakes in order to hold considered intuitions. In this volume, suitable for courses in ethics and applied ethics, Tannsjo argues that in the final analysis utilitarianism can best account for, and explain, our considered intuitions about all these kinds of killing. **
Author: Majid Yar
File Type: pdf
Contemporary culture offer contradictory views of the internet and new media technologies, painting them in extremes of optimistic enthusiasm and pessimistic foreboding. While some view them as a repository of hopes for democracy, freedom and self-realisation, others consider these developments as sources of alienation, dehumanisation and danger. This book explores such representations, and situates them within the traditions of utopian and dystopian thought that have shaped the Western cultural imaginary. Ranging from ancient poetry to post-humanism, and classical sociology to science fiction, it uncovers the roots of our cultural responses to the internet, which are centred upon a profoundly ambivalent reaction to technological modernity. Majid Yar argues that it is only by better understanding our societys reactions to technological innovation that we can develop a balanced and considered response to the changes and challenges that the internet brings in its wake.
Author: Albert the Great
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Albert the Great wrote On the Body of the Lord in the 1270s, making it his final work of sacramental theology. A companion volume to his commentary on the Mass, On the Body of the Lord is a comprehensive discussion of Eucharistic theology. The treatise is structured around six names for the Eucharist taken from the Mass grace, gift, food, communion, sacrifice, and sacrament. It emerges from the liturgy and is intended to draw the reader back to worship. The overall movement of the treatise follows the order of Gods wisdom. Albert begins by discussing the Eucharist as a gift flowing from the goodness of the Trinity. He touches on its relation to redemption and the Church, including a rigorous Aristotelian analysis of Eucharistic change and presence before ending with a discussion of Mass rubrics. The most significant theological emphasis is on the Eucharist as food given to feed the people of God. The style varies to suit the content certain sections are terse others are devotional, allowing the reader to enter the saints own prayer. Perhaps most characteristically Albertine is an extended meditation that compares the process of digestion to the incorporation of the Christian into the Body of Christ. The mixed style allows this work to integrate rigorous aspects of scholastic thought with a fervent love for God, making On the Body of the Lord one of Alberts most human as well as one of his most beautiful works. On the Body of the Lord was well received, particularly in areas that came to be influenced by the devotio moderna. By 1484, three separate Latin editions had been printed, two of which were the inaugural works on new presses. In the following century the Protestant Reformation brought an end to its popularity. On the Body of the Lord is here translated into English for the first time. **
Author: Sean Seeger
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Nonlinear Temporality in Joyce and Walcott is the first dedicated comparative study of James Joyce and Derek Walcott. The book examines the ways in which both Joyces fiction and Walcotts poetry articulate a nonlinear conception of time with radical cultural and political implications. For Joyce and Walcott equally, the book argues, it is only by reconceiving time in this way that it becomes possible to envisage a means of escape from what Joyce calls force, hatred, history and what Walcott calls the madness of history seen as sequential time. Astarting point for the comparisons drawn between Joyce and Walcott is their relationship to Homer. Joyces Ulysses is in one respect a rewriting of Homers Odyssey Walcotts Omeros stands in an analogous relationship to the Iliad. This book argues that these acts of rewriting, far from being instances of influence, intertexuality, or straightforward repetition, exemplify Joyce and Walcotts complex stance, not just toward literary history, but toward the idea of history as such. The book goes on to demonstrate how an enhanced appreciation of the role of nonlinear temporality in Joyce and Walcott can help to illuminate numerous other aspects of their work.**About the Author Sean Seeger is Lecturer in Literature in the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex, where he also reg-ularly teaches in Essexs Interdisciplinary Studies Centre. He previously taught in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London. Seans research and teaching focus on modern and contemporary literature, with an emphasis on modern-ism, postcolonialism, and utopiasdystopias. He has been the recipient of research awards from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Centre for Literary Translation, and has published on Joyce, Walcott, world literature, and literary theory.
Author: Jay H. Jasanoff
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This book reconciles what is known of the Proto-Indo-European verbal system with the evidence of Hittite and the other early Anatolian languages. The decipherment of Hittite in 1917 and the recognition that it was an Indo-European language had dramatic consequences for conceptions of the Indo-European parent language. For most of the twentieth century, attention focused on the peculiarities of Hittite phonology, especially the consonant h and its implications for the evolving laryngeal theory. Yet the morphological disconnects between Hittite and the other early languages are more profound than the phonological differences. The Hittite verbal system lacks most of the familiar tense-aspect categories of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. It also presents the novelty of the hi-conjugation, a purely formal conjugation class to which nearly half of all Hittite verbs belong. Repeated attempts to explain the hi-conjugation on the basis of the classical model of the Proto-Indo-European verbal system have failed. The question is not whether the conventional picture of the parent language must be modified to account for the facts of Hittite, but how.In this outstanding book, now in paperback, Professor Jasanoff puts forward a new and revolutionary model of the Proto-Indo-European verbal system that promises to have a major impact on Indo-European studies. His strikingly original synthesis, reflecting a quarter-century-long study of the problem, is the most thorough and systematic attempt thus far to bridge the gap between Hittite and the other Indo-European languages.ReviewJasanoff comes up with some of the strongest arguments yet made for assuming that the Indo-European languages other than Hittite and Tocharian underwent a substantial period of common development, and htis needs to be fittred into any model of the dispersal of the language family, in the long run...in Hittite and the Indo-European Verb, we can see how the whole picture fits together. ...a major event--Times Literary SupplementAbout the AuthorJay Jasanoff received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from Harvard in 1968. He has spent most of his academic career at Cornell and Harvard, where he is currently Diebold Professor of Indo-European Linguistics and Philology and Chair of the Department of Linguistics. His publications include Stative and Middle in Indo-European (1978) and numerous articles on Indo-European linguistics and problems in the history of the individual Indo-European languages.
Author: Moshe Davis
File Type: pdf
The continuing relationship between America and the Holy Land has implications for American and Jewish history which extend beyond the historical narrative and interpretation. The devotion of Americans of all faiths to the Holy Land extends into the spiritual realm, and the Holy Land, in turn, penetrates American homes, patterns of faith, and education. In this book Davis illuminates the interconnection of Americans and the Holy Land in historical perspective, and delineates unique elements inherent in this relationship the role of Zion in American spiritual history, in the Christian faith, in Jewish tradition and communal life, and the impress of Biblical place names on the map of America as well as American settlements and institutions in the State of Israel. The book concludes with an annotated select bibliography of primary sources on America and the Holy Land.
Author: Erica Frydenberg
File Type: pdf
This book addresses how best to meet everyday challenges. The author focuses on how to think and act differently about what we do as we face challenges, and how to assess each situation as one of challenge rather than threat or harm because we have the strategies to cope. Spanning eleven chapters, the book examines the best ways to provide the core skills for life, to children, adolescents and adults, and how that is best achieved through the contemporary theories of coping. Coping has traditionally been defined in terms of reaction that is, how people respond after or during a stressful event. More recently, coping is being defined more broadly to include anticipatory, preventive and proactive coping. This book provides case studies of resilient adults in a range of settings, highlighting how coping resources have helped them to overcome adversity. Researchers, students of psychology and social work, practitioners and those interested in the self-help field will find this book invaluable. **From the Back Cover This book addresses how best to meet everyday challenges. The author focuses on how to think and act differently about what we do as we face challenges, and how to assess each situation as one of challenge rather than threat or harm because we have the strategies to cope. Spanning eleven chapters, the book examines the best ways to provide the core skills for life, to children, adolescents and adults, and how that is best achieved through the contemporary theories of coping. Coping has traditionally been defined in terms of reaction that is, how people respond after or during a stressful event. More recently, coping is being defined more broadly to include anticipatory, preventive and proactive coping. This book provides case studies of resilient adults in a range of settings, highlighting how coping resources have helped them to overcome adversity. Researchers, students of psychology and social work, practitioners and those interested in the self-help field will find this book invaluable. About the Author Erica Frydenberg is an educational, clinical and organisational psychologist who has practiced extensively in the Australian educational setting. She is a Principal Research Fellow and Associate Professor in psychology in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, AU, and Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society. She has authored and co-authored over 120 academic journal articles and chapters in the field of coping, ranging from early years through to adolescence and adults.
Author: John E. Bowlt
File Type: pdf
Statements by Russian artists and critics presented together with concise commentaries reveal the problems and ideology of early-twentieth-century Russian art