Author: Darlene Fozard Weaver File Type: pdf Self love is an inescapable problem for ethics, yet much of contemporary ethics is reluctant to offer any normative moral anthropologies. Instead, secular ethics and contemporary culture promote a norm of self-realization which is subjective and uncritical. Christian ethics also fails to address this problem directly, because it tends to investigate self love within the context of conflicts between the selfs interests and those of her neighbors. Self Love and Christian Ethics, published in 2002, argues for right self love as the solution of proper self-relation that intersects with love for God and love for neighbor. Darlene Fozard Weaver explains that right self love entails a true self-understanding that is embodied in the persons concrete acts and relations. In making this argument, she calls upon ethicists to revisit ontological accounts of the self and to devote more attention to particular moral acts.**

Author: Mark Edwards File Type: pdf While it has often been recognised that the development of Christian orthodoxy was stimulated by the speculations of those who are now called heretics, it is still widely assumed that their contribution was merely catalytic, that they called forth the exposition of what the main church already believed but had not yet been required to formulate. This book maintains that scholars have underrated the constructive role of these heretical speculations in the evolution of dogma, showing that salient elements in the doctrines of the fall, the Trinity and the union of God and man in Christ derive from teachings that were initially rejected by the main church. Mark Edwards also reveals how authors who epitomised orthodoxy in their own day sometimes favoured teachings which were later considered heterodox, and that their doctrines underwent radical revision before they became a fixed element of orthodoxy. The first half of the volume discusses the role of Gnostic theologians in the formation of catholic thought the second half will offer an unfashionable view of the controversies which gave rise to the councils of Nicaea, Ephesus and Chalcedon . Many of the theories advanced here have not been broached elsewhere, and no synthesis on this scale had been attempted by other scholars. While this book proposes a revision in the scholarly perception of early Christendom, it also demonstrates the essential unity of the tradition.

Author: Hilary Putnam File Type: pdf Hilary Putnam has been at the center of contemporary debates about the nature of the mind and of its access to the world, about language and its relation to reality, and many other metaphysical and epistemological issues. In this book he turns to pragmatism - and confronts the teachings of James, Peirce, Dewey, and Wittgenstein - not solely out of an interest in theoretical questions, but above all to respond to the questions of whether it is possible to find an alternative to corrosive moral skepticism, on the one hand, and to moral authoritarianism on the other.ReviewIt is a relatively rare, and very welcome, event when an original, brilliantly imaginative analytic philosopher takes a fresh look at earlier figures in the history of philosophy and proceeds to tell a story that ties in their work with his own. Analytic philosophys greatest disability remains its lack of historical resonance, and Hilary Putnam is one of the few who have worked hard to help it overcome this handicap ... In sum, this book is a useful supplement to Putnams other recent work. Richard Rorty, The Philosophical ReviewFrom the Back CoverHilary Putnam has been at the center of contemporary debates about the nature of the mind and of its access to the world, about language and its relation to reality, and many other metaphysical and epistemological issues. In this book he turns to pragmatism - and confronts the teachings of James, Peirce, Dewey, and Wittgenstein - not solely out of an interest in theoretical questions, but above all to respond to the questions of whether it is possible to find an alternative to corrosive moral skepticism, on the one hand, and to moral authoritarianism on the other.

Author: Conor Grennan File Type: mobi Amazon.com ReviewIn search of adventure, 29-year-old Conor Grennan traded his day job for a year-long trip around the globe, a journey that began with a three-month stint volunteering at the Little Princes Childrens Home, an orphanage in war-torn Nepal.Conor was initially reluctant to volunteer, unsure whether he had the proper skill, or enough passion, to get involved in a developing country in the middle of a civil war. But he was soon overcome by the herd of rambunctious, resilient children who would challenge and reward him in a way that he had never imagined. When Conor learned the unthinkable truth about their situation, he was stunned The children were not orphans at all. Child traffickers were promising families in remote villages to protect their children from the civil warfor a huge feeby taking them to safety. They would then abandon the children far from home, in the chaos of Nepals capital, Kathmandu.For Conor, what began as a footloose adventure becomes a commitment to reunite the children he had grown to love with their families, but this would be no small task. He would risk his life on a journey through the legendary mountains of Nepal, facing the dangers of a bloody civil war and a debilitating injury. Waiting for Conor back in Kathmandu, and hopeful he would make it out before being trapped in by snow, was the woman who would eventually become his wife and share his lifes work.Little Princes is a true story of families and children, and what one person is capable of when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds. At turns tragic, joyful, and hilarious, Little Princes is a testament to the power of faith and the ability of love to carry us beyond our wildest expectations. hrAn Amazon Exclusive Essay by Conor Grennan How Taking Notes and Living without Indoor Plumbing Would Change My LifeWhen I was living in Nepal, I kept a notebook with me at all times. It was a small Nepali-made notebookthe brand name was Happy Days! or some such thing and it made me smile every time I looked at it. I took it everywhere I went, and wrote in it often.The children constantly asked me what I was writing, and I would tell them I was recording our conversations. That was true, but it was more than that. I was also recording everything I found strange in my new home. Like the fact that the kids chewed on chicken bones until they were practically dust, or that one of the boys, Santosh, had a digital watch which hed borrowed from a friend that, along with displaying the hour, flashed I Love You! once per second.There were times I was caught without my notebook, like in the middle of a soccer game when Dawas shotdestined for just inside the invisible right postwas blocked by the broadside of a cow, and I had to try to recall from memory the captivating debate over the role of livestock in team sports, and whether or not the goal should count. (It didnt.)Then, when the children would go to bed at 8 p.m., I would bundle up in two or three fleeces, a hat, and woolen gloves I had cut the fingers out of Id pull out my notebook and Id sit down to write my travel blog, copying everything I had put into the notebook over the course of the day into an old, ultra-light Dell Id bought off eBay for about 200 dollars. It was pretty much useless except as a word processor, but it was the most precious thing I owned. Over the next three years, traveling the globe and living in Nepal, I would end up typing just over half-a-million words on that little workhorsefive times the length of Little Princes.It turned out that writing everything down in the moment was critical because the more time I spent in Nepal, the more normal these strange things became. It became normal to watch my blankets being made from scratch on the ground outside my house, to trade broken flip-flops for potatoes, and to use outhouses on a daily basis without thinking twice about it. (Did you hear that, people? Outhouses!)The funny thing is, with all that note-taking, I never had any intention of writing a book about my time in Nepal. It honestly never occurred to me that it was a much of a story until someone else mentioned the idea to me.Once I started writing the book, however, I couldnt stop. I went back to my old notebooks and I was suddenly in Nepal again, hearing in my mind exactly how Hriteek had laughed, or Nishal had protested, or Raju had squealed as hed run through the house, bare feet padding against the cold cement floors.Little Princes, the book, allowed me to revisit that wonderful, difficult, challenging, happy time of my life. I still get back to Nepal, of course, and I still see the children. But they change, they grow up. Writing Little Princes allowed me to visit the children as they were. And also, as the person I was.hrFrom Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. Grennan, who once worked at the East West Institute in Prague, embarked on a round-the-world trip in 2006, starting with a stint volunteering for an orphanage six miles south of Kathmandu. The orphanage, called the Little Princes Childrens Home, housed 18 children from the remote province of Humla, rescued from a notorious child trafficker who had bought the children from poor villagers terrified of the Maoist insurgents eager for new recruits the parents hoped to keep their children safe, but the children often ended up as slaves. Grennan was stunned by the trauma endured by these children, who he grew to love over two months, and after completing his world tour, returned to the orphanage and vowed not only to locate seven Humla orphans who had vanished from a foster home, but also to find the parents of the children in the orphanage. This required starting up a nonprofit organization in America, Next Generation Nepal, raising funds, buying a house in Kathmandu for the childrens home, and trekking into the mountains of Humla to locate the parents. Grennans work is by turns self-pokingly humorous, exciting, and inspiring. (Feb.) (c) PWxyz, LLC.