Read Books Online and Download eBooks, EPub, PDF, Mobi, Kindle, Text Full Free.
Hard Atheism And The Ethics Of Desire
Download Hard Atheism And The Ethics Of Desire full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Hard Atheism And The Ethics Of Desire ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
Book Synopsis Hard Atheism and the Ethics of Desire by : Joel Marks
Download or read book Hard Atheism and the Ethics of Desire written by Joel Marks and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-12-16 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges the widespread assumption that the ethical life and society must be moral in any objective sense. In his previous works, Marks has rejected both the existence of such a morality and the need to maintain verbal, attitudinal, practical, and institutional remnants of belief in it. This book develops these ideas further, with emphasis on constructing a positive alternative. Calling it “desirism”, Marks illustrates what life and the world would be like if we lived in accordance with our rational desires rather than the dictates of any actual or pretend morality, neither overlaying our desires with moral sanction nor attempting to override them with moral strictures. Hard Atheism and the Ethics of Desire also argues that atheism thereby becomes more plausible than the so-called New Atheism that attempts to give up God and yet retain morality.
Book Synopsis Ethics Without Morals by : Joel Marks
Download or read book Ethics Without Morals written by Joel Marks and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, Marks offers a defense of amorality as both philosophically justified and practicably livable. In so doing, the book marks a radical departure from both the new atheism and the mainstream of modern ethical philosophy. While in synch with their underlying aim of grounding human existence in a naturalistic metaphysics, the book takes both to task for maintaining a complacent embrace of morality. Marks advocates wiping the slate clean of outdated connotations by replacing the language of morality with a language of desire. The book begins with an analysis of what morality is and then argues that the concept is not instantiated in reality. Following this, the question of belief in morality is addressed: How would human life be affected if we accepted that morality does not exist? Marks argues that at the very least, a moralist would have little to complain about in an amoral world, and at best we might hope for a world that was more to our liking overall. An extended look at the human encounter with nonhuman animals serves as an illustration of amorality's potential to make both theoretical and practical headway in resolving heretofore intractable ethical problems.
Book Synopsis Difficult Atheism by : Christopher Watkin
Download or read book Difficult Atheism written by Christopher Watkin and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-31 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing primarily on the work of Alain Badiou and Jean-Luc Nancy, plus Quentin Meillassoux and Slavoj Zizek, Watkin explores the theme of atheism through the ideas of the death of God and nihilism in contemporary French philosophy.
Download or read book Reason and Ethics written by Joel Marks and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-01 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reason and Ethics defends the theoretical claim that all values are subjective and the practical claim that human affairs can be conducted fruitfully in full awareness of this. Joel Marks goes beyond his previous work defending moral skepticism to question the existence of all objective values. This leads him to suggest a novel answer to the Companions in Guilt argument that the denial of morality would mean relinquishing rationality as well. Marks disarms the argument by conceding the irreality of both morality and logic, but is still able to rescue rationality while dispensing with morality on pragmatic grounds. He then offers a positive account of how life may be lived productively without recourse to attributions and assertions of right and wrong, good and bad, and even truth and falsity. Written in an accessible and engaging style, Reason and Ethics will be of interest to scholars and students working in metaethics as well as to the generally intellectually curious.
Book Synopsis Atheistic Platonism by : Eric Charles Steinhart
Download or read book Atheistic Platonism written by Eric Charles Steinhart and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-11-30 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Atheistic Platonism is an alternative to both theism and nihilistic atheism. It shows how any jobs allegedly done by God are better done by impersonal Platonic objects. Without Platonic objects, atheism degenerates into an illogical nihilism. Atheistic Platonism instead provides reality with foundations that are eternal, necessary, rational, beautiful, and utterly mindless. It argues for a plenitude of mathematical objects, and an infinite plurality of possible universes. It provides mindless rational grounds for objective values, and for objective moral laws for the persons who evolve in universes. It defines a meaningful way of life, which facilitates self-improvement. Atheistic Platonists argue for computational theories of life after death. Atheistic Platonism includes a rich system of spiritual symbols. It values transformational practices and ecstatic experiences. Where atheisms based on materialism fail, atheisms based on Platonism succeed.
Book Synopsis Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments: A Stone Reader by : Peter Catapano
Download or read book Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments: A Stone Reader written by Peter Catapano and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2017-08-22 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the editors of the widely influential The Stone Reader comes the most thorough and engaging guide to modern ethical thought available. Since 2010, The Stone— an enormously popular column in the New York Times— has interpreted and reinterpreted age-old inquires that speak to our contemporary condition. Having done for modern ethics what The Stone Reader did for modern philosophy, this portable volume features an assortment of essays culled from the archives of an online Times series that has attracted millions of readers through accessible examinations of longstanding topics like consciousness, religious belief, and morality. Presenting the most thorough and accessible guide to modern ethical thought available, New York Times editor Peter Catapano and best-selling philosopher Simon Critchley curate a fascinating culture of debate and deliberation that would have otherwise gone undiscovered. From questions of gun control and drone warfare to the morals of vegetarianism and marriage, this book emancipates ethics from the province of ivory-tower classrooms to become a centerpiece of discussions for years to come.
Book Synopsis The End of Morality by : Richard Joyce
Download or read book The End of Morality written by Richard Joyce and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-18 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to the moral error theorist, all moral judgments are mistaken. The world just doesn’t contain the properties and relations necessary for these judgments to be true. But what should we actually do if we decided that we are in this radical and unsettling predicament—that morality is just a widespread and heartfelt illusion? One suggestion is to eliminate all talk and thought of morality (abolitionism). Another is to carry on believing it anyway (conservationism). And yet another is to treat morality as a kind of convenient fiction (fictionalism). We tend to think of moral thinking as valuable and useful (e.g., for motivating cooperative behavior), but we can also recognize that it can be harmful (e.g., hindering compromise) and even disastrous (e.g., inspiring support for militaristic propaganda). Would we be better off or worse off if we stopped basing decisions on moral considerations? This is a collection of twelve brand new chapters focused on a critical examination of the options available to the moral error theorist. After a general introduction outlining the topic, explaining key terminology, and offering suggestions for further reading, the chapters address questions like: • Is it true that the more that people are motivated by moral concerns, the more likely it is that society will be elitist, authoritarian, and dishonest? • Is an appeal to moral values a useful tool for helping resolve conflicts, or does it actually exacerbate conflicts? • Would it even be possible to abolish morality from our thinking? • If we were to accept a moral error theory, would it be feasible to carry on believing in morality in everyday contexts? • Might moral discourse be usefully modeled on familiar metaphorical language, where we can convey useful and important truths by uttering falsehoods? • Does moral thinking support or undermine a commitment to feminist goals? • What role do moral judgments play in addressing important decisions affecting climate change? The End of Morality: Taking Moral Abolitionism Seriously is the first book to thoroughly address these and other questions, systematically investigating the harms and benefits of moral thought, and considering what the world might be like without morality.
Book Synopsis The Moral Psychology of Love by : Arina Pismenny
Download or read book The Moral Psychology of Love written by Arina Pismenny and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-03-28 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under what circumstances can love generate moral reasons for action? Are there morally appropriate ways to love? Can an occurrence of love or a failure to love constitute a moral failure? Is it better to love morally good people? This volume explores the moral dimensions of love through the lenses of political philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. It attempts to discern how various social norms affect our experience and understanding of love, how love, relates to other affective states such as emotions and desires, and how love influences and is influenced by reason. What love is affects what love ought to be. Conversely, our ideas of what love ought to be partly determined by our conception of what love is.
Book Synopsis Why It's OK to Be Amoral by : Ronald de Sousa
Download or read book Why It's OK to Be Amoral written by Ronald de Sousa and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-11-29 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why It’s OK to Be Amoral argues that self-righteous moralism has replaced religion as a source of embattled and gratuitous certainties. High-minded moral convictions invoke the authority of sacred moral truths, but there are no such truths. In reality, moral passions are rooted in atavistic emotional dispositions and arbitrary social conventions. While public and private discourse is saturated with guilt, shame and righteous indignation, professional philosophers, under cover of clever argumentation, promote the utopian idea that all practical questions have uniquely right answers—providing that you adopt the right moral principles. But their justifications for those principles appeal to contested ‘foundations’, among which no rational adjudication is possible. Moreover, because there are two discrepant ways of understanding motivation, our access to agents’ true reasons is never sufficiently reliable to warrant moral praise or blame. Finally, every agent has a wide diversity of reasons for action, yet moralists claim that some reasons trump all others, because they are ‘moral’ reasons. Since these too must be grounded in facts, that amounts to double counting some reasons. Having exposed these aspects of the institution of morality, this book suggests that if we cannot abstain altogether from moralising, we can at least try to use it against itself. Key Features Describes and criticises seven approaches to the question, Why should I do or not do X? Develops an original objection to the idea of identifying a domain of moral reasons: namely, that it amounts to the unwarranted double counting of a subset of our reasons. Describes two ways of thinking about reasons and choices, and explains how the discrepancy between them makes it impossible to assess an agent’s motivation reliably enough to warrant moral praise or blame. Outlines the subtle changes in attitude involved in espousing amoralism, without giving up on rational choices and honest political commitments.
Book Synopsis Spinoza's Religion by : Clare Carlisle
Download or read book Spinoza's Religion written by Clare Carlisle and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold reevaluation of Spinoza that reveals his powerful, inclusive vision of religion for the modern age Spinoza is widely regarded as either a God-forsaking atheist or a God-intoxicated pantheist, but Clare Carlisle says that he was neither. In Spinoza’s Religion, she sets out a bold interpretation of Spinoza through a lucid new reading of his masterpiece, the Ethics. Putting the question of religion centre-stage but refusing to convert Spinozism to Christianity, Carlisle reveals that “being in God” unites Spinoza’s metaphysics and ethics. Spinoza’s Religion unfolds a powerful, inclusive philosophical vision for the modern age—one that is grounded in a profound questioning of how to live a joyful, fully human life. Like Spinoza himself, the Ethics doesn’t fit into any ready-made religious category. But Carlisle shows how it wrestles with the question of religion in strikingly original ways, responding both critically and constructively to the diverse, broadly Christian context in which Spinoza lived and worked. Philosophy itself, as Spinoza practiced it, became a spiritual endeavor that expressed his devotion to a truthful, virtuous way of life. Offering startling new insights into Spinoza’s famously enigmatic ideas about eternal life and the intellectual love of God, Carlisle uncovers a Spinozist religion that integrates self-knowledge, desire, practice, and embodied ethical life to reach toward our “highest happiness”—to rest in God. Seen through Carlisle’s eyes, the Ethics prompts us to rethink not only Spinoza but also religion itself.
Download or read book Carceral Logics written by Lori Gruen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-04-14 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We incarcerate humans as a form of punishment and we cage animals for food, entertainment, and research. Are there lessons one site of carcerality can teach us about the other?
Book Synopsis New Perspectives on the Ontology of Social Identities by : Alejandro Arango
Download or read book New Perspectives on the Ontology of Social Identities written by Alejandro Arango and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-06-03 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Radical Atheism by : Martin Hägglund
Download or read book Radical Atheism written by Martin Hägglund and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Radical Atheism challenges the religious appropriation of Derrida's work and offers a compelling new account of his thinking on time and space, life and death, good and evil, self and other.
Book Synopsis Finding Meaning and Beauty in an Idiotic World by : Wei-Ching Chang
Download or read book Finding Meaning and Beauty in an Idiotic World written by Wei-Ching Chang and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2019-05-09 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the most important things in life, and how can we live more ethical, fulfilling lives? In our modern world, it is not always easy to answer these questions; human needs and ethics have been obscured by the destructive demands of capitalism, colonialism, discrimination, militarism, and other sociopolitical forces. In Finding Meaning & Beauty in an Idiotic World, Wei-Ching Chang offers us a roadmap to thinking through these complex issues, distilling the meaning of life into a series of universal values pertaining to truth, goodness, and beauty. No social mechanism will be left uncovered, as Chang draws upon both Eastern and Western philosophies and the fields of literature, film, political science, and women’s studies to examine each one. The themes that emerge include reason over faith and intuition, the importance of freedom and equality in democracy, how to diminish the calamites of war and violence, and ultimately, how to act cooperatively with one another in the cultivating of worldwide ethics. The result is a thought-provoking tour de force that teaches us, through the power of logic, how we can better appreciate our own lives and act more generously to nurture the lives of others on both personal and global scales.
Book Synopsis Philosophers without Gods by : Louise M. Antony
Download or read book Philosophers without Gods written by Louise M. Antony and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-08-08 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Atheists are frequently demonized as arrogant intellectuals, antagonistic to religion, devoid of moral sentiments, advocates of an "anything goes" lifestyle. Now, in this revealing volume, nineteen leading philosophers open a window on the inner life of atheism, shattering these common stereotypes as they reveal how they came to turn away from religious belief. These highly engaging personal essays capture the marvelous diversity to be found among atheists, providing a portrait that will surprise most readers. Many of the authors, for example, express great affection for particular religious traditions, even as they explain why they cannot, in good conscience, embrace them. None of the contributors dismiss religious belief as stupid or primitive, and several even express regret that they cannot, or can no longer, believe. Perhaps more important, in these reflective pieces, they offer fresh insight into some of the oldest and most difficult problems facing the human mind and spirit. For instance, if God is dead, is everything permitted? Philosophers without Gods demonstrates convincingly, with arguments that date back to Plato, that morality is independent of the existence of God. Indeed, every writer in this volume adamantly affirms the objectivity of right and wrong. Moreover, they contend that secular life can provide rewards as great and as rich as religious life. A naturalistic understanding of the human condition presents a set of challenges--to pursue our goals without illusions, to act morally without hope of reward--challenges that can impart a lasting value to finite and fragile human lives. 'This Atheists R Us compilation differs markedly in tone from Hitchens and Dawkins. Excellent fare for Christian small groups whose members are genuinely interested in the arguments raised by atheists.'-- Christianity Today 'Rather than the foolishness of Dawkins or Hitchens, these [essays] are compelling and sophisticated arguments that religious people ought to confront....'-- Tikkun 'Taken as a group, these readable, personal, and provocative essays make it clear that there are many kinds of non-believers, and even many different elements that make up a single skeptical outlook. Contrary to the popular image, atheism isn't all rebellious trumpets and defiant drums. That part of the orchestra is essential, but here we have all the varieties of unreligious experience, a full symphony of unbelief.' -- Free Inquiry 'This collection strikes me as an excellent example of how comprehensible philosophical writing can be at its best. By and large, the essays are written in a clear and direct style, free of philosophical jargon. Many who read it will find themselves also engaged at a level that is not merely academic.'--George I. Mavrodes, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Book Synopsis The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions by : Alex Rosenberg
Download or read book The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions written by Alex Rosenberg and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-10-03 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book for nonbelievers who embrace the reality-driven life. We can't avoid the persistent questions about the meaning of life-and the nature of reality. Philosopher Alex Rosenberg maintains that science is the only thing that can really answer them—all of them. His bracing and ultimately upbeat book takes physics seriously as the complete description of reality and accepts all its consequences. He shows how physics makes Darwinian natural selection the only way life can emerge, and how that deprives nature of purpose, and human action of meaning, while it exposes conscious illusions such as free will and the self. The science that makes us nonbelievers provides the insight into the real difference between right and wrong, the nature of the mind, even the direction of human history. The Atheist's Guide to Reality draws powerful implications for the ethical and political issues that roil contemporary life. The result is nice nihilism, a surprisingly sanguine perspective atheists can happily embrace.
Download or read book Moral Moments written by Joel Marks and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2000 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Against the social scientific spirit of the age, the author defends a distinct role for ethics in decision-making. Central themes of the book are:--ethics is not subjective--ethics has relevance to business and the professions as well as to everyday life--there is no more practical question we can ask than, "What is ethics?" Book jacket.
