Why the meaning of sin changed radically during the first centuries of ChristianityAncient Christians invoked sin to account for an astonishing range of things, from the death of God's son to the politics of the Roman Empire that worshipped him.
Ancient lessons for sustainable citizenshipAn ecologically sustainable society cannot be achieved without citizens who possess the virtues and values that will foster it, and who believe that individual actions can indeed make a difference.
A fresh reflection on what makes life meaningfulMost people, including philosophers, tend to classify human motives as falling into one of two categories: the egoistic or the altruistic, the self-interested or the moral.
Even lawyers who obey the law often seem to act unethically--interfering with the discovery of truth, subverting justice, and inflicting harm on innocent people.
In Enhancing Evolution, leading bioethicist John Harris dismantles objections to genetic engineering, stem-cell research, designer babies, and cloning and makes an ethical case for biotechnology that is both forthright and rigorous.
The Judge as Political Theorist examines opinions by constitutional courts in liberal democracies to better understand the logic and nature of constitutional review.
Many contemporary political thinkers are gripped by the belief that their task is to develop an ideal theory of rights or justice for guiding and judging political actions.
As a spiritual autobiography, Kierkegaard's The Point of View for My Work as an Author stands among such great works as Augustine's Confessions and Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua.
"e;Without authority,"e; a phrase Kierkegaard repeatedly applied to himself and his writings, is an appropriate title for this volume of five short works that in various ways deal with the concept and practice of authority.
Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions was the last of seven works signed by Kierkegaard and published simultaneously with an anonymously authored companion piece.
This volume provides the first English translation of all the known correspondence to and from Soren Kierkegaard, including a number of his letters in draft form and papers pertaining to his life and death.
After deciding to terminate his authorship with the pseudonymous Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard composed reviews as a means of writing without being an author.
In Thinking of Others, Ted Cohen argues that the ability to imagine oneself as another person is an indispensable human capacity--as essential to moral awareness as it is to literary appreciation--and that this talent for identification is the same as the talent for metaphor.
A searching examination of the moral limits of political compromiseWhen is political compromise acceptable-and when is it fundamentally rotten, something we should never accept, come what may?
Caspar Hare makes an original and compelling case for "e;egocentric presentism,"e; a view about the nature of first-person experience, about what happens when we see things from our own particular point of view.
This book is a concise philosophical meditation on Iago and the nature of evil, through the exploration of the enduring puzzle found in Shakespeare's Othello.
This is the first major work in English to explore at length the meaning, context, aims, and vital importance of Thomas Hobbes's concepts of the law of nature and the right of nature.
"e;Luck egalitarianism"e;--the idea that justice requires correcting disadvantages resulting from brute luck--has gained ground in recent years and is now the main rival to John Rawls's theory of distributive justice.
Machiavelli's Ethics challenges the most entrenched understandings of Machiavelli, arguing that he was a moral and political philosopher who consistently favored the rule of law over that of men, that he had a coherent theory of justice, and that he did not defend the "e;Machiavellian"e; maxim that the ends justify the means.
According to conventional wisdom in American legal culture, the 1870s to 1920s was the age of legal formalism, when judges believed that the law was autonomous and logically ordered, and that they mechanically deduced right answers in cases.
Why the battle between superstition and science is far from overFrom uttering a prayer before boarding a plane, to exploring past lives through hypnosis, has superstition become pervasive in contemporary culture?
Wide-ranging and ambitious, Justice combines moral philosophy and Christian ethics to develop an important theory of rights and of justice as grounded in rights.
Christian Political Ethics brings together leading Christian scholars of diverse theological and ethical perspectives--Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anabaptist--to address fundamental questions of state and civil society, international law and relations, the role of the nation, and issues of violence and its containment.
Adam Seligman, one of our most important social thinkers, continues the incisive critique of modernity he began in his previously acclaimed The Idea of Civil Society and The Problem of Trust.
Immanuel Kant famously said that he was awoken from his "e;dogmatic slumbers,"e; and led to question the possibility of metaphysics, by David Hume's doubts about causation.
From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller On Bullshit, a profound meditation on how and why we loveIn The Reasons of Love, leading moral philosopher and bestselling author Harry Frankfurt argues that the key to a fulfilled life is to pursue wholeheartedly what one cares about, that love is the most authoritative form of caring, and that the purest form of love is, in a complicated way, self-love.
