No Choice But Freedom


Book Description

Joanna Turnbull's marriage to Talbot Showcroft is foundering in the wake of his emigration to the colonies, leaving her and their baby son in the care of her dictatorial father who encumbered her marriage with an unusual nuptial agreement. Her best friend Katie has been disowned by her father for taking up with a fugitive Scot fleeing the aftermath of the battle of Culloden. Joanna resolves the issues by moving to the Colonies, taking Katie and her husband with her. The book's title is appropriate. As the plot wraps around the issues of loyalty to family and personal principles, each of the characters faces his or her own choices of depravity or virtue, slavery or freedom.




The Paradox of Choice


Book Description

Whether we're buying a pair of jeans, ordering a cup of coffee, selecting a long-distance carrier, applying to college, choosing a doctor, or setting up a 401(k), everyday decisions—both big and small—have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming abundance of choice with which we are presented. As Americans, we assume that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction. But beware of excessive choice: choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis, anxiety, and perpetual stress. And, in a culture that tells us that there is no excuse for falling short of perfection when your options are limitless, too much choice can lead to clinical depression. In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains at what point choice—the hallmark of individual freedom and self-determination that we so cherish—becomes detrimental to our psychological and emotional well-being. In accessible, engaging, and anecdotal prose, Schwartz shows how the dramatic explosion in choice—from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs—has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution. Schwartz also shows how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse. By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counter intuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on those that are important and ignore the rest, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make.




The Freedom to Read


Book Description




Development as Freedom


Book Description

By the winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Economics, an essential and paradigm-altering framework for understanding economic development--for both rich and poor--in the twenty-first century. Freedom, Sen argues, is both the end and most efficient means of sustaining economic life and the key to securing the general welfare of the world's entire population. Releasing the idea of individual freedom from association with any particular historical, intellectual, political, or religious tradition, Sen clearly demonstrates its current applicability and possibilities. In the new global economy, where, despite unprecedented increases in overall opulence, the contemporary world denies elementary freedoms to vast numbers--perhaps even the majority of people--he concludes, it is still possible to practically and optimistically restain a sense of social accountability. Development as Freedom is essential reading.




The Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy


Book Description

This volume includes 22 new pieces by leading political philosophers, on traditional issues (such as authority and equality) and emerging issues (such as race, and money in politics). The pieces are clear and accessible will interest both students and scholars working in philosophy, political science, law, economics, and more.




Kant's Conception of Freedom


Book Description

Traces the development of Kant's views on free will from earlier writings through the three Critiques and beyond.




Freedom's Teacher


Book Description

Septima Poinsette Clark's gift to the civil rights movement was education. In the mid-1950s, this former public school teacher developed a citizenship training program that enabled thousands of African Americans to register to vote and then to link the po




Cutting to the Core


Book Description

Surgery inevitably inflicts some harm on the body. At the very least, it damages the tissue that is cut. These harms often are clearly outweighed by the overall benefits to the patient. However, where the benefits do not outweigh the harms or where they do not clearly do so, surgical interventions become morally contested. Cutting to the Core examines a number of such surgeries, including infant male circumcision and cutting the genitals of female children, the separation of conjoined twins, surgical sex assignment of intersex children and the surgical re-assignment of transsexuals, limb and face transplantation, cosmetic surgery, and placebo surgery. When, if ever, do the benefits of these surgeries outweigh their costs? May a surgeon perform dangerous procedures that are not clearly to the patient's benefit, even if the patient consents to them? May a surgeon perform any surgery on a minor patient if there are no clear benefits to that child? These and other related questions are the core themes of this collection of essays.




Hegel's `Elements of the Philosophy of Right'


Book Description

A series of original essays exploring the key themes of Hegel's seminal work, Elements of the Philosophy of Right.




At Freedom's Edge


Book Description

Even after the Civil War, blacks despaired of being treated as equals in a white man’s world. They were deprived of many of the most basic rights of citizenship, and were often cheated and exploited. As a result they clung tenaciously to that most important of new rights—the right to move. At Freedom’s Edge is William Cohen’s comprehensive history of black mobility from the Civil War to World War I. Cohen treats mobility as a central component of black freedom, crucial in the emergence of a free labor system, and equally crucial as an obstacle to the persistent southern white effort to reassert hegemony over blacks in all areas of life. This study has a rigorously southern focus. Most historians of black migration concentrate on telling how the migrants adjusted to northern life, but Cohen provides detailed accounts of internal southern movement and efforts to leave the South. He also examines the relative absence, during this period, of significant migration to the North. Cohen presents a thorough treatment of the efforts of the Freedmen’s Bureau to restructure the southern labor system, showing how heavily this organization was influenced by questions involving black mobility. He also gives the fullest picture yet of the postwar emergence of the occupation of the labor agent. Among the migration episodes he considers are the Liberia movement, the Kansas exodus, the movement of blacks from Georgia and the Carolinas to Arkansas and Mississippi, and the migration to Oklahoma. The post-Reconstruction era was marked by a concerted white thrust to destroy black freedom. Cohen shows that while whites succeeded in establishing almost total dominion in the political and social realms, they failed when they tried to erect a system of involuntary servitude that would seriously limit black movement. Cohen argues that the difference here arose from the fact that whites were largely united on matters such as suffrage and segregation but were divided on the desirability of immobilizing the black labor force. Those who depended on black labor sought legal formulas aimed at stopping black movement. They met resistance, however, from those who did not share their economic interests. This study, then, is almost as much a legal history of white efforts to interdict black movement as it is a history of black migration. At Freedom’s Edge is a probing study of the black search for freedom within freedom.