The Moral Foundations of Social Institutions


Book Description

Seumas Miller provides an exciting new philosophical theory of contemporary social institutions and the ethical challenges they confront.




Social Justice


Book Description

In bioethics, discussions of justice have tended to focus on questions of fairness in access to health care: is there a right to medical treatment, and how should priorities be set when medical resources are scarce. But health care is only one of many factors that determine the extent to which people live healthy lives, and fairness is not the only consideration in determining whether a health policy is just. In this pathbreaking book, senior bioethicists Powers and Faden confront foundational issues about health and justice.




The Righteous Mind


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The acclaimed social psychologist challenges conventional thinking about morality, politics, and religion in a way that speaks to conservatives and liberals alike—a “landmark contribution to humanity’s understanding of itself” (The New York Times Book Review). Drawing on his twenty-five years of groundbreaking research on moral psychology, Jonathan Haidt shows how moral judgments arise not from reason but from gut feelings. He shows why liberals, conservatives, and libertarians have such different intuitions about right and wrong, and he shows why each side is actually right about many of its central concerns. In this subtle yet accessible book, Haidt gives you the key to understanding the miracle of human cooperation, as well as the curse of our eternal divisions and conflicts. If you’re ready to trade in anger for understanding, read The Righteous Mind.




The Moral Foundations of Social Institutions


Book Description

In this book, Seumas Miller examines the moral foundations of contemporary social institutions. Offering an original general theory of social institutions, he posits that all social institutions exist to realize various collective ends, indeed, to produce collective goods. He analyses key concepts such as collective responsibility and institutional corruption. Miller also provides distinctive special theories of particular institutions, including governments, welfare agencies, universities, police organizations, business corporations, and communications and information technology entities. These theories are philosophical and, thus, foundational and synoptic in character. They are normative accounts of a sampling of contemporary social institutions, not descriptive accounts of all social institutions, both past and present. Miller also addresses various ethical challenges confronting contemporary institutional designers and policymakers, including the renovation of the international financial system, the 'dumbing down' of the media, the challenge of world poverty, and human rights infringements by security agencies combating global terrorism.




Freedom's Right


Book Description

The theory of justice is one of the most intensely debated areas of contemporary philosophy. Most theories of justice, however, have only attained their high level of justification at great cost. By focusing on purely normative, abstract principles, they become detached from the sphere that constitutes their “field of application” - namely, social reality. Axel Honneth proposes a different approach. He seeks to derive the currently definitive criteria of social justice directly from the normative claims that have developed within Western liberal democratic societies. These criteria and these claims together make up what he terms “democratic ethical life”: a system of morally legitimate norms that are not only legally anchored, but also institutionally established. Honneth justifies this far-reaching endeavour by demonstrating that all essential spheres of action in Western societies share a single feature, as they all claim to realize a specific aspect of individual freedom. In the spirit of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and guided by the theory of recognition, Honneth shows how principles of individual freedom are generated which constitute the standard of justice in various concrete social spheres: personal relationships, economic activity in the market, and the political public sphere. Honneth seeks thereby to realize a very ambitious aim: to renew the theory of justice as an analysis of society.




The Moral Foundation of Economic Behavior


Book Description

It then identifies specific characteristics that moral beliefs must have for the people who possess them to be regarded as trustworthy.




The Moral Foundations of Social Institutions


Book Description

Seumas Miller provides an exciting new philosophical theory of contemporary social institutions and the ethical challenges they confront.




The Moral Foundation of Democracy


Book Description

Hallowell makes a significant argument in favour of the importance of moral values in the orderly functioning of modern democracies. Hallowell begins with a survey of the role that classical liberalism and faith in man as a reasonable, moral, and spiritual actor played in the emergence of democratic self-government. He sharply criticises positivist thought and moral relativism as direct challenges to the notion that transcendent truths guide individuals in their actions and influence how people participate in a democratic society. Hallowell reminds us that at its core, a well-functioning democracy must be based on a fundamental respect for the dignity of the individual.




Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences


Book Description

This Encyclopedia provides a comprehensive overview of individual differences within the domain of personality, with major sub-topics including assessment and research design, taxonomy, biological factors, evolutionary evidence, motivation, cognition and emotion, as well as gender differences, cultural considerations, and personality disorders. It is an up-to-date reference for this increasingly important area and a key resource for those who study intelligence, personality, motivation, aptitude and their variations within members of a group.




The Moral Foundations of the Youth Justice System


Book Description

When is it fair to hold young people criminally responsible? If young people lack the capacity to make a meaningful choice and to control their impulses, should they be held criminally culpable for their behaviour? In what ways is the immaturity of young offenders relevant to their blameworthiness? Should youth offending behaviour be proscribed by criminal law? These are just some of the questions asked in this thoughtful and provocative book. In The Moral Foundations of the Youth Justice System, Raymond Arthur explores international and historical evidence on how societies regulate criminal behaviour by young people, and undertakes a careful examination of the developmental capacities and processes that are relevant to young people’s criminal choices. He argues that the youth justice response needs to be reconceptualised in a context where one of the central objectives of institutions regulating children and young people’s behaviour is to support the interests and welfare of those children. This timely book advocates a revolutionary transformation of the structure and process of contemporary youth justice law: a synthesised and integrated approach that is clearly distinct from that used for dealing with adults. This book is a key resource for students, academics and practitioners across fields including criminal law, youth justice, probation and social work.