The Promise of Happiness

The Promise of Happiness

The Promise of Happiness is a provocative cultural critique of the imperative to be happy. It asks what follows when we make our desires and even our own happiness conditional on the happiness of others: I just want you to be happy; Im happy if youre happy. Combining philosophy and feminist cultural studies, Sara Ahmed reveals the affective and moral work performed by the happiness duty, the expectation that we will be made happy by taking part in that which is deemed good, and that by being happy ourselves, we will make others happy. Ahmed maintains that happiness is a promise that directs us toward certain life choices and away from others. Happiness is promised to those willing to live their lives in the right way.

The Promise of Happiness

Moral Questions

Moral Questions

This new introduction to ethics is written for students who are approaching philosophy for the first time.

Moral Questions

Moral Theory at the Movies

Moral Theory at the Movies

Moral Theory at the Movies provides students with a wonderfully approachable introduction to ethics. The book incorporates film summaries and study questions to draw students into ethical theory and then pairs them with classical philosophical texts. The students see how moral theories, dilemmas, and questions are represented in the given films and learn to apply these theories to the world they live in. There are 36 films and a dozen readings including: Thank you for Smoking, Plato’s Gorgias, John Start Mill’s Utilitarianism, Hotel Rwanda, Plato’s Republic, and Horton Hears a Who. Topics cover a wide variety of ethical theories including, ethical subjectivism, moral relativism, ethical theory, and virtue ethics. Moral Theory at the Movies will appeal to students and help them think about how philosophy is relevant today.

Moral Theory at the Movies

Why Good is Good

Why Good is Good

Where do our moral beliefs come from? Theologians and scientists provide often conflicting answers. Robert Hinde resolves these conflicts to offer a groundbreaking, multidisciplinary response, drawing on psychology, philosophy, evolutionary biology and social anthropology.

Why Good is Good

Beyond Patriotism

Beyond Patriotism

Beyond Patriotism argues that some millions of Americans have become post-national people who put the good of humanity ahead of patriotism or national honour. It discusses the decisions that disillusioned them from the Vietnamese War, to the attempt to put Pol Pot back into power, to the sanctions against Iraq. Rather than lamenting the heyday of patriotism, post-national people should congratulate themselves on attaining moral maturity. They should clarify their thinking about why nationalism is bankrupt, what Americans should do to pacify the world, what they owe to their native land, and what they owe to themselves.

Beyond Patriotism

Wesley and the Wesleyans

Wesley and the Wesleyans

A critical contribution to the history of Britain and the U.S., this book demonstrates how the search for personal supernatural power lay at the heart of the so-called eighteenth-century English evangelical revival. John Kent rejects the view that the Wesleys rescued the British from moral and spiritual decay by reviving primitive Christianity. The study is of interest to everyone concerned with the history of Methodism and the Church of England, the Evangelical tradition, and eighteenth-century religious thought and experience.

Wesley and the Wesleyans

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is the ethical theory advanced by Jeremy Bentham, J.S. Mill, and Henry Sidgwick and has contributed significantly to contemporary moral and political philosophy. Yet it is not without controversy and is a subject that students can often find particularly perplexing. Utilitarianism: A Guide for the Perplexed offers a concise, yet fully comprehensive introduction to utilitarianism, its historical roots, key themes, and current debates.

Utilitarianism

Opus Dei

Opus Dei

In this follow-up to The Kingdom and the Glory and The Highest Poverty, Agamben investigates the roots of our moral concept of duty in the theory and practice of Christian liturgy. Beginning with the New Testament and working through to late scholasticism and modern papal encyclicals, Agamben traces the Church’s attempts to repeat Christ’s unrepeatable sacrifice. Crucial here is the paradoxical figure of the priest, who becomes more and more a pure instrument of God’s power, so that his own motives and character are entirely indifferent as long as he carries out his priestly duties. In modernity, Agamben argues, the Christian priest has become the model ethical subject. We see this above all in Kantian ethics. Contrasting the Christian and modern ontology of duty with the classical ontology of being, Agamben contends that Western philosophy has unfolded in the tension between the two. This latest installment in the study of Western political structures begun in Homo Sacer is a contribution to the study of liturgy, an extension of Nietzsche’s genealogy of morals, and a reworking of Heidegger’s history of Being.

Opus Dei