Human Kindness and the Smell of Warm Croissants

Human Kindness and the Smell of Warm Croissants
Author: Ruwen Ogien
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2015-05-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 023153924X

Human Kindness and the Smell of Warm Croissants makes philosophy fun, tactile, and popular. Moral thinking is simple, Ruwen Ogien argues, and as inherent as the senses. In our daily experiences, in the situations we confront and in the scenes we witness, we develop an understanding of right and wrong as sophisticated as the moral outlook of the world's most gifted philosophers. By drawing on this knowledge to navigate life's most perplexing problems, ethics becomes second nature. Ogien explores, through experimental philosophy and other methods, the responses nineteen real-world conundrums provoke. Is a short, mediocre life better than no life at all? Is it acceptable to kill a healthy person so his organs can save five others? Would you swap a "natural" life filled with frustration, disappointment, and partial success for a world in which all of your needs are met, but through artificial and mechanical means? Ogien doesn't seek to show how difficult it is to determine right from wrong or how easy it is for humans to become monsters or react like saints. Helping us tap into the wisdom and feeling we already possess in our ethical "toolboxes," Ogien instead encourages readers to question moral presuppositions and rules; embrace an intuitive sense of dignity, virtue, and justice; and pursue a pluralist ethics suited to the principles of human kindness.

Skill and Mastery

Skill and Mastery
Author: Karyn Lai
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2019-07-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1786609142

Skill and Mastery: Philosophical Stories from the Zhuangzi presents an illuminating analysis of skill stories from the Zhuangzi, a 4th century BCE Daoist text. In this intriguing text that subverts conventional norms and pursuits, ordinary activities such as swimming, cicada-catching and wheelmaking are executed with such remarkable efficacy and spontaneity that they seem like magical feats. An international team of scholars explores these stories in their philosophical, historical and political contexts. Their analyses’ highlight the stories’underlying conceptions of agency, character and cultivation; and relevance to contemporary debates on human action and experience. The result is a valuable collection, opening up new lines of inquiry in comparative East-West philosophical debates on skill, cultivation and mastery, as well as cross-disciplinary debates in psychology, cognitive science and philosophy.

Nourishment

Nourishment
Author: Corine Pelluchon
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2019-02-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350073903

In her new book, Corine Pelluchon argues that the dichotomy between nature and culture privileges the latter. She laments that the political system protects the sovereignty of the human and leaves them immune to impending environmental disaster. Using the phenomenological writings of French philosophers like Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, and Paul Ricœur, Pelluchon contends that human beings have to recognise humanity's dependence upon the natural world for survival and adopt a new philosophy of existence that advocates for animal welfare and ecological preservation. In an extension of Heidegger's ontology of concern, Pelluchon declares that this dependence is not negative or a sign of weakness. She argues instead, that we are nourished by the natural world and that the very idea of nourishment contains an element of pleasure. This sustenance comforts humans and gives their lives taste. Pelluchon's new philosophy claims then, that eating has an affective, social and cultural dimension, but that most importantly it is a political act. It solidifies the eternal link between human beings and animals, and warns that the human consumption of animals and other natural resources impacts upon humanity's future.

Understanding Virtue

Understanding Virtue
Author: Jennifer Cole Wright
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2020-10-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190655143

The last thirty years have seen a resurgence of interest in virtue among philosophers, psychologists, and educators. Over time, this interdisciplinary conversation has included character cultivation and education, in addition to more abstract, theoretical discussions of virtue. As is often the case when various disciplinary endeavors become entwined, this renewed interest in virtue cultivation faces an important challenge--namely, meeting the varying requirements imposed by different disciplinary standards. For virtue in particular, this means developing an account that practitioners from multiple disciplines find sufficiently rigorous, substantive, and useful. This volume represents a response to this interdisciplinary challenge. This co-authored book not only provides a framework for quantifying virtues, but also explores how we can understand virtue in a philosophically-informed way that is compatible with the best thinking available in personality psychology. Its objective is twofold: first, drawing on whole trait theory in psychology and Aristotelian virtue ethics, it offers accounts of virtue and character that are both philosophically sound and psychologically realistic. Second, the volume presents strategies for how virtue and character can be translated into empirically measurable variables and, thus, measured systematically, relying on the insights from the latest research in personality, social, developmental, and cognitive psychology, and psychological science more broadly. This volume presents a major contribution to the emerging science of virtue measurement and character, demonstrating just how philosophical understanding and psychological research can enrich each other.

The Antiegalitarian Mutation

The Antiegalitarian Mutation
Author: Nadia Urbinati
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2016-08-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0231541937

The twin crises of immigration and mass migration brought new urgency to the balance of power between progressive, humanitarian groups and their populist opponents. In the United States and many European countries, the outcome of this struggle is uncertain, with a high chance that the public will elect more politicians who support an agenda of nativism and privatization. The Antiegalitarian Mutation makes a forceful case that those seeking to limit citizenship and participation, political or otherwise, have co-opted democracy. Political and legal institutions are failing to temper the interests of people with economic power against the needs of the many, leading to an unsustainable rise in income inequality and a new oligarchy rapidly assuming broad social control. For Nadia Urbinati and Arturo Zampaglione, this insupportable state of affairs is not an inevitable outcome of robust capitalism but rather the result of an ideological war waged against social democracy by the neoliberal governments of Reagan, Thatcher, and others. These giants of free-market fundamentalism secured power through legitimate political means, and only by taking back our political institutions can we remedy the social ills that threaten to unmake our world. That, according to The Antiegalitarian Mutation, is democracy's challenge and its ongoing promise.

Pink Society – The Northport Case

Pink Society – The Northport Case
Author: Silvana Dionísio
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2023-07-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9948795474

After the unforeseen disruption in his daily bread distribution, the Kildare Hall baker swiftly hopped into his van. While doing it, a nasty shiver went up his body as he spotted from the corner of his eye someone peering from the attic’s window. He rubbed his eyes and glanced at the window again, but the vision had disappeared. When he left the Thirteen that morning, he could not have imagined what had happened the night before at the typically quiet house nor suspected that the society of young activists that had gathered there fled in an undesired hurry to the most daring adventure of their lives. With a group of international criminals on their trail, will the group reach its final destination? Or is this trip destined for total failure?

Born of Ashes

Born of Ashes
Author: Caris Roane
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Total Pages: 445
Release: 2012-01-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429952520

Enter a hidden world of winged vampire warriors—and the women they are sworn protect. Born of Ashes is the fourth breathtaking novel in paranormal romance author Caris Roane's Guardians of Ascension series... For years, she was kept as a human slave—one of seven unwilling "blood donors" for the death vampires who thirst for absolute power. Now, Fiona is a free woman, haunted by her memories of being strapped to a gurney, drained of blood, then revived at the last moment. She lives to avenge her captors—but only one warrior can help her... Jean-Pierre has lived and fought for over two-hundred years. He knows the triumph of slaying a death vampire, but has never known anything like the feelings that arise when he becomes Fiona's guardian. Her beauty, her pain, her passion—and her growing power—consume his senses. Now the warrior must draw his sword once more—and fight the gates of hell itself—for love.

Baker Thief

Baker Thief
Author: Claudie Arseneault
Publisher: The Kraken Collective
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2018-06-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1775312917

Adèle has only one goal: catch the purple-haired thief who broke into her home and stole her exocore, thus proving herself to her new police team. Little does she know, her thief is also the local baker. Claire owns the Croissant-toi, but while her days are filled with pastries and customers, her nights are dedicated to stealing exocores. These new red gems are heralded as the energy of the future, but she knows the truth: they are made of witches’ souls. When her twin—a powerful witch and prime exocore material—disappears, Claire redoubles in her efforts to investigate. She keeps running into Adèle, however, and whether or not she can save her sister might depend on their conflicted, unstable, but deepening relationship.

The Seventh Sense

The Seventh Sense
Author: William Duggan
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2015-05-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0231539436

Flashes of insight—the "Eureka!" moments that produce new and useful ideas in a single thought—are behind some of the world's most creative and practical innovations. This book shows how to cultivate more and better flashes of insight by harnessing the science and practice of the "seventh sense." Drawing from psychology, neuroscience, Asian philosophy, and military strategy, William Duggan illustrates the power of the seventh sense to help readers aspire to and achieve more in their personal and professional lives. His examples include Gandhi, Joan of Arc, Starbucks founder Howard Shultz, and executives and students he has taught in his classes. His book presents specific steps in the form of three practical tools to help prepare the mind, see and seize opportunity, and follow through on one's resolution. Based on Duggan's perennially popular Columbia Business School course, this book teaches the mental skills and discipline that power the seventh sense.