"In preparing his translation for an English audience, the anonymous translator made many references to English authors in his notes, among them More, Hobbes, Swift, and Milton. While he could also have used a variety of French comments on the duke's maximes as well, he deliberately chose to cater to his English readers by emphasizing English parallels and classical sources. In his introduction, Dr. Primer reviews the translation history of the duke's maxims and finds that some of the main characteristics of this translation were borrowed from the posthumously published French edition prepared by the Sieur Abraham-Nicholas Amelot de la Houssaye, whose presence in this edition is visible from time to time. The anonymous translator of selections from Amelot's edition adopted a more colloquial style than is generally associated with La Rochefoucauld's maxims; he also turns out to be significant not only as a translator but also as a reinterpreter of the central moral issue in the entire book. Most readers, including Jonathan Swift, had taken the duke's position on human nature to be the same as Hobbes's (stressing the human being's selfishness or natural egoism), but the translator/annotator finds that the duke's message is not inconsistent with the more positive view of human nature found in Lord Shaftesbury and in the poetry of Pope."--BOOK JACKET.

Marine Maxims is a collection of fifty principle-based leadership lessons that Thomas J. Gordon acquired commanding Marines over a career spanning three decades of service. Dealing with the complexities and challenges of the contemporary operating environment requires an internal moral compass fixed true. These maxims focus on developing inner citadels of character, moral courage, and the resilience to persevere in a contested domain where information is key. Its purpose is to provide future leaders with a professional development plan that will steel their resolve and enable them to lead with honor. Thematically, these maxims build upon a foundation of character, courage, and will. To be effective, a leader must model and inspire the will to persevere in the face of danger or adversity. The essence of effective leadership is credibility. A leader’s credibility is derived from a congruence of competence and character. Exceptional leaders are not remembered for what they accomplished, but how they did it. Those that lead with integrity will be remembered as a leader worth following.

This is the fullest collection of La Rochefoucauld's writings ever published in English, and includes the first complete translation of the Miscellaneous Reflections. A table of alternative maxim numbers and an index of topics help the reader to locate any maxim quickly.

This book suggests that normative ethics should be developed as a social science, and that this will improve its reputation in business and society. Storchevoy defines four criteria of a good scientific method (clear definitions, correct logic, empirical verification, accurate measurement) and demonstrates how normative ethics can make use of them. He provides a historical review of the methodological evolution of normative ethics and outlines how it was moving in a nonlinear way towards this scientific development by the 16th century. A Scientific Approach to Ethics challenges the reputation of ethics among many within business and business schools as unscientific and argues that it can come to be seen as a scientific discipline able to reveal universal moral truth.

Collected and arranged by John Frederick Schroeder, D.D. With an introduction by Gerald R. Ford. Includes index and bibliography.

Throughout his long, hectic and astonishingly varied life, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) would jot down his passing thoughts on theatre programmes, visiting cards, draft manuscripts and even bills ... Goethe was probably the last true ‘Renaissance Man’. Although employed as a Privy Councillor at the Duke of Weimar’s court, where he helped oversee major mining, road-building and irrigation projects, he also painted, directed plays, carried out research in anatomy, botany and optics – and still found time to produce masterpieces in every literary genre. His fourteen hundred Maxims and Reflections reveal some of his deepest thought on art, ethics, literature and natural science, but also his immediate reactions to books, chance encounters or his administrative work. Although variable in quality, the vast majority have a freshness and immediacy which vividly conjure up Goethe the man. They make an ideal introduction to one of the greatest of European writers.

Equity is a world unto itself. Originally conceived and administered by the ancient Court of Chancery in England, this arcane body of rules and principles has matured into a distinct branch of modern jurisprudence, influencing almost every field of private law -- from contract and tort to company and real property. Specifically, equity seeks to fashion practical justice by alleviating the inflexibility of the common law when liable to produce unfair outcomes in addition to providing a more robust set of remedies, such as injunctions or specific performance, to aggrieved claimants. Chancery law is governed by a set of principles referred to as 'Maxims of Equity,' nearly twenty moral guidelines aimed at providing jurists a wide scope in overriding the rigors of private agreements and facilitating complex financial and proprietary transactions such as the creation and management of trusts of land. Recognizing these maxims as key insights--not only into our own legal order but into the moral values that society at large prioritizes--requires both philosophical dissection and the practical assessment of their efficacy. Such scrutiny ultimately permits a keen understanding of the nexus between ethics and law, their inevitable divergences and which areas of the latter are most in need of reform.