This book claims that any one who cares more and better, exists more and better. Much has been written about how character affects action, but this book describes how actions and passions affect character ontologically. There is an independent, not culturally relative source for the ethics of care in an ontology of the self. Ethical and aesthetic flourishing is at once ontological flourishing of the largest, truest self. The book includes many illustrations of how behavior and attitudes have consequences not only for who, but for how much we are. It refines the concept of flourishing originating with Aristotle, showing how values that encourage flourishing of the world as it relates to any person, reflexively enhance the flourishing of that person, hence offering a bridge across the fact/value chasm and a cure for ethical relativism. Classical and modern philosophers writing about the nature of a self are engaged to provide a platform from which further advances can be made on several problems in general philosophy that relate to the ontology of a self. These include the use of the term “existence,” a bundle theory showing a way substance can be made up of attributes, an exploration of unity in a self, an evaluation of necessary constituents of selfhood, a theory of how persons are constituted in space and time, a portrayal of how existential intensity relates to the exercise of power, and a proposal about how free acts and stances can be connected to character. Applications of an ontology of care to problems of partiality, specialization, limitation, age and death are outlined in the final chapters. All these issues are engaged to explicate the connection between ontological and ethical flourishing of the self/world combination.

What should morally conscientious agents do if they must choose among options that are somewhat right and somewhat wrong? Should one select an option that is right to the highest degree, or would it perhaps be more rational to choose randomly among all somewhat right options? And how should lawmakers and courts address behaviour that is neither entirely right nor entirely wrong? In this first book-length discussion of the 'gray area' in ethics, Martin Peterson challenges the assumption that rightness and wrongness are binary properties and explores acts which are neither entirely right nor entirely wrong, but rather a bit of both. Including discussions of white lies and the permissibility of abortion, Peterson's book presents a gradualist theory of right and wrong designed to answer these and other practical questions about the gray area in ethics.

Heidegger has often been reproached for his alleged neglect of practical issues, specifically his "inability" to propose or articulate an ethics or politics. This book investigates the extent to which Heidegger's thought can be read as a crucial resource for practical philosophy and the articulation of an ethos for our time. Leading scholars from around the world offer a sustained and intensive focus on Heidegger's thought of praxis, working through such motifs as freedom, the possibility of ethics, the political, responsibility, community, nihilism, technology and the contemporary ethos, among others. Ultimately, this volume reveals the practical senses of ontology, and the ontological senses of praxis by exhibiting the practicality of Being itself.

What calls for thinking about law? What does it mean to think about? What is aboutness? Could it be that law, in its essence, has not yet been thought about? In exploring these questions, this book closely reads Heidegger's thought, especially his later poetical writings. Heidegger's transformation of the very notion and process of thinking has destabilising implications for the formation of any theory of law, however critical this theory may be. The transformation of thinking also affects the notions of ethics and morality, and the manner in which law relates to them. Interpretations of Heidegger's unique understanding of notions such as 'essence', 'thinking', 'language', 'truth' and 'nearness' come together to indicate the otherness of the essence of law from what is referred to as the 'legal'. If the essence of law has not yet been thought about, what generates deafness to the call for such thinking, thereby entrenching a refuge for legalism? The ambit of the legal is traced to Levinasian ethics, especially to his notion of otherness, despite such a notion being apparently highly critical of the totality of the legal. In entrenching the legal, it is argued that Levinas's notion of otherness does not reflect thinking that is otherwise than ontology but rather radicalises and maintains a derivative ontology. A call for thinking about law is then connected to Heideggerian ontologically based otherness upon which ethical reflection, that the essence of law protects, is grounded.

This book provides an innovative way to revisit the depth and scope of our moral/post-moral worldviews, while undertaking an ontic reflection about organizational life. The ontic dimension of life refers to existing entities’ lived experiences. It has nothing to do with psychological and relational processes. The ontic level of analysis mirrors a philosophical outlook on organizational life. Unlike moral worldviews, post-moral worldviews oppose the existence of Truth-itself. Post-moral worldviews rather imply that dialogical relationships allow people to express their own truth-claims and welcome others’ truth-claims. The purpose of this book is to explain the philosophical implications of moral and post-moral worldviews and the way to move from a moral to a post-moral worldview. Moreover, this book explores the possibility to transcend the moral/post-moral dualism, through moral deliberation processes and a reinterpretation of the Presence of the Infinite in all dimensions of human life. This book could eventually help to better grasp the basic philosophical challenges behind ethical reflection about organizational issues.

Bhakti Ethics, Emotions, and Love in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Metaethics explores the broader implications of understanding bhakti, “devotional love to the divine,” as an ethical theory based on a “realist” account of emotions, where emotions are sensory perceptions of the real ethical qualities of classes of actions. The book spotlights one complex articulation of an Indian epistemology and ontology of ethics based on the metaphysics of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava psychology of emotions in dialogue with a variety of academic fields, including the philosophy of religion and related methodologies such as virtue ethics, theological voluntarism, and ecofeminist and feminist care ethics. The work discusses how emotions are understood metaphysically as extra-mental, objectively real qualities, what Cogen Bohanec refers to as “affective realism.” This follows from a cosmogenic model where the universe emanates from the loving relationship between the divine feminine, Rādhā, and her intense loving relationship with her masculine counterpart, Kṛṣṇa. Since the origin of all of reality emanates from the ultimacy of an affective relationship, then the fabric of reality can be described as having objectively real affective qualities and that is the basis for grounding this ethical system.

SI 14 provides a rigorous theoretical foundation for the study of information experience, an emerging field within Information Science. With particular focus on information behavior and literacy, it explores the importance and implications of individual user experience through the themes of understanding, meaning, and self.

At all times physicians were bound to pursue not only medical tasks, but to reflect also on the many anthropological and metaphysical aspects of their discipline, such as on the nature of life and death, of health and sickness, and above all on the vital ethical dimensions of their practice. For centuries, almost for two millennia, how ever, those who practiced medicine lived in a relatively clearly defined ethical and implicitly philosophical or religious 'world-order' within which they could safely turn to medical practice, knowing right from wrong, or at least being told what to do and what not to do. Today, however, the situation has radically changed, mainly due to three quite different reasons: First and most obviously, physicians today are faced with a tremendous development of new possibilities and techniques which allow previously unheard of medical interventions (such as cloning, cryo-conservation, ge netic interference, etc. ) which call out for ethical reflection and wise judgment but regarding which there is no legal and medical ethical tradition. Traditional medical education did not prepare physicians for coping with this new brave world of mod em medicine. Secondly, there are the deep philosophical crises and the philosophical diseases of medicine mentioned in the preface that lead to a break-down of firm and formative legal and ethical norms for medical actions.

This is an historical survey of 20th Century Roman Catholic Theological Ethics (also known as moral theology). The thesis is that only through historical investigation can we really understand how the most conservative and negative field in Catholic theology at the beginning of the 20th could become by the end of the 20th century the most innovative one. The 20th century begins with moral manuals being translated into the vernacular. After examining the manuals of Thomas Slater and Henry Davis, Keenan then turns to three works and a crowning synthesis of innovation all developed before, during and soon after the Second World War. The first by Odon Lottin asks whether moral theology is adequately historical; Fritz Tillmann asks whether it's adequately biblical; and Gerard Gilleman, whether it's adequately spiritual. Bernard Haering integrates these contributions into his Law of Christ. Of course, people like Gerald Kelly and John Ford in the US are like a few moralists elsewhere, classical gate keepers, censoring innovation. But with Humanae vitae, and successive encyclicals, bishops and popes reject the direction of moral theologians. At the same time, moral theologians, like Josef Fuchs, ask whether the locus of moral truth is in continuous, universal teachings of the magisterium or in the moral judgment of the informed conscience. In their move toward a deeper appreciation of their field as forming consciences, they turn more deeply to local experience where they continue their work of innovation. Each continent subsequently gives rise to their own respondents: In Europe they speak of autonomy and personalism; in Latin America, liberation theology; in North America, Feminism and Black Catholic theology; and, in Asia and Africa a deep post-colonial interculturatism. At the end I assert that in its nature, theological ethics is historical and innovative, seeking moral truth for the conscience by looking to speak crossculturally.

Utilizes Heidegger in rethinking common environmental paradigms.