Building on the work of Elinor Ostrom (Governing the Commons) the author examines how the different shared goods of a democratic society are shaped by technology and demonstrates how club goods, common pool resources, and public goods are supported, enhanced, and disrupted by technology. He further argues that as the common good is undermined by different interests, it should be possible to reclaim technology, if the members of the society conclude that they have something in common.

Political philosophy is nothing other than looking at things political under the aspect of eternity. This book invites us to look philosophically at political things in J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium, demonstrating that Tolkien’s potent mythology can be brought into rich, fruitful dialogue with works of political philosophy and political theology as different as Plato’s Timaeus, Aquinas’ De Regno, Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Erik Peterson’s “Monotheism as a Political Problem.” It concludes that a political reading of Tolkien’s work is most luminous when conducted by the harmonious lights of fides et ratio as found in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. A broad study of Tolkien and the political is especially pertinent in that the legendarium operates on two levels. As a popular mythology it is, in the author’s own words “a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them.” But the stories of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings contain deeper teachings that can only be drawn out when read philosophically. Written from the vantage of a mind that is deeply Christian, Tolkien’s stories grant us a revelatory gaze into the major political problems of modernity—from individualism to totalitarianism, sovereignty to surveillance, terror to technocracy. As an “outsider” in modernity, Tolkien invites us to question the modern in a manner that moves beyond reaction into a vivid and compelling vision of the common good.

This books analyzes international financial markets and environmental problems as typical examples of transnational common goods and considers the factors affecting the strategic constellations of countries in common goods provision, in particular the strategic effects of multi-level governance.

The idea of the common good was borrowed by the Fathers of the early Catholic Church from the rich philosophical traditions of ancient Greece and Rome. It has been a fundamental part of Catholic thinking about social, political, and economic life throughout the Catholic intellectual tradition, from Augustine and Aquinas to modern Catholic social thought in the encyclicals of popes in recent centuries. Yet this history has been rooted in the traditions of philosophy and theology. With the rise of the social sciences in the nineteenth century as distinct disciplines no longer limited to the methods of their philosophical origins, humanity has learned a great deal more about the human condition. Empirical Foundations of the Common Good asks two questions: what have the social sciences learned about the common good? how might theology alter its understanding of the common good in light of that insight? In this volume, six social scientists, with backgrounds in economics, political science, sociology, and policy analysis, speak about what their disciplines have to contribute to discussions within Catholic social thought about the common good. Two theologians then respond by examining the insights of social science and exploring how Catholic social thought can integrate social scientific insights into its understanding of the common good. This volume's interplay of social scientific and religious views is a unique contribution to contemporary discussion of what constitutes "the common good."

Every kind of exploration is touched in some way by a philosophy of persons; touched and often vitally enhanced. This collection sets out to mine this rich seam of influence, bringing together authors keen to strike new developments and applications. Together, they have put their philosophy of persons to work in fields as wide-ranging as the moral and the metaphysical, the practical and the political, the cultural and the cosmological. In doing so, they have drawn on and illustrated the depth and breadth of modern Personalist thought, demonstrating its crucial relevance to debates across the entire philosophical spectrum. Whether they are familiar with the Personalist tradition or no, readers from every corner of the philosophical world will find much here to challenge and stimulate them. Most importantly, they will find a new and badly needed philosophical perspective.

Revolutionary advances in biomedical research and information systems technology pose new and difficult issues for American health care policy, especially in the context of managed care. Health Care Policy in a New Millennium takes on this challenging array of issues where the dignity of individual life meets the imperatives of national-level health-care systems - patients' rights, rationing of care, organ transplants, genetic research, confidentiality of medical records, the right to die, and other ethical dilemmas. The book places these critical questions about the quality of life in our society in their political, legal, social, economic, and ethical contexts.

Hippocrates famously advised doctors 'it is far more important to know what person the disease has than what disease the person has'. Yet 2,500 years later, 'personalised medicine', based on individual genetic profiling and the achievements of genomic research, claims to be revolutionary. In this book, experts from a wide range of disciplines critically examine this claim. They expand the discussion of personalised medicine beyond its usual scope to include many other highly topical issues, including: human nuclear genome transfer ('three-parent IVF'), stem cell-derived gametes, private umbilical cord blood banking, international trade in human organs, biobanks such as the US Precision Medicine Initiative, direct-to-consumer genetic testing, health and fitness self-monitoring. Although these technologies often prioritise individual choice, the original ideal of genomic research saw the human genome as 'the common heritage of humanity'. The authors question whether personalised medicine actually threatens this conception of the common good.

The essays in this edited collection are inspired by Andrew Feenberg’s philosophy of technology. Feenberg is the leading critical theorist of technology working today, combining the critical traditions of Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger, Georg Lukáacs, and Herbert Marcuse with empirical methods from science & technology studies (STS) and media studies. Divided into three parts, these contributions from philosophers, media theorists, design theorists, and STS scholars, reflect the relevancy of Feenberg's philosophy for making sense of our technically mediated society. This collection appeals to students and researchers interested in the philosophy of technology, critical theory, smart cities, big data, AI, and algorithmic culture.

The commodification of science—often identified with commercialization, or the selling of expertise and research results and the “capitalization of knowledge” in academia and beyond—has been investigated as a threat to the autonomy of science and academic culture and criticized for undermining the social responsibility of modern science. In From Commodification to the Common Good, Hans Radder revisits the commodification of the sciences from a philosophical perspective to focus instead on a potential alternative, the notion of public-interest science. Scientific knowledge, he argues, constitutes a common good only if it serves those affected by the issues at stake, irrespective of commercial gain. Scrutinizing the theory and practices of scientific and technological patenting, Radder challenges the legitimacy of commercial monopolies and the private appropriation and exploitation of research results. His book invites us to reevaluate established laws and to question doctrines and practices that may impede or even prohibit scientific research and social progress so that we might achieve real and significant transformations in service of the common good.