The Good Life and the Greater Good in a Global Context offers a timely contribution to the debates about the good life that surround us every day in the media, politics, the humanities, and social sciences. The authors’ examine the relationship between the good life and the greater good as represented across different genres, media, cultures, and disciplines. This enables them to develop a framework of values that transcends the overly rational and individualistic model of the good life advanced by neoliberalism and the “happiness industry.” Thus, over and against normative conceptualizations of the good life that reduce meaning to money, creativity to consumption, and compassion to self-help, the contributors propose an ethically charged philosophy of living that views the care for the self, for the other, and for the planet as the catalysts of true human flourishing. In addition to recovering the original usage of “the good life” from classical thought—especially the Aristotelian understanding of eudaimonia as living well and doing well—the essays gathered here highlight its entanglement with distinctly modern ideas of happiness, wellbeing, flourishing, progress, revolution, democracy, the American Dream, utopia, and sustainability. As such, the essays capture the breadth and depth of the conversation about the good life that is of central importance to how we relate to the past, engage the present, and envision the future.

“A landmark book in the science of emotions and its implications for ethics and human universals.”—Library Journal, starred review In this startling study of human emotion, Dacher Keltner investigates an unanswered question of human evolution: If humans are hardwired to lead lives that are “nasty, brutish, and short,” why have we evolved with positive emotions like gratitude, amusement, awe, and compassion that promote ethical action and cooperative societies? Illustrated with more than fifty photographs of human emotions, Born to Be Good takes us on a journey through scientific discovery, personal narrative, and Eastern philosophy. Positive emotions, Keltner finds, lie at the core of human nature and shape our everyday behavior—and they just may be the key to understanding how we can live our lives better. Some images in this ebook are not displayed owing to permissions issues.

In this comprehensive collection of essays, most of which appear for the first time, eminent scholars from many disciplines—philosophy, economics, sociology, political science, demography, theology, history, and social psychology—examine the causes, nature, and consequences of present-day consumption patterns in the United States and throughout the world.

Sustainability and the City: Urban Poetics and Politics contributes to third-generation discourse on sustainable development by considering, through a humanistic lens, theories and practices of sustainability in a wide range of urban cultures. It demonstrates cities’ inextricability from discussions on sustainability because not only is the world urbanizing at an unprecedented rate but also cities are primary locations of the circulation of excess capital, socioeconomic divisions and hierarchies, political resistance, friction between human and non-human worlds, and the confluence of art, policy, and identity formation in placemaking. With essays by scholars working in a variety of fields—from architecture to literature to music to sociology—this collection maintains that any hope for achieving urban sustainability will require taking seriously the ways in which cities are imagined. Efforts to make cities sustainable must fully incorporate the humanities because critical endeavors and creative expressions that fall within the purview of the humanities are vital to closing the conceptual gulf, as well as the practical gap, between human and non-human conservation. Even if the environmental humanities embrace cities, critics must ask whether coalescing the terms ‘sustainability’ and ‘city’ may actually obstruct human action to combat climate change—which, from some angles, seems impending, self-imposed apocalypse. To examine the urban turn, Sustainability and the City attends to culture. Essays in the first part of the collection approach urban sustainability from various disciplinary vantage points to emphasize history, ideology, pedagogy, and critical theory. The second part of the collection analyzes urban commons on four different continents. Finally, the collection moves from a diverse set of interpretations of on-the-ground urban phenomena to a compilation of readings of sustainability in different media and genres—sound art, drama, fiction, and film—set in, or evocative of, cities. The collection carves out a place for artists and critics to help realize social justice in cities, which generate remarkable power, but power that is too often and too easily used destructively, unfairly, and wastefully despite cities’ unique capacities to inspire and sustain humanity.

Patrick Riordan takes a different approach to the questions of global ethics by following the direction of questioning initially pioneered by Aristotle; for him the most basic question of ethics is 'what is the good life'? So in the context of contemporary global ethics the Aristotelian questioner wonders about the good life on a global scale. Global Ethics and Global Common Goods fills the gap in existing literature caused by the neglect of the topic of the good in global ethics. Beginning by outlining answers to questions such as 'what is good?' and 'is there a highest good?' Riordan demonstrates the value of a common good perspective in matters of universal human rights and their institutions and practices, the study of international relations and the construction of global institutions, and debates about global justice between cosmopolitanism, nationalism and economic globalization. Philosophical questions provoked by these debates are identified and pursued, such as the question of a common human nature which seems presupposed by the language of universal rights. For experienced students of political philosophy and international relations this is a crucial text in the literature exploring the possibilities for politics on a world scale, while the perspective of the common good adds a new and distinctive dimension to current debates on global security and the challenges of managing conflict.

This volume traces the formation of the Asian American literary canon and the field of Asian American Studies from 1965-1996. It is intended for an academic audience, ranging from advanced undergraduate students to scholars from a variety of disciplines, interested in the formation of Asian American literary studies from 1965-1996.

Prosperity in the Twenty-First Century sets out a new vision for prosperity in the twenty-first century and how it can be achieved for all. The volume challenges orthodox understandings of economic models, but goes beyond contemporary debates to show how social innovation drives economic value. Drawing on substantive research in the UK, Lebanon and Kenya, it develops new concepts, frameworks, models and metrics for prosperity across a wide range of contexts, emphasising commonalities and differences. Its distinctive approach goes beyond defining and measuring prosperity – addressing the debate about the failures of GDP – to formulating and describing what is needed to make prosperity a realisable proposition for specific people living in specific locales. Departing from general propositions about post-growth to delineate pathways to prosperity, the volume emphasises that visions of the good life are diverse and require empirical work co-designed with local communities and stakeholders to drive change. It is essential reading for policymakers who are stuck, local government officers who need new tools, activists who wonder what is next, academics in need of refreshment, and students and people of all ages who want a way forward.

A multilingual, transnational literary tradition, Jewish American writing has long explored questions of personal identity and national boundaries. These questions can engage students in literature, writing, or religion; at Jewish, Christian, or secular schools; and in or outside the United States. This volume takes an expansive view of Jewish American literature, beginning with writing from the earliest colonies in the Americas and continuing to contemporary Soviet-born authors in the United States, including works that engage deeply with religious concepts and others that embrace assimilation. It invites readers to rethink the nature of American multiculturalism, suggests pairings of Jewish American texts with other ethnic American literatures, and examines the workings of whiteness and privilege. Contributors offer varied perspectives on classic texts such as Yekl, Bread Givers, and "Goodbye, Columbus," along with approaches to interdisciplinary topics including humor, graphic novels, and musical theater. The volume concludes with an extensive resources section.

Teachers work with students, parents, administrators, coaches, camp counselors, education researchers, postsecondary institutions, teachers of other grades and other subjects-in short, teachers accomplish their daily miracles through collaboration by asking questions about what they don't know and sharing what they do. This book was written by teacher pioneers to share their collaborating, their designing, and their exploring.

This collection features studies on trauma, literary theory, and psychoanalysis in women’s writing. It examines the ways in which literature helps to heal the wounded self, and it particularly concentrates attention on the way women explain the traumatic experiences of war, violence, or displacement. Covering a global range of women writers, this book focuses on the psychoanalytic role of literature in helping recover the voices buried by intense pain and suffering and to help those voices be heard. Literature brings the unconscious into being and focus, reconfiguring life through narration. These essays look at the relationship between traumatic experience and literary form.