This book shows why the discovery of the unconscious by Nietzsche and Freud requires a reconception of the concepts of moral agency and responsibility and even of morality itself. It explicates how contemporary psychology has taken over the traditional task of ethics in elucidating a theory of human well-being, but criticizes this psychology for being unable to generate adequate notions of either responsibility or moral agency. Riker develops a new moral psychology in which the reality of unconscious functioning is included within a theory of responsibility, and the agent's primary ethic concern becomes knowing what her unconscious motivations are and integrating them into a morally and psychologically mature self.

Develops an original and compelling moral psychology that recognizes both the centrality of unconscious motivation and the inescapability of moral responsibility.

This classic work is a monumental, integrated view of man's search for an understanding of the inner reaches of the mind. In an account that is both exhaustive and exciting, the distinguished psychiatrist and author demonstrates the long chain of development—through the exorcists, magnetists, and hypnotists—that led to the fruition of dynamic psychiatry in the psychological systems of Janet, Freud, Adler, and Jung.

This book examines the nature of Freud’s relationship to the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche regarded himself, among other things, as a psychologist. His psychological explorations included an understanding of the meaning and function of dreams, the unconscious, sublimation of drives, drives turned inward upon the self, unconscious guilt, unconscious envy, unconscious resistance, and much more that anticipated some of Freud’s fundamental psychoanalytic concepts. Although Freud wrote of Nietzsche having anticipated psychoanalytic concepts, he denied that Nietzsche had any influence on his thought.

Although cognitive psychology and neuroscience have usurped the influential position once held by psychoanalysis, this volume seeks to reclaim the value of the unconscious as a methodological tool for the study of ancient texts by transforming our understanding of what it means, how it operates, and how it relates to textual hermeneutics.

Moral Habitat explores how our moral imaginations and moral norms have been shaped by and even cocreated with Earth in diverse biotic communities. Weaving together science and religion with indigenous and womanist traditions, Nancie Erhard uses examples from a variety of sources, including post-Cartesian science, the Old Testament, and the Mi ́kmaq tribe of Eastern Canada. She demonstrates how each portrays the agency—including the moral agency—of the natural world. From this cross-cultural approach, she recasts the question of how we conceive of humans as moral agents. While written for "the sake of Earth," this thought-provoking book goes well beyond the issue of ecology to show the contribution that such an approach can make to pluralist ethics on a range of timely social issues.

In Why It Is Good to be Good, John H. Riker shows how modernity's reigning concept of the self undermines moral life and lays the basis for the epidemic of cheating that is devastating social and economic institutions. He argues that by accepting Kohut's brilliant and original...

This book offers a series of critical commentaries on, and forced encounters between, different thinkers. At stake in this philosophical and psychoanalytical enquiry is the drawing of a series of diagrams of the finite/infinite relation, and the mapping out of the contours for a speculative and pragmatic production of subjectivity.

The way an individual's psychology is intertwined with their morality is the subject of this fascinating book from the pen of the late Ilham Dilman. Dilman convincingly argues that evil, though it cannot be reduced to psychological terms (it is a moral concept) is explicable in terms of an individual person's psychology. Goodness, by contrast, comes from the person and not their psychology. Philosophers the world over will want to read this book and see how Dilman skilfully defends his arguments.

In this book, Aleksandr V. Bezgodov and Konstantin V. Barezhev formulate planetary ethics—the most important part of the philosophy of the Planetary Project. Planetary ethics represent the moral basis and value code for building a biocompatible, harmonious, and manageable civilization. They analyze the moral and ethical views of those Russian cosmists who belonged to the natural science branch of this unique philosophical, scientific, and cultural phenomenon. Looking at the world through the prism of a planetary-cosmic consciousness, cosmists developed a system of biocentric and humanistic values. Russian cosmism is a spiritual rebellion of life against chaos, death, and limitation. A combination of science, philosophy, poetry, and a certain utopianism extended on a universal scale makes Russian cosmism a prologue to the modern nonclassical, science-based worldview that emphasizes synergy and globalism. Back in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, cosmists focused on a united humanity and the principles of a close relationship between man and the universe. This monograph lays the groundwork for the planetary ethics that originated in the philosophy of Russian cosmism. The monograph continues the series of books of the Planetary Project, Planetary Project: From Sustainable Development to Managed Harmony and Planetary Rent as an Instrument for Solving Global Problems.