Ethics of Tragedy

Ethics of Tragedy
Author: Ari Hirvonen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2020-01-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9781910761090

Ari Hirvonen's profound analysis of Greek tragedies, especially refugee tragedies and Sophocles' Oedipus-trilogy, that presents the sense and ethics of tragedy in a time of rapacious capitalism and ecocatastrophe.

A Perfect Moral Storm

A Perfect Moral Storm
Author: Stephen M. Gardiner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 508
Release: 2011-05-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199910456

Climate change is arguably the great problem confronting humanity, but we have done little to head off this looming catastrophe. In The Perfect Moral Storm, philosopher Stephen Gardiner illuminates our dangerous inaction by placing the environmental crisis in an entirely new light, considering it as an ethical failure. Gardiner clarifies the moral situation, identifying the temptations (or "storms") that make us vulnerable to a certain kind of corruption. First, the world's most affluent nations are tempted to pass on the cost of climate change to the poorer and weaker citizens of the world. Second, the present generation is tempted to pass the problem on to future generations. Third, our poor grasp of science, international justice, and the human relationship to nature helps to facilitate inaction. As a result, we are engaging in willful self-deception when the lives of future generations, the world's poor, and even the basic fabric of life on the planet is at stake. We should wake up to this profound ethical failure, Gardiner concludes, and demand more of our institutions, our leaders and ourselves. "This is a radical book, both in the sense that it faces extremes and in the sense that it goes to the roots." --Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews "The book's strength lies in Gardiner's success at understanding and clarifying the types of moral issues that climate change raises, which is an important first step toward solutions." --Science Magazine "Gardiner has expertly explored some very instinctual and vitally important considerations which cannot realistically be ignored. --Required reading." --Green Prophet "Gardiner makes a strong case for highlighting and insisting on the ethical dimensions of the climate problem, and his warnings about buck-passing and the dangerous appeal of moral corruptions hit home." --Times Higher Education "Stephen Gardiner takes to a new level our understanding of the moral dimensions of climate change. A Perfect Moral Storm argues convincingly that climate change is the greatest moral challenge our species has ever faced - and that the problem goes even deeper than we think." --Peter Singer, Princeton University

The Fragility of Goodness

The Fragility of Goodness
Author: Martha C. Nussbaum
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 587
Release: 2001-01-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1107393779

This book is a study of ancient views about 'moral luck'. It examines the fundamental ethical problem that many of the valued constituents of a well-lived life are vulnerable to factors outside a person's control, and asks how this affects our appraisal of persons and their lives. The Greeks made a profound contribution to these questions, yet neither the problems nor the Greek views of them have received the attention they deserve. This book thus recovers a central dimension of Greek thought and addresses major issues in contemporary ethical theory. One of its most original aspects is its interrelated treatment of both literary and philosophical texts. The Fragility of Goodness has proven to be important reading for philosophers and classicists, and its non-technical style makes it accessible to any educated person interested in the difficult problems it tackles. This edition, first published in 2001, features a preface by Martha Nussbaum.

Truthfulness and Tragedy

Truthfulness and Tragedy
Author: Stanley Hauerwas
Publisher:
Total Pages: 272
Release: 1977
Genre: Medical
ISBN:

In Truthfulness and Tragedy Stanley Hauerwas provides an account of moral existence and ethical rationality that shows how Christian convictions operate, or should operate, to form and direct lives. In attempting to conceptualize the basis of Christian ethics in a manner that will render Christian convictions morally intelligible, the author casts fresh light on traditional theoretical issues and articulates the distinctive Christian response to contemporary concerns such as suicide, medical ethics, and child care. The first section of the book deals with methodological issues: the meaning and nature of practical reason, obligation claims, natural law, and self deception, and the affinity of story and ethics. It focuses on the relation of truthfulness and tragedy and the need for a story--a set of religious convictions or "grammar of theology"--that does justice to the tragic character of human existence. The second section addresses substantive issues: suicide, euthanasia, and the value of survival; the moral limits of population growth; the definition of "person" for medical reasons; and social involvement and Christian ethics. The overall theme is the need for a community in which truthfulness is a way of life. In the final section, devoted to the problem of how to care for retarded children, the implications of the author's ethical position are given concrete expression. He discusses the assumptions underlying the willingness to have children, criteria for humanness, medical ethics, and how truthful communities deal with suffering. In Truthfulness and Tragedy Stanley Hauerwas extends and clarifies the ethical position set forth in his earlier books Character and the Christian Life and Vision and Virtue. He is associate professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame. He was a senior fellow in Christian medical ethics at the Joseph and Rose Kennedy Institute for the Study of Reproduction and Bioethics, and taught medical ethics at the University of Texas medical branch in Galveston.

Ethics in Ancient Greek Literature

Ethics in Ancient Greek Literature
Author: Maria Liatsi
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2020-08-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110699613

Interpretation of ancient Greek literature is often enough distorted by the preconceptions of modern times, especially on ancient morality. This is often equivalent to begging the question. If we think e.g. of aretê, which has different meanings in different contexts, we shall think in English (or in Modern Greek or in French or in German) and shall falsify the phenomena. If we are to understand the Greek concept e.g. of aretê we must study the nature of the situations in which it is applied. For it is an important fact in the study of Greek society that the Greeks used the one word (e.g. aretê) where we use different words. If we are to understand properly the texts, we have to view them in their historical and social context. Ancient Greek thought needs to be studied together with politics, ethics, and economic behaviour. Moreover, the best insights can be found in those who confine themselves to the terms of each ancient author's analysis. From this principle each of the contributions of the volume begins.

Tragedy, Tradition, Transformism

Tragedy, Tradition, Transformism
Author: D. Stephen Long
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2007-07-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1725220210

In his original interpretation and critique of Paul Ramsey's ethical thought, D. Stephen Long traces the development of one of the mid-twentieth century's most important and controversial religious social thinkers. Long examines Ramsey's early liberal idealism as well as later influences on his work, including the just war doctrine, Reinhold Niebuhr's realism, H. Richard Niebuhr's historical relativism, Karl Barth's neo-orthodoxy, and Jacques Maritain's integralism. Long overcomes obstacles confronting any Ramsey scholar--such as a theology that cannot be systematized and the complexities of Ramsey's own writing--and lends sharp insight to the philosophical, theological, and moral issues we face today. Scholars of religious ethics and intellectual thought will find this work to be essential reading.

Nietzsche and “The Birth of Tragedy”

Nietzsche and “The Birth of Tragedy”
Author: Paul Raimond Daniels
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2014-09-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317548094

Nietzsche's philosophy - at once revolutionary, erudite and deep - reaches into all spheres of the arts. Well into a second century of influence, the profundity of his ideas and the complexity of his writings still determine Nietzsche's power to engage his readers. His first book, "The Birth of Tragedy", presents us with a lively inquiry into the existential meaning of Greek tragedy. We are confronted with the idea that the awful truth of our existence can be revealed through tragic art, whereby our relationship to the world transfigures from pessimistic despair into sublime elation and affirmation. It is a landmark text in his oeuvre and remains an important book both for newcomers to Nietzsche and those wishing to enrich their appreciation of his mature writings. "Nietzsche and The Birth of Tragedy" provides a clear account of the text and explores the philosophical, literary and historical influences bearing upon it. Each chapter examines part of the text, explaining the ideas presented and assessing relevant scholarly points of interpretation. The book will be an invaluable guide to readers in Philosophy, Literary Studies and Classics coming to "The Birth of Tragedy" for the first time.

Ontology and the Art of Tragedy

Ontology and the Art of Tragedy
Author: Martha Husain
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 163
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0791489795

Ontology and the Art of Tragedy is a sustained reflection on the principles and criteria from which to guide one's approach to Aristotle's Poetics. Its scope is twofold: historical and systematic. In its historical aspect it develops an approach to Aristotle's Poetics, which brings his distinctive philosophy of being to bear on the reception of this text. In its systematic aspect it relates Aristotle's theory of art to the perennial desiderata of any theory of art, and particularly to Kandinsky's.

The Philosophy of Tragedy

The Philosophy of Tragedy
Author: Julian Young
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2013-06-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1107067464

This book is a full survey of the philosophy of tragedy from antiquity to the present. From Aristotle to Žižek the focal question has been: why, in spite of its distressing content, do we value tragic drama? What is the nature of the 'tragic effect'? Some philosophers point to a certain kind of pleasure that results from tragedy. Others, while not excluding pleasure, emphasize the knowledge we gain from tragedy - of psychology, ethics, freedom or immortality. Through a critical engagement with these and other philosophers, the book concludes by suggesting an answer to the question of what it is that constitutes tragedy 'in its highest vocation'. This book will be of equal interest to students of philosophy and of literature.

Tragic Pathos

Tragic Pathos
Author: Dana LaCourse Munteanu
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2011-11-10
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1139502344

Scholars have often focused on understanding Aristotle's poetic theory, and particularly the concept of catharsis in the Poetics, as a response to Plato's critique of pity in the Republic. However, this book shows that, while Greek thinkers all acknowledge pity and some form of fear as responses to tragedy, each assumes for the two emotions a different purpose, mode of presentation and, to a degree, understanding. This book reassesses expressions of the emotions within different tragedies and explores emotional responses to and discussions of the tragedies by contemporary philosophers, providing insights into the ethical and social implications of the emotions.