A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language

David Bentley Hart (Author)

All Things Are Full of Gods: The Mysteries of Mind and Life

5,A world-renowned philosopher's genre-defying exploration of the mystery of consciousness "[A] masterpiece. . . . The most thorough and rigorous account of the nature of reality to be published in a century."--James Matthew Wilson, World Magazine In a blossoming garden located far outside all worlds, a group of aging Greek gods have gathered to discuss the nature of existence, the mystery of mind, and whether there is a transcendent God from whom all things come. Turning to Eros, Psyche asks, "Do you see this flower, my love?" So begins David Bentley Hart's unprecedented exploration of the mystery of consciousness. Writing in the form of a Platonic dialogue, he systematically subjects the mechanical view of nature that has prevailed in Western culture for four centuries to dialectical interrogation. Powerfully rehabilitating a classical view in which mental acts are irreducible to material causes, he argues through the gods' exchanges that the foundation of all reality is spiritual or mental rather than material. The structures of mind, organic life, and even language together attest to an infinite act of intelligence in all things that we may as well call God. Engaging ...

Daniel Mark (Author)

The Nature of Law: Authority, Obligation, and the Common Good

1,Challenging the prevailing understanding of the authority of law, Daniel Mark offers a theory of moral obligation that is rooted both in command and in the law's orientation to the common good.When and why do we have an obligation to obey the law? Prevailing theories in the philosophy of law, starting with the work of H. L. A. Hart and Joseph Raz, fail to provide definitive answers regarding the nature of legal obligation. In this highly original and effective new work, Daniel Mark argues that there is a prima facie moral obligation to obey the law simply because it is the law. In Mark's view, the best concept of law--one that allows for the possibility of justified authority and obligation--defines law as a set of commands oriented to the common good. Legal obligation, he proposes, shares defining features with moral obligation and with religious obligation while aligning wholly with neither.This philosophically coherent view of legal obligation offers a viable framework for analyzing important and seemingly paradoxical puzzles about the law, such as why civil disobedience is punished as lawbreaking or why war-crimes trials for legal but immoral acts present a moral quandary. By ...

Vladimir Jankelevitch (Author)

The Paradox of Morality

5,The last work by "one of the most singular voices of twentieth-century French philosophy" (Critical Inquiry) on the complexities of love in public and private life Vladimir Jank?l?vitch stands alongside Emmanuel Levinas as one of the most admired French ethicists of the twentieth century, known for his work on everything from the possibility of forgiveness after the Holocaust to the philosophy of music. In his final work, The Paradox of Morality (1981), Jank?l?vitch turns his attention to the fundamental questions of the moral life: the struggle between egoism and self-sacrifice, the question of whether pure or infinite love exists, and moral agency in the pursuit of human rights. In dialogue with philosophers from Plato to Nietzsche, Jank?l?vitch proposes that the moral life comprises an acrobatic act in which we must balance the demands of love and our responsibility to the other against our natural attachment to the self. Morality is the activity of realizing and combining, in each individual action, the maximum amount of love possible with the minimum of being. This oscillation between self and other--and between being and love--is never fixed or stable. In the end, ...