Ethics Lost in Modernity: Reflections on Wittgenstein and Bioethics turns to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein as a guide to understand the immense success—yet great danger—of bioethics. Matthew Vest traces the story of bioethics since its inception in the late 1960s as a way to uncover a number of hidden assumptions within modern ethics that relies upon scientific theorizing as the fundamental way of thinking. Autonomy and utilitarianism, in particular, are two nearly unquestioned goals of scientific theorizing that are easily accessible, but at what cost? Vest argues that such an ethics enacts a thin moral calculation that runs the risk of enslaving ethics to scientism. Far from the depth of religious ethos and practices of virtue, modern ethics is lost amidst thin ethical theories, enacting a language game that instrumentalizes ethics in service of technological, bureaucratic, and professional end goals. He proposes that true moral living is far from anti–science, but rather is envisioned best when ethics and science are balanced with keen insights from ancient sacred cosmology.

Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the major philosophers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Best known for After Virtue, first published in 1981, his output spans seven decades and has been unusually wide-ranging in its impact. As MacIntyre enters his tenth decade, this book pays tribute not just to his work, but to its influence across disciplines outside philosophy. Beginning with an intellectual biography, the chapters that follow, written by leading scholars in their fields, explore MacIntyre's contributions to theology, Thomism, moral philosophy, classical philosophy, political philosophy, Marxism, the Frankfurt School, communication, business ethics, sociology, education, law, and therapeutic method. Essential reading for scholars from across these disciplines, and for anyone who wishes to understand MacIntyre's contributions, Learning from MacIntyre not only helps readers to appreciate what we may learn from this influential thinker, but also illustrates his work's continuing significance going forward.

A new approach to environmental ethics from within the Christian tradition.

This book centres on the notion of human life that lies at the foundation of contemporary thinking in the areas of ethics, law and politics. Centrally, the book addresses the deep divide, characteristic of this thinking, between: on the one hand, those who wish to do away with any anthropological understandings of the human, and appeal to mere facts delivered by science; and, on the other hand, critics who defend an anthropological understanding of human life that is tied to traditional, teleological, metaphysics. In short: knowledge of the world is given over to the sciences and moral theory is considered to operate in a distinct, and insulated, domain. But this opposition has, Piergiorgio Donatelli argues here, outlived its usefulness. Through a discussion of the intimate human spheres of reproduction, dying and sexuality, he argues that we now live in a world characterized by new ways of living: by novel rearrangements of emotions, and by the modification, and in some cases a radical rupture in, existing ideas of human life. These shifts challenge any established separation between facts and norms, between human life and its conceptualization. As such, it is argued here, they simultaneously offer the possibility of a new, socially articulated, understanding of the relationship between subjectivity and normativity. Engaging pressing contemporary themes, this book will be invaluable to scholars in the fields of ethics, law and political theory, and both analytic and continental philosophy.

How society deals with the problem of evil in a post-9/11 world.

Revisiting Virginia Woolf's most experimental novels, Elsa Högberg explores how Woolf's writing prompts us to re-examine the meaning of intimacy. In Högberg's readings of Jacob's Room, Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and The Waves, intimacy is revealed to inhere not just in close relations with the ones we know and love, but primarily within those unsettling encounters which suspend our comfortable sense of ourselves as separate from others and the world around us. Virginia Woolf and the Ethics of Intimacy locates this radical notion of intimacy at the heart of Woolf's introspective, modernist poetics as well as her ethical and political resistance to violence, aggressive nationalism and fascism. Engaging contemporary theory – particularly the more recent works of Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva – it reads Woolf as a writer and ethical thinker whose vital contribution to the modernist scene of inter-war Britain is strikingly relevant to critical debates around intimacy, affect, violence and vulnerability in our own time.

What is a Love Feast? How did the early church celebrate the Love Feast? How might Christians today celebrate the Love Feast? In Recovering the Love Feast, Paul Stutzman addresses these questions, offering a unique blend of liturgical history and practical theology. Part I outlines the history of the Love Feast, noting its prevalence in early church worship, its gradual decline, and its reemergence in the practices of several Pietist groups (e.g., the Moravians, Methodists, and Brethren). Particular focus is given to five elements of the celebration, that is: eucharistic preparation, feetwashing, the fellowship meal, the holy kiss, and the Eucharist proper. In Part II, Stutzman argues that the Love Feast is a valuable Christian practice and a celebration worth recovering in those traditions that may have forgotten the feast. Rather than prescribing a specific method for celebrating the Love Feast, Stutzman proposes that there are five key disciplines that today's Love Feasts should embody: submission, love, confession, reconciliation, and thanksgiving. This book encourages Christians from a range of traditions to experiment with reclaiming the Love Feast, with the hope that each celebration serves as an act of worship to God and an authentic expression of Christian discipleship.

With this book the international academic discourse on mobility is taken a step further, through the intertwined perspectives of different social sciences, engineering and the humanities. The Ethics of Mobilities departs from the recent interest in social surveillance, raised by the use of technology for the surveillance and control of mobility as well as for transport. It widens this theme to encompass a broad scale of issues, ranging from freedom and escape to social exclusion and control, thus raising important questions of ethics, identity and religion; questions that are dealt with by a diverse, yet structured range of chapters, arranged around the themes of ethics and religion, and freedom and control. Through their variety and diversity of perspectives, the chapters of this book offer a substantial interdisciplinary contribution to the socially and environmentally relevant discussion about what a technically and economically accelerating mobility does to life and how it might be transformed to sustain a more life-enhancing future. Ethics of Mobilities will excite not only international interest, but will also appeal to scholars across a wide range of disciplines, in fields as diverse as theology and engineering.

Over the past twenty years the transition from the late Middle Ages to the early modern era has received increasing attention from experts in the history of philosophy. In part, this new interest arises from claims, made in literature aimed at a less specialist readership, that this transition was responsible for the subsequent philosophical and theological problems of the Enlightenment. Philosophers like Alasdair MacIntyre and theologians like John Milbank display a certain nostalgia for the medieval synthesis of Thomas Aquinas and, consequently, evaluate the period from 1300 to 1700 in rather negative terms. Other historians of philosophy writing for the general public, such as Charles Taylor, take a more positive view of the Reformation but nevertheless conclude that modernity has been shaped by 1 conflicts which stem from early modern times. Ethics and moral thought occupy a central place in these theories. It is assumed that we have lost something – the concept of virtue, for instance, or the source of common morality. Yet those who put forward such notions do not treat the history of ethics in detail. From the historian’s perspective, their far-reaching theoretical assumptions are based on a quite small body of textual evidence. In reality, there was a rich variety of approaches to moral thinking and ethical theories during the period from 1400 to 1600.

Focusing on the history of ideas, this book explores important questions concerning knowledge in relation to philosophy, science, ethics and Christian faith. Kirk contributes to the current debate about the intellectual basis and integrity of Western culture, exploring controversial issues concerning the notions of modernity and post-modernity. Repositioning the Christian faith as a valid dialogue partner with contemporary secular movements in philosophy and ethics, Kirk seeks to show that in 'post-Christian' Europe the Christian faith still possesses intellectual resources worthy to be reckoned with. This book's principal argument is that contemporary Western society faces a cultural crisis. It explores what appears to be an historical enigma, namely the question of why Western intellectual endeavours in philosophy and science seem to have abandoned the search for a source of knowledge able to draw together disparate pieces of information provided by different disciplines. Kirk draws conclusions, particularly in the area of ethical decision-making, from this apparent failure and invites readers to consider Christian theism afresh as a means for the renewal of culture and society.