The discussion of good and evil must not be confined to the sterile lecture halls of academics but related instead to ordinary human feelings, needs, and desires, says noted philosopher Richard Taylor. Efforts to understand morality by exploring human reason will always fail because we are creatures of desire as well. All morality arises from our intense and inescapable longing. The distinction between good and evil is always clouded by rationalists who convert the real problems of (...) ethics into complex philosophical puzzles. In the first part of Good and Evil, Taylor looks for a more meaningful conception by reexamining and rejecting the whole rationalistic tradition that dominates philosophical ethics. The second part provides an empirical explanation of good and evil, noting that one does not have to look too far to find prime examples of the failure of fixed moral rules. Including important commentary on Joseph Fletcher's groundbreaking situation ethics, and Aristotle's virtues (e.g., magnanimity and pride), Taylor rounds out the book by developing a philosophy of aspiration--personal worth as an ethical ideal--to replace the morality of duty. He offers a modified form of situation ethics to fit the contemporary problems we face. (shrink)

Beyond Good and Evil is one of the most scathing and powerful critiques of philosophy, religion, science, politics and ethics ever written. In it, Nietzsche presents a set of problems, criticisms and philosophical challenges that continue both to inspire and to trouble contemporary thought. In addition, he offers his most subtle, detailed and sophisticated account of the virtues, ideas, and practices which will characterize philosophy and philosophers of the future. With his relentlessly energetic style and tirelessly probing manner, (...) Nietzsche embodies the type of thought he wants to foster, while defining its historical role and determining its agenda. This edition offers a new and readable translation, by Judith Norman, of one of the most influential texts in the history of philosophy, together with an introduction by Rolf-Peter Horstmann that sets it in its historical and philosophical context. (shrink)

Raimond Gaita's Good and Evil is one of the most important, original and provocative books on the nature of morality to have been published in recent years. It is essential reading for anyone interested in what it means to talk about good and evil. Gaita argues that questions about morality are inseparable from the preciousness of each human being, an issue we can only address if we place the idea of remorse at the centre of moral (...) life. Drawing on an astonishing range of thinkers and writers, including Plato, Wittgenstein, George Orwell and Primo Levi, Gaita also reflects on the place of reason and truth in morality and ultimately how questions about good and evil are connected to the meaning of our lives. This revised edition of Good and Evil includes a substantial new preface and afterword by the author. (shrink)

“Supposing that truth is a women-what then?” This is the very first sentence in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil . Not very often are philosophers so disarmingly explicit in their intention to discomfort the reader. In fact, one might say that the natural state of Nietzsche’s reader is one of perplexity. Yet it is in the process of overcoming the perplexity that one realizes how rewarding to have one’s ideas challenged. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche (...) critiques the mediocre in modernity and challenges the reader to accept their state of becoming and accept improvisation and creativity of the process. Nietzsche’s book is carefully designed to disorient the reader, to systematically provoke and tease her to the point of stealing away her certainties. It is challenging yet rewarding to overcome the perplexities of Nietzsche’s teachings. (shrink)

Beyond Good and Evil was one of the last books German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, and has fast become one of the best-known works on moral and ethical philosophy. A collection of aphorisms and commentary largely make up one of his most celebrated works on his mature philosophy of the free spirit, and continues to be one of the most widely read and studied works of philosophy today. To be published as part of the first batch. Along with (...) Thus Spake Zaruthustra, this is Nietzsche's most popular work, in which he dismisses the a slave morality of Western civilization in favour of the a will to power. There are many editions, but they tend to be cheap paperback versions, or academic-style editions. This will be a nice looking collectable hard-back edition. (shrink)

Raimond Gaita's _Good and Evil_ is one of the most important, original and provocative books on the nature of morality to have been published in recent years. It is essential reading for anyone interested in what it means to talk about good and evil. Gaita argues that questions about morality are inseparable from the preciousness of each human being, an issue we can only address if we place the idea of remorse at the centre of moral life. Drawing (...) on an astonishing range of thinkers and writers, including Plato, Wittgenstein, George Orwell and Primo Levi, Gaita also reflects on the place of reason and truth in morality and ultimately how questions about good and evil are connected to the meaning of our lives. This revised edition of _Good and Evil_ includes a substantial new preface and afterword by the author. (shrink)

Raimond Gaita draws moral philosophy away from the academic study of ethics and considers instead how real people actually think, talk and feel about morality. He explores our ideas of good and evil, and their link to our respect for human beings and the'preciousness' of each individual.

What is ‘evil’? What are the ways of overcoming this destructive and morally recalcitrant phenomenon? To what extent is the use of punitive violence tenable? _Evil and the Philosophy of Retribution _compares the responses of three modern Indian commentators on the Bhagavad-Gita — Aurobindo Ghose, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Mahatma Gandhi. The book reveals that some of the central themes in the Bhagavad-Gita were transformed by these intellectuals into categories of modern socio-political thought by reclaiming them from pre-modern debates (...) on ritual and renunciation. Based on canonical texts, this work presents a fascinating account of how the relationship between ‘good’, ‘evil’ and retribution is construed against the backdrop of militant nationalism and the development of modern Hinduism. Amid competing constructions of Indian tradition as well as contemporary concerns, it traces the emerging representations of modern Hindu self-consciousness under colonialism, and its very understanding of evil surrounding a textual ethos. Replete with Sanskrit, English, Marathi, and Gujarati sources, this will especially interest scholars of modern Indian history, philosophy, political science, history of religion, and those interested in the Bhagavad-Gita. (shrink)

Nietzsche's mature masterpiece, Beyond Good and Evil considers the origins and nature of Judeo-Christian morality; the end of philosophical dogmatism and beginning of perspectivism; the questionable virtues of science and scholarship; liberal democracy, nationalism, and women's emancipation. A superb and new translation by Marion Faber, this highly annotated edition is complemented by a lucid introduction by one of the most eminent of Nietzsche scholars, Robert C. Holub.

One of the century's greatest philosophers, without whom there would be no Sartre, no Foucault, no Frankfurt School, Martin Heidegger was also a man of great failures and flaws, a Faustus who made a pact with the devil of his time, Adolf Hitler. The story of Heidegger's life and philosophy, a quintessentially German story in which good and evil, brilliance and blindness are inextricably entwined and the passions and disasters of a whole century come into play, is told (...) in this brilliant biography. Heidegger grew up in Catholic Germany where, for a chance at pursuing a life of learning, he pledged himself to the priesthood. Soon he turned apostate and sought a university position, which set him on the path to becoming the star of German philosophy in the 1920s. Rüdiger Safranski chronicles Heidegger's rise along with the thought he honed on the way, with its debt to Heraclitus, Plato, and Kant, and its tragic susceptibility to the conservatism that emerged out of the nightmare of Germany's loss in World War I. A chronicle of ideas and of personal commitments and betrayals, Safranski's biography combines clear accounts of the philosophy that won Heidegger eternal renown with the fascinating details of the loves and lapses that tripped up this powerful intellectual. The best intellectual biography of Heidegger ever written and a best-seller in Germany, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil does not shy away from full coverage of Heidegger's shameful transformation into a propagandist for the National Socialist regime; nor does it allow this aspect of his career to obscure his accomplishments. Written by a master of Heidegger's philosophy, the book is one of the best introductions to the thought and to the life and times of the greatest German philosopher of the century. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Don Quijote and the Law of LiteratureCarl Good (bio)The part is one of these beings, the whole minus this part the other. But the whole minus a part is not the whole and as long as this relationship persists, there is no whole, only two unequal parts.—Rousseau, Social Contract, cited by Paul de Man in Allegories of ReadingBut it is not just that, because it is also a (...) performative.... There is first a performative, the act of positing..., which then moves to a system of tropes; a kind of anamorphosis of tropes takes place, in which all the tropological systems are engendered, as a result of this original act of positing.... It is circulation which is out of hand,... the sheer circulation or play of the signifier, and which is, as you know, the root of error, madness, stupidity and all other evil.—Paul de Man, “The Concept of Irony”Amid a confusion of narrative inversions, misleading appearances, and unresolvable disputes, at least two things are consistent in Don Quijote de la Mancha: first, the knight’s singular fidelity to what I will refer to as a law of literature, which persists like a phantasm of continuity throughout the larger narrative; and, second, the many interruptions of this narrative by the stories, or episodes, recounted by the characters who cross don Quijote’s path (including the knight himself), in the form of speeches, testimonies, plays, jokes, poems, and so on. In at least one strict sense, these other stories have nothing to do with that path other than their interruptions of it and by it. Such a claim has its own strategic value and does not entirely contradict the reasonings of a long history of critics of the Quijote who have tended to argue from a variety of different standpoints for some kind of ideological cohesion that would bind the smaller episodes to the larger story that they interpolate. But at a certain ground zero of interpretation—albeit a paradoxical ground that prohibits a scholarly shelter to be built on it—no argument would be sufficient to establish such a coherence among the work’s separate narrative parts, since such an argument would live in the brief, oneiric intensity of the critic’s testimony and that testimony’s potential effects rather than in the composition of the work itself somewhere beyond its apprehension by reading. Nonetheless, out of the dismembered ensemble of the Quijote what does perhaps effect its own strange kind of life is the very play of ironic interruptions and frictions between the dismembered parts, the profusion of which seems to impose itself as the work’s own aggressive insistence on itself as something which makes sense possible by constantly provoking and unsettling sense. That is where we could begin to speak of don Quijote himself, not only as the phantasmatic agent of this unsettling but also as the mad promise of justice that could be said to motivate it.The play of interruptions in don Quijote’s own story begins to outline the shifting contours and living contradictions of this novel as a “text” in the sense in which Derrida [End Page 44] and others have used the term: that which “names or relates in its way... [a] conflict without encounter between law and singularity” [“Before the Law” 187]. Although the story of this “encounter” has been often recounted, it bears another citation here, at least because it seems to be forgotten more often than it is told. Even when it is told, the story is often muted in homage to the name of Derrida by writers who tacitly assume that Derrida’s is the only possible version of this “conflict without encounter.” That version would be better described as merely one particular ethical shaping or forcing—a powerful one—of a story that has been told, and remains untold, in uncountable ways. Nonetheless, such a democratic assessment of Derrida does not quite justify a dismissal of his version as merely one among others, since, for one thing, it would be unable to account for the astonishing hold that different versions of Derridean “deconstruction” continue to have on the imagination of North American... (shrink)

*Tackles the Thomistic debate surrounding the inherent good and evil of human actions*.

This article discusses madness and saintliness in Dostoevsky’s novels and investigates how the madman and the saint discern between good and evil. I first explore the metaphysical, spiritual, and moral universe of Dostoevsky’s characters by drawing on William Desmond’s philosophy of the between. Second, I argue that the madman’s misconstrual of reality can be grasped as an idolatrous, divisive, and parodic imitation of the good. Third, I reflect on disembodied discernment. In some cases, due to the weakness (...) of the moral agent, the good cannot be properly embodied in space and time, even if a person exhibits ethically sound discernment. Fourth, I look at examples of holy discernment and examine how, through love, the genuinely good person is able to transform idolatry into a universal and cosmic sacramentalism. (shrink)

"Scribner library ; SL 45."A Hebrew version of the first essay was published in 1950 under title: (romanized form) ha-Tsedek veha-ʻavel ʻal-pi tseror mizmore Tehilim. I. Right and wrong, translated by R.G. Smith. --II. Images of good and evil, translated by M. Bullock.

The distinction between good and evil is clouded by rationalists who convert the real problems of ethics into complex philosophical puzzles. Taylor develops a philosophy of aspiration -- personal worth as an ethical ideal -- to replace the morality of duty. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

This discussion of Jewish philosophy, covers the complex issue of good and evil in the context of classical Jewish thought.

Democracy faces threats from an emerging right-wing movement in democratic governments around the world. This may be even more prevalent in the United States because there is an evil that uses rhetorical tropes to undermine the anchor institutions of democracy: press, courts, universities, and Congress. This evil has a personification--former President Donald Trump. All the rhetorical critiques of Trump, that he is a demagogue, an authoritarian, a serial liar, a populist on steroids, fail to take into account the (...) evil that is fomented by his angry and vengeful rhetoric. Pictures of evil in Scripture, philosophy, and rhetoric bear a striking resemblance to Trump. It is not enough to say that he is dangerous to democracy. Kennedy claims that he is the evil seed in democracy that is even now sprouting new versions of the Trump rhetoric as each acolyte attempts to outrage the next. Good and Evil in the Garden of Democracy screams at the evil, fights against the evil, and then attempts to sing the songs of goodness and democracy from poets, prophets, and rhapsodes. For the health of democracy these words have been written. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Divided into three essays, this title offers an investigation into the origins of our moral values, or as the author calls them 'moral prejudices'. It addresses the concept of guilt and its role in the development of civilization and religion. It also considers suffering and its role in human existence.

Beyond Good and Evil (1886) and On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) are Nietzsche's two most persuasive and philosophical books, following close on the heels of his breakthrough hybrid Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85); here for the first time Nietzsche represents himself as a philosopher, setting forth the proper activity of philosophers and training his formidable genealogical focus on the origins and motivations of morality.

Since September 11, 2001, many people in the United States have been more inclined to use the language of good and evil, and to be more comfortable with the idea that certain moral standards are objective (true independently of what anyone happens to think of them). Some people, especially those who are not religious, are not sure how to substantiate this view. Whatever Happened to Good and Evil? provides a basis for exploring these doubts and ultimately (...) defends the objectivity of ethics. Engaging and accessible, it is the first introduction to meta-ethics written especially for students and general readers with no philosophical background. Focusing on the issues at the foundation of morality, it poses such questions as: How can we know what is right and wrong? Does ethical objectivity require God? Why should I be moral? Where do moral standards come from? What is a moral value, and how can it exist in a scientific world? Do cultural diversity and persistent moral disagreement support moral skepticism? Writing in a clear and lively style and employing many examples to illustrate theoretical arguments, Russ Shafer-Landau identifies the many weaknesses in contemporary moral skepticism and devotes considerable attention to presenting, and critiquing, the most difficult objections to his view. Also included in the book are a helpful summary of all the major arguments covered, as well as a glossary of key philosophical terms. Whatever Happened to Good and Evil? is ideal for a variety of philosophy courses and compelling reading for anyone interested in ethics. (shrink)

To be ashamed of one's immorality—that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one's morality. Friedrich Nietzsche.

_Beyond Good and Evil_ is Nietzsche's first sustained philosophical treatment of issues important to him. Unlike the expository prose of the essayistic period, the stylized forays and jabs of the aphoristic period, and the lyrical-philosophical rhetoric of the Zarathustra-period, _Beyond Good and Evil_ inscribes itself boldly into the history of philosophy, challenging ancient and modern notions of philosophy's achievements and insisting on a new task for "new philosophers." This is a watershed book for Nietzsche and for philosophy in (...) the modern era. _On the Genealogy of Morality_ applies Nietzsche's celebrated genealogical method, honed in the earlier aphoristic writings, to the problem of morality's influence on the human species. In three treatises that strikingly anticipate insights appearing much later in Freud's _Civilization and Its Discontents_, Nietzsche provides an anthropological psychograph of our species, revealing the origins of the concepts of good and evil, the roles played by guilt and bad conscience, and the persistence of ascetic ideals. Manifesting a hopeful yet unsentimental assessment of the human condition, these books resonated throughout the 20th century and continue to exert broad appeal. (shrink)

" Now Laurence Lampert sets out to fulfill this prophecy by providing a section by section interpretation of this philosophical masterpiece that emphasizes its unity and depth as a comprehensive new teaching on nature and humanity.According ...

The Metaphysics of Good and Evil is the first, full-length contemporary defence, from the perspective of analytic philosophy, of the Scholastic theory of good and evil - the theory of Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and most medieval and Thomistic philosophers. Goodness is analysed as obedience to nature. Evil is analysed as the privation of goodness. Goodness, surprisingly, is found in the non-living world, but in the living world it takes on a special character. The book analyses (...) various kinds of goodness, showing how they fit into the Scholastic theory. The privation theory of evil is given its most comprehensive contemporary defence, including an account of truthmakers for truths of privation and an analysis of how causation by privation should be understood. In the end, all evil is deviance - a departure from the goodness prescribed by a thing's essential nature. Key Features: Offers a comprehensive defence of a venerable metaphysical theory, conducted using the concepts and methods of analytic philosophy. Revives a much neglected approach to the question of good and evil in their most general nature. Shows how Aristotelian-Thomistic theory has more than historical relevance to a fundamental philosophical issue, but can be applied in a way that is both defensible and yet accessible to the modern philosopher. Provides what, for the Scholastic philosopher, is arguably the only solid metaphysical foundation for a separate treatment of the origins of morality. (shrink)

In this multi-disciplinary collection, we ask the question, 'What did, and do, Quakers think about good and evil?' There are no simple or straightforwardly uniform answers to this, but in this collection, we draw together contributions that for the first time look at historical and contemporary Quakerdom's approach to the ethical and theological problem of evil and good. Within Quakerism can be found Liberal, Conservative, and Evangelical forms. This book uncovers the complex development of metaethical thought (...) by a religious group that has evolved with an unusual degree of diversity. In doing so, it also points beyond the boundaries of the Religious Society of Friends to engage with the spectrum of thinking in the wider religious world. (shrink)

Spiritual Writer, theologian, and philosopher, Fr. Robert Spitzer S.J., tackles the topic of recognizing and overcoming spiritual evil. His focus is the human heart. His goal: our spiritual and moral transformation, which leads to true peace and genuine happiness. The book is divided into two main parts: (1) the realities of God's goodness and of spiritual evil, and (2) recognizing and overcoming the diabolical tactics of deception, temptation, and sin. The author synthesizes the best advice given by Catholic (...) spiritual masters throughout the ages and gives a practical guide to implementing it in our busy lives. Father Spitzer provides the biblical and theological background of Jesus' victory over evil. He also explores the reality of the devil, including extraordinary manifestations of diabolic activity such as possession. With insights from modern psychology, he shows how prayer can transform the subconscious psyche, making us better able to resist temptation, detach from the world, and grow in holiness. (shrink)

The article is an attempt to outline a new paradigm of thinking, contained in the dialogical “you are.” Józef Tischner creatively developed ideas of Buber and Levinas. He claimed that in the face of “death of a man” there is a need to search for new ways of rescuing our humanity. The philosophy of drama starts from a question, which is a “cry of pain” in the presence of evil. A man — according to Nietzsche’s discovery — looks for (...) power, understood by Tischner as a “grace,” which is a specific good. Forces of good and evil influence a man both in a constructive and destructive way. A desire for unlimited power inevitably appears in the depth of a human heart. Evil, as a false power, reveals itself both in the individual and social aspect. Dehumanized global structures grow today as “systems of evil.” The agathological drama is being realized also in the dimension of faith and unbelief, in the sphere of the division between faith and mind. The “resurrection” of man is possible owing to meeting with another person whose dignity and beauty one may discover no matter how different he is. In the civilization of work the man is often treated as a tool, an instrument for egoistic benefit. The agathological philosophy aims to be a way of thinking attached to a specific man, while it looks for a key and a solution to a drama of a man, entangled in the system of work, consumption, empty hopes and pseudo-values. This philosophical thought has great potential to diagnose our times, which is the first step on the way to the “transformation of all values.” Key words GOOD, EVIL, AGATHOLOGY, REASON, FAITH. (shrink)

This superb new translation of Nietzsche's mature masterpiece, Beyond Good and Evil, offers the most comprehensively annotated text, complemented by a lucid introduction by one of the most eminent of Nietzsche scholars, Robert C. Holub.

I. The moral criterion.--II. The individual and the society. Man and the universe.

Abstract In what ways was Nietzsche right, from a Buddhist perspective, and where did he go wrong? Nietzsche understood how the distinction we make between this world and a higher spiritual realm serves our need for security, and he saw the bad faith in religious values motivated by this need. He did not perceive how his alternative, more aristocratic values, also reflects the same anxiety. Nietzsche realised how the search for truth is motivated by a sublimated desire for symbolic security; (...) philosophy's attempt to create the world reflects the tyrannical will?to?power, becoming the most ?spiritualised? version of the need to impose our will. Insofar as truth is our intellectual effort to grasp being symbolically, however, Nietzsche overlooks a different reversal of perspective which could convert the ?bad infinite? of heroic will into the good infinite of disseminating play. What he considered the crown of his system?eternal recurrence?is actually its denouement. Having seen through the delusion of Being, Nietzsche still sought a Being within Becoming. Nietzsche is able to affirm the value of this moment only by making it recur eternally. Rather than the way to vanquish nihilism, will?to?power turns out to be pure nihilism, for nihilism is not the debacle of all meaning but our dread of that debacle and what we do to avoid it. (shrink)

What is evil? -- Problems of evil -- Theodicy -- Divine hiddenness -- Evil, atheism and the problem of good -- Evil and suffering in Hinduism and Buddhism -- Eternal goods and the triumph over evil.

Talk about evil resonates in ways that are culturally inherited. Historical and religious dimensions of “evil” often seem to be front and center. Nevertheless, we argue that it would be too quick to dismiss the study of evil within secular ethics. We defend an outlook that is inspired by ancient ethics—also called virtue ethics—which accepts the so-called Guise of the Good account of motivation. For an agent to be motivated to perform an action, something about the (...) action must look good to her. We argue that evil actions do not constitute exceptions to the Guise of the Good. To preserve this framework, we entertain a privative account of evil, according to which evil is the absence of the good, and yet appears in a positive light to the agent who performs an evil action. We reject the view that evil is quantitatively extreme badness. An account of evil should permit that some instances of evil are from a third person perspective not extremely bad. On this picture, evil is agent-relative; something can be evil relative to one person without being evil relative to another person. Accordingly, several qualities—rather than only one distinctive quality—can make an action evil. (shrink)