This book seeks to reframe our understanding of the lawyer's work by exploring how Martin Luther King, Jr built his advocacy on a coherent set of moral claims regarding the demands of love and justice in light of human nature. King never shirked from staking out challenging claims of moral truth, even while remaining open to working with those who rejected those truths. His example should inspire the legal profession as a reminder that truth-telling, even in a society that often (...) appears morally balkanized, has the capacity to move hearts and minds. At the same time, his example should give the profession pause, for King's success would have been impossible without his substantive views about human nature and the ends of justice. This book is an effort to reframe our conception of morality's relevance to professionalism through the lens provided by the public and prophetic advocacy of Dr King. (shrink)

Our society's longstanding commitment to the liberty of conscience has become strained by our increasingly muddled understanding of what conscience is and why we value it. Too often we equate conscience with individual autonomy, and so we reflexively favor the individual in any contest against group authority, losing sight of the fact that a vibrant liberty of conscience requires a vibrant marketplace of morally distinct groups. Defending individual autonomy is not the same as defending the liberty of conscience because, although (...) conscience is inescapably personal, it is also inescapably relational. Conscience is formed, articulated, and lived out through relationships, and its viability depends on the law's willingness to protect the associations and venues through which individual consciences can flourish: these are the myriad institutions that make up the space between the person and the state. Conscience and the Common Good reframes the debate about conscience by bringing its relational dimension into focus. (shrink)

This article provides a brief introduction to the interplay between law and religion in the health care context. First, I address the extent to which the commitments of a faith tradition may be written into laws that bind all citizens, including those who do not share those commitments. Second, I discuss the law’s accommodation of the faith commitments of individual health care providers—hardly a static inquiry, as the degree of accommodation is increasingly contested. Third, I expand the discussion to include (...) institutional health care providers, arguing that the legal system’s resistance to accommodating the morally distinct identities of institutional providers reflects a short-sighted view of the liberty of conscience. Finally, I offer some tentative thoughts about why these dynamics become even more complicated in the context of Islamic health care providers. (shrink)

The six essays presented in this volume afford the English-reading public the first serious and considered overview of the uniquely Germanic movements of psychological aesthetics and Kunstwissenschaft.

[1] T. 1. Die Metaphysik des Schönen. T. 2. Das Schöne in einseitiger Existenz.--[2] T. 3. [Bildende Künste] T. 4. Bildnerkunst. Malerei.--[3] T. 5. Die Musik. T. 6. Dichtkunst. Register.

This essay examines two contrasting cases of readers engaging with violent texts: student requests for trigger warnings to alert them to potentially troubling content in course materials, and widely popular fanfiction writing and reading in which fans create new stories within fictional worlds they love, sometimes adding depictions of physical, emotional, or sexual violence. Violent material is alternately resisted or is sought out and even created. Examining these contrasting stances reveals a conception of fiction in which violent content is central (...) for its capacity to produce powerful, personal effects in readers. With a measure of control over their engagement with and response to texts they read, readers can use depictions of violence to enable them to externalize, manipulate, and resolve their own potentially overwhelming emotional states. This outcome is obscured by the academic privileging of reading at a critical distance, and it demonstrates a vital role for the personal in theorizing fiction reading and pedagogy. (shrink)