Hegel is regarded as one of the most influential figures on modern political and intellectual development. After painting Hegel's life and times in broad strokes, Peter Singer goes on to tackle some of the more challenging aspects of Hegel's philosophy. Offering a broad discussion of Hegel's ideas and an account of his major works, Singer explains what have often been considered abstruse and obscure ideas in a clear and inviting manner.
About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most...

What is ethics? Where does it come from? Can we really hope to find any rational way of deciding how we ought to live? If we can, what would it be like, and how are we going to know when we have found it? To capture the essentials of what we know about the origins and nature of ethics, Peter Singer has drawn on anthropology, evolution, game theory, and works of fiction, in addition to the classic moral philosophy of such thinkers as Nietzsche, Kant, and Confucius. By choosing some of the finest pieces of writing, old and new, in and about ethics, he conveys the intellectual excitement of the...

Many people have an uneasy feeling that they may be missing out on something basic that would give their lives a significance it currently lacks. But how should we live? What is there to stop us behaving selfishly? In this account, which makes reference to a wide variety of sources and everyday issues, Peter Singer suggests that the conventional pursuit of self-interest is individually and collectively self-defeating. Taking into consideration the beliefs of Jesus, Kant, Rousseau, and Adam Smith amongst others, he looks at a number of different cultures, including America, Japan, and the...

This volume collects a wealth of articles covering a range of topics of practical concern in the field of ethics, including active and passive euthanasia, abortion, organ transplants, capital punishment, the consequences of human actions, slavery, overpopulation, the separate spheres of men and women, animal rights, and game theory and the nuclear arms race. The contributors are Thomas Nagel, David Hume, James Rachels, Judith Jarvis Thomson, Michael Tooley, John Harris, John Stuart Mill, Louis Pascal, Jonathan Glover, Derek Parfit, R.M. Hare, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Peter Singer, and...

For thirty years, Peter Singer's Practical Ethics has been the classic introduction to applied ethics. For this third edition, the author has revised and updated all the chapters, and added a new chapter addressing climate change, one of the most important ethical challenges of our generation. Some of the questions discussed in this book concern our daily lives. Is it ethical to buy luxuries when others do not have enough to eat? Should we buy meat from intensively reared animals? Am I doing something wrong if my carbon footprint is above the global average? Other questions confront us as...

No-one can avoid an involvement in ethics. Everything that we do, or do not do, is a possible subject of ethical evaluation. Peter Singer's volume, in 47 long entries, contributed by some of the most distinguished philosophers, surveys the whole field of ethics from the origins of the subject, through the great ethical traditions to theories of how we ought to live, arguments about specific ethical issues and the nature of ethics itself. Unlike other volumes in the series, this book is not alphabetically organized, but follows a broadly chronological and systematic plan, which aims to provide...

What is ethics? Where do moral standards come from? Are they based on emotions, reason, or some innate sense of right and wrong? For many scientists, the key lies entirely in biology--especially in Darwinian theories of evolution and self-preservation. But if evolution is a struggle for survival, why are we still capable of altruism?

In his classic study The Expanding Circle, Peter Singer argues that altruism began as a genetically based drive to protect one's kin and community members but has developed into a consciously chosen ethic with an expanding circle of moral...

Tuto knihu tvoří 63 příběhů o umění, životě a smrti ve světě rocku. Jsou to příběhy o životech ukončených náhle na vrcholu tvůrčího vzestupu a o neuvěřitelných cestách osudu. Příběhy umělců, kteří zemřeli po letech bojů se svými démony, s nimiž už nedokázali dál bojovat. Najdeme zde umělce od Buddyho Hollyho až po Whitney Houstonovou, tedy hudební legendy různých období, jež se od sebe lišily životním stylem i způsobem, jak vyjadřovaly svůj talent. Jedno však měly společné, a sice skutečnost, že šlo vesměs o dobové ikony. Řada z...

Druhý díl úspěšného průvodce po moderní pražské architektuře první poloviny dvacátého století zachycuje slovem a obrazem další dvě stovky slavných, ale i méně známých, avšak architektonicky pozoruhodných staveb. Tentokrát se prostřednictvím textů renomovaného historika architektury Zdeňka Lukeše a fotografií Pavla Hrocha vydáme do dalších pražských čtvrtí obklopujících historické centrum.

What does the idea of taking 'the point of view of the universe' tell us about ethics? The great nineteenth-century utilitarian Henry Sidgwick used this metaphor to present what he took to be a self-evident moral truth: the good of one individual is of no more importance than the good of any other. Ethical judgments, he held, are objective truths that we can know by reason. The ethical axioms he took to be self-evident provide a foundation for utilitarianism. He supplements this foundation with an argument that nothing except states of consciousness have ultimate value, which led him to hold...