San Antonio College Library

The second volume in applied ethics based on the distinguished Wayne Leys Memorial Lectureship Series. With guidelines from legal reasoning, Michael D. Bayles examines "Moral Theory and Application." Abraham Edel questions "Ethics Applied Or Conduct Enlightened?" The late Warner A. Wick shows in "The Good Person and the Good Society: Some Ideals Foolish and Otherwise" that devotion to ideals need not be either fanaticism or foolishness. John Lachs...

This volume contains the proceedings of the eighteenth annual Lectures on Moral Values in a Free Society held at The University of Texas at Dallas on November 11 through 13, 1996.

Sam Harris dismantles the most common justification for religious faith--that a moral system cannot be based on science.

"This work traces the development of social ethics in European Protestantism from Barth's early dialectical theology (ca. 1920) through Bonhoeffer's Ethics, written during World War II. In this development, two major approaches to social ethics emerge: a theological radicalism, championed by Barth, which emphasizes the difference between Christian action and ordinary moral reflection; and a theological realism, exemplified by Brunner and Bonhoeffer,...

"Wondergenes not only imagines a future world in which genetic enhancement is the norm, but asserts that this future has already begun. What happens, for example, when gene therapy becomes gene enhancement? Who will benefit and who might be left behind? What are the costs to our values and beliefs, and to our future? To answer these questions, Mehlman provides an overview of the scientific advances that have led to the present state of genetic enhancement...

Disability: Controversial Debates and Psychosocial Perspectives examines various theories and practices relating to disability. The focus of the work is not disabled people as "objects" of study but rather an analysis of disability as it has been historically and culturally constructed. The topics covered range from language and discourse, interpersonal relationships and "disability" professions to public policy and the politics of disability. This...

In Building Cultures of Trust Martin Marty proposes ways to improve the conditions for trust at what might be called the "grassroots" level. He suggests that it makes a difference if citizens put energy into inventing, developing, and encouraging "cultures of trust" in all areas of life--families, schools, neighborhoods, workplaces, and churches. Marty acknowledges that the reality of human nature tends toward trust-breaking, not trust-building--all...

"Divided into two volumes, The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature offers a collection of writings from twenty leading Christian thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and analyses of their work by leading contemporary religious scholars. Volume 2 illustrates the different venues, vectors, and sometimes-conflicting visions of what a Christian understanding of law, politics, and society entails. The collection...

America was built on stories: tales of grateful immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, Horatio Alger-style transformations, self-made men, and the Protestant work ethic. In this new book, renowned sociologist Robert Wuthnow examines these most American of stories--narratives about individualism, immigration, success, religion, and ethnicity--through the eyes of recent immigrants. In doing so, he demonstrates how the "American mythos" has both legitimized...

"For a century and a half, the artists and intellectuals of Europe have scorned the bourgeoisie. And for a millennium and a half, the philosophers and theologians of Europe have scorned the marketplace. The bourgeois life, capitalism, Mencken's "booboisie" and David Brooks's "bobos"--All have been, and still are, framed as being responsible for everything from financial to moral poverty, world wars, and spiritual desuetude. Countering these centuries...