Ethics & moral philosophy
Showing all 13 results
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Animals, robots, gods
£20.00Animals, robots, gods
We have always lived with ethically significant others, whether they are the pets we keep, the gods we believe in or the machines we are endowing with life. How should we treat them as our world changes? In this book, anthropologist Webb Keane provides a new vision of ethics, defined less by our minds, religion or society, and more by our interactions with those around us. Drawing on ground-breaking research by fieldworkers around the world, he explores the underpinnings of our moral universe. Along the way we investigate the ethical dilemmas of South Asian animal rights activists, Balinese cockfighters, Japanese robot fanciers – even macho cowboys.
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Great minds on small things
£12.99Great minds on small things
How to Be Perfect meets The Daily Stoic in this witty, entertaining, highly giftable compendium of quotidian wisdom
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How to get over a breakup
£14.99How to get over a breakup
Breakups are the worst. On one scale devised by psychiatrists, only a spouse’s death was ranked as more stressful than a marital split. Is there any treatment for a breakup? The ancient Roman poet Ovid thought so. Having become famous for teaching the art of seduction in ‘The Art of Love’, he then wrote ‘Remedies for Love’ (Remedia Amoris), which presents 38 frank and witty strategies for coping with unrequited love, falling out of love, ending a relationship and healing a broken heart. ‘How to Get Over a Breakup’ presents an unabashedly modern prose translation of Ovid’s lighthearted and provocative work.
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On purpose
£9.99On purpose
Ten essays on how reading and meaningfully engaging with literature can help us live better, more purposeful lives.
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Space rover
£9.99Space rover
‘Object Lessons’ is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. In 1971, the first lunar rover arrived on the moon. The design became an icon of American ingenuity and the adventurous spirit and vision many equated with the space race. Fifty years later, that vision feels like a nostalgic fantasy, but the lunar rover’s legacy paved the way for Mars rovers like Sojourner, Curiosity, and Perseverance. Other rovers have made accessible the world’s deepest caves and most remote tundra, extending our exploratory range without risking lives.
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The art of not eating
£20.00The art of not eating
The day Jessica Hamel-Akré discovered the ideas of George Cheyne – an eighteenth-century polymath and London society figure known as ‘Dr Diet’ – it sparked an intellectual obsession, a ten-year study of women’s appetite and a personal unravelling. In this bold and radical book, Hamel-Akré follows Cheyne through the pages of medical studies, novels and historical scandals, meeting ash-eating mystics, wasting society girls, impoverished female fasters and early feminist philosophers, all of whom were once grappling with nascent ideas around food, longing and the body. In doing so, she uncovers the eighteenth-century origins of both today’s diet culture and her own troubled relationship with wanting.
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The book against death
£12.99The book against death
The Book Against Death is the work of a lifetime: a collection of Canetti’s aphorisms, diatribes, musings and commentaries on and against death – published in English for the first time since his death in 1994 – interposed with material from philosophers and writers including Goethe, Kafka, Walter Benjamin and Robert Walser.
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The happiness of dogs
£16.99The happiness of dogs
If a dog could write a book of philosophy, what would it contain? If you have spent part of your life with a dog, you may find certain questions popping, unbidden, into your mind. Is my dog living a fulfilled life? Is my dog a good dog? Does my dog love me? This, however only scratches the surface of a canine philosophy. Drawing on his life lived with dogs (two German shepherds, the amiable Hugo and his dark twin Shadow; Brenin, a wolf hybrid, and Tess his wolf dog daughter; and Nina, a German shepherd/malamute mix), on the ideas of philosophers from Socrates to Hume and Sartre, and on the cutting edge psychology of canine cognition, philosopher Mark Rowlands explores the way dogs experience the world to bring us closer to an understanding of ourselves.
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The invention of good and evil
£25.00The invention of good and evil
For almost five million years, humans have been locked in a relationship with morality, inventing and reinventing the concepts of ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’, and weaving them into our cities, laws and customs. Morality is often associated with restraint and coercion; restriction and sacrifice; inquisition, confession and a guilty conscience. Joyless and claustrophobic, it is a device used to shames us into compliance. This impression is not entirely incorrect, but it is certainly incomplete. Using our past as a basis for a new understanding of our future, Hanno Sauer traces humanity’s fundamental moral transformations from our earliest ancestors through to the present day, when it seems we have never disagreed more over what it means to be good. Our current political disagreements may feel like the end of the world, but where will the evolution of morality take us next?
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The Life Inside
£9.99The Life Inside
A unique insight into survival behind bars, inherited shame and some of life’s most pressing questions.
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The Little Book of Ethics
£7.99The Little Book of Ethics
This accessible and thought-provoking guide will take you on a captivating exploration of the fundamental questions that form our decisions and actions, asking, what is the right thing to do in a certain set of circumstances? What can we base our decision on? Is there always a correct decision, or is it always a bit unclear?
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The new Leviathans
£10.99The new Leviathans
Ever since its publication in 1651, Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan has unsettled and challenged how we understand the world. Condemned and vilified by each new generation, Hobbes’ cold political vision continues to see through any number of political and ethical vanities. In his stimulating book ‘The New Leviathans’, John Gray allows us to understand the world of the 2020s with all its contradictions, moral horrors and disappointments through a new reading of Hobbes’ classic work.
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Utilitarianism
£8.99Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is one of the most important and influential secular philosophies of modern times, and has drawn considerable debate and controversy. This Very Short Introduction considers its origins, its relevance to modern moral challenges, and the arguments and discussions around utilitarian approaches.
£8.99