The Value of Worthless Lives

The Value of Worthless Lives

Author: Ilaria Serra

Publisher:

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9780823293308

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The writer Giuseppe Prezzolini said that Italian immigrants left behind tears and sweat but not "words," making their lives in America mostly in silence, their memories private and stories untold. In this innovative portrait of the Italian-American experience, these lives are no longer hidden. Ilaria Serra offers the first comprehensive study of a largely ignored legacy--the autobiographies written by immigrants. Here she looks closely at fifty-eight representative works written during the high tide of Italian migration. Scouring archives, discovering diaries, and memoirs in private houses and forgotten drawers, Serra recovers the voices of the first generation--bootblacks and poets, film directors and farmers, miners, anarchists, and seamstresses--compelled to tell their stories. Mostly unpublished, often thickly accented, these tales of ordinary men and women are explored in nuanced detail, organized to reflect how they illuminate the realities of work, survival, identity, and change. Moving between history and literature, Serra presents each as the imaginative record of a self in the making and the collective story of the journey to selfhood that is the heart of the immigrant experience.


Foundations of Freedom

Foundations of Freedom

Author: Simon R. Clarke

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 147

ISBN-13: 0415622379

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What makes individual freedom valuable? People have always believed in freedom, have sought it, and have sometimes fought and died for it. The belief that it is something to be valued is widespread. But does this belief have a rational foundation? This book examines answers to these questions that are based on the welfare of the person whose freedom is at stake. There are various conceptions of a worthwhile life, a life that is valuable for the person whose life it is. These conceptions will be examined to see whether they are plausible and what their connection, if any, is to freedom. Are they compelling foundations for freedom? Does freedom make a person’s life better or would his/her welfare be advanced by restricting freedom?


Welfare, Meaning, and Worth

Welfare, Meaning, and Worth

Author: Aaron Smuts

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-22

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 131544190X

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Welfare, Meaning, and Worth argues that there is more to what makes a life worth living than welfare, and that a good life does not consist of what is merely good for the one who lives it. Smuts defends an objective list theory that states that the notion of worth captures matters of importance for which no plausible theory of welfare can account. He puts forth that lives worth living are net high in various objective goods, including pleasure, meaning, knowledge, and loving relationships. The first part of the book presents a theory of worth, a mental statist account of welfare, and an objectivist theory of meaning. The second part explores the implications for moral theory, the popularity of painful art, and the viability of pessimism about the human condition. This book offers an original exploration of worth as a combination of welfare and meaning that will be of interest to philosophers and ethicists who work on issues in well-being and positive psychology.


Sanctity of Life and Human Dignity

Sanctity of Life and Human Dignity

Author: K. Bayertz

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 940091590X

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`Sanctity of life' and `human dignity' are two bioethical concepts that play an important role in bioethical discussions. Despite their separate history and content, they have similar functions in these discussions. In many cases they are used to bring a difficult or controversial debate to an end. They serve as unquestionable cornerstones of morality, as rocks able to weather the storms of moral pluralism. This book provides the reader with analyses of these two concepts from different philosophical, professional and cultural points of view. Sanctity of Life and Human Dignity presents a comparative analysis of both concepts.


Bodies in the Streets: The Somaesthetics of City Life

Bodies in the Streets: The Somaesthetics of City Life

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-08-12

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 9004411135

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Cities are defined by their complex network of busy streets and the multitudes of people that animate them through physical presence and bodily actions that often differ dramatically: elegant window-shoppers and homeless beggars, protesting crowds and patrolling police. As bodies shape city life, so the city’s spaces, structures, economies, politics, rhythms, and atmospheres reciprocally shape the urban soma. This collection of original essays explores the somaesthetic qualities and challenges of city life (in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas) from a variety of perspectives ranging from philosophy, urban theory, political theory, and gender studies to visual art, criminology, and the interdisciplinary field of somaesthetics. Together these essays illustrate the aesthetic, cultural, and political roles and trials of bodies in the city streets.


Healing the Culture

Healing the Culture

Author: Robert Spitzer

Publisher: Ignatius Press

Published: 2009-10-16

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 168149227X

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Father Spitzer, President of Gonzaga University, has been using the principles in this book over the last eight years to educate people of all backgrounds in the philosophy of the pro-life movement. The tremendous positive response he has received inspired him to start the Life Principles Institute. This book is one of the key resources used for this program. This work effectively draws out the connections between personal attitudes toward happiness and the meaning of life, and the larger cultural issues such as freedom and human rights. Relying on the wisdom of the ages and respecting the human persons' unique capacity for rational analysis, this work offers definitions of the key cultural terms affecting life issues, including Happiness, Success, Love, Suffering, Quality of Life, Ethics, Freedom, Personhood, Human Rights and the Common Good.


Law, Ethics and Compromise at the Limits of Life

Law, Ethics and Compromise at the Limits of Life

Author: Richard Huxtable

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 0415492793

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This book will focus upon decisions to withhold or withdraw life-supporting treatment from incompetent patients. The book offers a critical examination of the latest developments with a view to developing a new framework for resolving disputes in the clinic that is not only theoretically robust but also practically relevant


Philosophy in a Meaningless Life

Philosophy in a Meaningless Life

Author: James Tartaglia

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2015-12-17

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 1474247679

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Philosophy in a Meaningless Life provides an account of the nature of philosophy which is rooted in the question of the meaning of life. It makes a powerful and vivid case for believing that this question is neither obscure nor obsolete, but reflects a quintessentially human concern to which other traditional philosophical problems can be readily related; allowing them to be reconnected with natural interest, and providing a diagnosis of the typical lines of opposition across philosophy's debates. James Tartaglia looks at the various ways philosophers have tried to avoid the conclusion that life is meaningless, and in the process have distanced philosophy from the concept of transcendence. Rejecting all of this, Tartaglia embraces nihilism ('we are here with nothing to do'), and uses transcendence both to provide a new solution to the problem of consciousness, and to explain away perplexities about time and universals. He concludes that with more self-awareness, philosophy can attain higher status within a culture increasingly in need of it.


Tax Basis Assets and Liabilities of U.S. Life Insurers

Tax Basis Assets and Liabilities of U.S. Life Insurers

Author: Edward L. Robbins

Publisher: ACTEX Publications

Published: 2015-03-08

Total Pages: 545

ISBN-13: 1625423837

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This new, innovative textbook, a sequel to US Tax Reserves for Life Insurers published in 2005, provides authoritative guidance and mathematical approaches to calculating both actuarial tax basis liabilities (reserves and related items) and assets (primarily invested assets and deferred taxes). The text provides an introduction to statutory and tax reserve planning and includes a detailed discussion of the pertinent parts of the authoritative guidance, including extensive references to specific cases and rulings. This sequel provides significant detail on investment tax accounting and offers an introduction to tax aspects of business combinations.