{"title":"Aaron Stalnaker","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"overcoming-our-evil-book-aaron-stalnaker-9781589015036","title":"Overcoming Our Evil","description":"Can people ever really change? Do they ever become more ethical? How does that happen? These are the questions that ethicist Aaron Stalnaker explores in this seminal study in comparative religious ethics. Examining two vastly different and vastly influential thinkers from antiquity--the Christian theologian Augustine and the Confucian philosopher Xunzi--Stalnaker examines how these two intellectual giants understood fallen human nature--and how they propose that individuals, through highly disciplined spiritual exercises, can become better human beings. What are these spiritual exercises? For Augustine, prayer and scriptural study; for Xunzi, textual study, ritual, and musical performance. Stalnaker meticulously constructs vivid portraits of both thinkers, demonstrating where they connect and where they diverge, making the case that both have been misunderstood and misinterpreted. But this is not simply a study of dusty historical figures speaking to ancient worlds far different than ours. In undertaking his analysis Stalnaker is a voice of cool reason in the heated debates over religious and cultural pluralism. His work is an intellectually rigorous ethic of global neighborliness, that is, an attempt to understand and appreciate seemingly conflictual worldviews, to bring traditions into respectful dialogue, to find points of agreement and disagreement, to avert the Scylla of parochialism (I'm right and you're wrong) and the Charybdis of theological relativism (Anything goes).","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52615557054737,"sku":"NLS9781589015036","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781589015036.jpg?v=1761524455"},{"product_id":"mastery-dependence-and-the-ethics-of-authority-book-aaron-stalnaker-9780190052300","title":"Mastery, Dependence, and the Ethics of Authority","description":"Over the last few decades, skepticism about political and moral experts has grown into a serious social problem, undermining the functioning of liberal democratic regimes. Indeed, meritocracy - that is, government by hard working, public-spirited people with high levels of relevant expertise - has never looked so promising as an alternative to the dangers of know-nothing populism. One cultural tradition has devoted sustained attention to the idea of meritocracy, as well as to the cultivation of true expertise or mastery: Confucianism. Mastery, Dependence, and the Ethics of Authority presents a compelling analysis of expertise and authority, and examines classical Confucian conceptions of mastery, dependence, and human relationships in order to suggest new approaches to these issues in ethics and political theory. Contemporary Westerners are heirs to multiple traditions that are suspicious of authority, especially coercive political authority. We are also increasingly wary of dependence, which now often seems to signify weakness, neediness, and pathology. Analysts commonly presume that both authority and dependence threaten human autonomy, and are thus intrinsically problematic. But these judgments are mistaken. Our capacity for autonomy needs to be cultivated over time through deliberate practices of training, in which we depend on the guidance of virtuous and skilled teachers. Confucian thought provides a subtle and powerful analysis of one version of this training process, and of the social supports such an education in autonomy requires - as well as the social value of having virtuous and skilled leaders. Early Confucians also argue that human life is marked by numerous interacting forms of dependence, which are not only ineradicable, but in many ways good. On a Confucian view, it is natural, healthy, and good for people to be deeply dependent on others in a variety of ways across the full human lifespan. They teach us that individual autonomy only develops within a social matrix, structured by relationships of mutual dependence that can either help or hinder it, including a variety of authority relations.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52629734129937,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52629734785297,"sku":"NIN9780190052300","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780190052300.jpg?v=1790196073"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-aaron-stalnaker.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}