{"title":"John Kekes","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"facing-evil-book-john-kekes-9780691020952","title":"Facing Evil","description":"Arguing that the prevalence of evil presents a fundamental problem for our secular sensibility, John Kekes develops a conception of character-morality as a response. He shows that the main sources of evil are habitual, unchosen actions produced by our character defects and that we can increase our control over the evil we cause by cultivating a reflective temper.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49555055378705,"sku":"GOR011133283","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50900245709073,"sku":"CIN0691020957G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51190084534545,"sku":"GOR014195707","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52449058652433,"sku":"CIN0691020957VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53555804307729,"sku":"GOR001916814","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0691020957.jpg?v=1751105519"},{"product_id":"art-of-life-book-john-kekes-9780801489792","title":"The Art of Life","description":"\"That the art of life is creative, imaginative, and individual does not mean... that it cannot be taught and learned or that individuals cannot improve their mastery of it. Teaching it proceeds by way of exemplary lives, and learning it consists in coming to appreciate what makes some lives exemplary.... That imitation here is impossible does not mean one cannot learn from examples. The question is, How can that be done reasonably; how can decisions about how one should live escape being arbitrary, if they are left to individual creativity and imagination and are not governed by rules that apply to everyone living in a particular context?\"—from The Art of LifeThe art of life, according to John Kekes, consists in living a life of personal and moral excellence. This art requires continuous creative effort, drawing on one's character, circumstances, experiences, and ideals. Since these conditions vary with times and places, Kekes says, there can be no single blueprint for the achievement of excellence. We must do it ourselves—but we can learn from those who have lived exemplary lives.Reflecting on lives of integrity and honor, Kekes formulates what we can learn from them and what we can do to adapt the ideals they represent to our personal circumstances. Avoiding both the abstractness that characterizes much moral thought and the relativism that recognizes no rational or moral limits, Kekes shows how serious philosophical thinking can be readable and helpful to those who struggle with the perennial problems of human existence.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49558858465553,"sku":"CIN0801489792VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0801489792.jpg?v=1758968457"},{"product_id":"morality-of-pluralism-book-john-kekes-9780691044743","title":"The Morality of Pluralism","description":"Controversies about abortion, the environment, pornography, AIDS, and similar issues naturally lead to the question of whether there are any values that can be ultimately justified, or whether values are simply conventional. John Kekes argues that the present moral and political uncertainties are due to a deep change in our society from a dogmatic to a pluralistic view of values. Dogmatism is committed to there being only one justifiable system of values. Pluralism recognizes many such systems, and yet it avoids a chaotic relativism according to which all values are in the end arbitrary. Maintaining that good lives must be reasonable, but denying that they must conform to one true pattern, Kekes develops and justifies a pluralistic account of good lives and values, and works out its political, moral, and personal implications.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49575946387729,"sku":"GOR011903249","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50359658053905,"sku":"CIN0691044740G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52707082273041,"sku":"CIN0691044740VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0691044740.jpg?v=1750783962"},{"product_id":"case-for-conservatism-book-john-kekes-9780801435560","title":"A Case for Conservatism","description":"In his recent book Against Liberalism, philosopher John Kekes argued that liberalism as a political system is doomed to failure by its internal inconsistencies. In this companion volume, he makes a compelling case for conservatism as the best alternative. His is the first systematic description and defense of the basic assumptions underlying conservative thought.Conservatism, Kekes maintains, is concerned with the political arrangements that enable members of a society to live good lives. These political arrangements are based on skepticism about ideologies, pluralism about values, traditionalism about institutions, and pessimism about human perfectibility. The political morality of conservatism requires the protection of universal conditions of all good lives, social conditions that vary with societies, and individual conditions that reflect differences in character and circumstance. Good lives, according to Kekes, depend equally on pursuing possibilities that these conditions establish and on setting limits to their violations.Attempts to make political arrangements reflect these basic tenets of conservatism are unavoidably imperfect. Kekes concludes, however, that they represent a better hope for the future than any other possibility.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49733287149841,"sku":"NGR9780801435560","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50480826056977,"sku":"CIN0801435560G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52816873029905,"sku":"CIN0801435560VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0801435560.jpg?v=1758967515"},{"product_id":"against-liberalism-book-john-kekes-9780801433610","title":"Against Liberalism","description":"Liberalism is doomed to failure, John Kekes argues in this penetrating criticism of its basic assumptions. Liberals favor individual autonomy, a wide plurality of choices, and equal rights and resources, seeing them as essential for good lives. They oppose such evils as selfishness, intolerance, cruelty, and greed. Yet the more autonomy, equality, and pluralism there is, Kekes contends, the greater is the scope for evil. According to Kekes, liberalism is inconsistent because the conditions liberals regard as essential for good lives actually foster the very evils liberals want to avoid, and avoiding those evils depends on conditions contrary to the ones liberals favor.   Kekes argues further that the liberal conceptions of equality, justice, and pluralism require treating good and evil people with equal respect, distributing resources without regard to what recipients deserve, and restricting choices to those that conform to liberal preconceptions. All these policies are detrimental to good lives. Kekes concludes that liberalism cannot cope with the prevalence of evil, that it is vitiated by inconsistent commitments, and that—contrary to its aim—liberalism is an obstacle to good lives.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49777946427665,"sku":"CIN0801433614G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53495330078993,"sku":"CIN0801433614VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0801433614.jpg?v=1761386001"},{"product_id":"examined-life-book-john-kekes-9780271008738","title":"The Examined Life","description":"A well-thought-out project, engaging, enlightening, and highly accessible for the audience it addresses.... After twenty years of philosophical reflection on the context for a virtue-based ethics, we now have a book which both offers us some content and reminds us along the way how important the virtues are for right living. -International Philosophical Quarterly","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50094765605137,"sku":"CIN0271008733G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51067363524881,"sku":"GOR012283224","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":51322556809489,"sku":"CIN0271008733A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53181192503569,"sku":"NLS9780271008738","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0271008733.jpg?v=1751006170"},{"product_id":"pluralism-in-philosophy-book-john-kekes-9780801438059","title":"Pluralism in Philosophy","description":"This original and ambitious book aims to change how we think about good lives. The perennial debates about good lives—the disagreements caused by conflicts between scientific, religious, moral, historical, aesthetic, and subjective modes of reflection—typically end in an impasse. This leaves the underlying problems of the meaning of life, the possibility of free action, the place of morality in good lives, the art of life, and human self-understanding as intractable as they have ever been.   The way out of this impasse, argues Kekes, is to abandon the assumption shared by the contending parties that the solutions of these problems can be rational only if they apply universally to all lives in all contexts. He believes that solutions may vary with lives and contexts and still be rational. Kekes defends a pluralistic alternative to absolutism and relativism that will, he holds, take philosophy in a new and more productive direction.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50260570374417,"sku":"GOR010289735","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50362734969105,"sku":"CIN0801438055G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0801438055.jpg?v=1758966815"},{"product_id":"moral-wisdom-and-good-lives-book-john-kekes-9780801482786","title":"Moral Wisdom and Good Lives","description":"In this profound and yet accessible book, John Kekes discusses moral wisdom: a virtue essential to living a morally good and personally satisfying life. He advances a broad, nontechnical argument that considers the adversities inherent in the human condition and assists in the achievement of good lives.   The possession of moral wisdom, Kekes asserts, is a matter of degree: more of it makes lives better, less makes them worse. Exactly what is moral wisdom, however, and how should it be sought? Ancient Greek and medieval Christian philosophers were centrally concerned with it. By contrast, modern Western sensibility doubts the existence of a moral order in reality; and because we doubt it, and have developed no alternatives, we have grown dubious about the traditional idea of wisdom.   Kekes returns to the classical Greek sources of Western philosophy to argue for the contemporary significance of moral wisdom. He develops a proposal that is eudaimonistic—secular, anthropocentric, pluralistic, individualistic, and agonistic. He understands moral wisdom as focusing on the human effort to create many different forms of good lives. Although the approach is Aristotelian, the author concentrates on formulating and defending a contemporary moral ideal. The importance of this ideal, he shows, lies in increasing our ability to cope with life's adversities by improving our judgment.   In chapters on moral imagination, self-knowledge, and moral depth, Kekes calls attention to aspects of our inner life that have been neglected because of our cultural inattention to moral wisdom. He discusses these inner processes through the tragedies of Sophocles, which can inspire us with their enduring moral significance and help us to understand the importance of moral wisdom to living a good life.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50275237462289,"sku":"CIN080148278XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50933053391121,"sku":"CIN080148278XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/080148278X.jpg?v=1758967650"},{"product_id":"enlargement-of-life-book-john-kekes-9780801476273","title":"The Enlargement of Life","description":"Moral imagination, according to John Kekes, is indispensable to a fulfilling and responsible life. By correcting a parochial view of the possibilities available to us and overcoming mistaken assumptions about our limitations, moral imagination liberates us from self-imposed narrowness. It enlarges life by enabling us to reflect more deeply and widely about how we should live. The material for this reflection, Kekes believes, is supplied by literature. Each of the eleven chapters of the book focuses on a novel, play, or autobiography that exemplifies the protagonist's reflective self-evaluation. Kekes shows the enduring significance of these protagonists' successes or failures and how we might apply what they teach to our very different characters and circumstances.   Kekes discusses John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, the Oedipus tragedies by Sophocles, Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, Henry James's Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl, Montaigne's Essays, a story by Herodotus, and Arthur Koestler's Arrival and Departure. Throughout, Kekes shows that moral thought must be concrete, not abstract; that good reasons for or against how we live and what choices we make are available but must be particular, not universal; and that the rigid separation of literature, psychology, and moral thought is detrimental to all three.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50312374059281,"sku":"CIN0801476275VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52997571969297,"sku":"CIN0801476275G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0801476275.jpg?v=1758968603"},{"product_id":"moderate-conservatism-book-john-kekes-9780197668061","title":"Moderate Conservatism","description":"Moderate Conservatism: Reclaiming the Center by John Kekes is a response to attacks on the United States' 300-year-old constitutional democracy by extremists on the left and the right. It makes a reasoned case for moderation and the defense of a political system that has endured because it has balanced the often-conflicting claims of justice, liberty, equality, prosperity, and security. That balance is now threatened by extremists who ignore all else but their grievances. They are blind to the destructive consequences of their attacks on the conditions on which the well-being of all Americans, including their own, depends.  The aim of Moderate Conservatism is to protect the United States' political system. It is a defense of what Americans have and are in danger of losing. Central to it is the rarely conscious patriotism of many millions of citizens who live private lives, earn a living, raise a family, and rely on the political system to protect the conditions in which they can continue to do so. They sustain life as Americans know it. And that life is now threatened by the destructive attacks of extremists. The United States is in urgent need of the balance and moderation this book describes and defends.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50345530425617,"sku":"CIN0197668062VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51097208783121,"sku":"NIN9780197668061","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0197668062.jpg?v=1776939778"},{"product_id":"human-predicaments-book-john-kekes-9780226359458","title":"Human Predicaments","description":"In his latest book, esteemed philosopher John Kekes draws on anthropology, history, and literature in order to help us cope with the common predicaments that plague us as we try to take control of our lives. In each chapter he offers fascinating new ways of thinking about a particular problem that is fundamental to how we live, such as facing difficult choices, uncontrollable contingencies, complex evaluations, the failures of justice, the miasma of boredom, and the inescapable hypocrisies of social life.   Kekes considers how we might deal with these predicaments by comparing how others in different times and cultures have approached them. He examines what is good, bad, instructive, and dangerous in the sexually charged politics of the Shilluk, the Hindu caste system, Balinese role-morality, the religious passion of Cortes and Simone Weil, the fate of Colonel Hiromichi Yahara during and after the battle for Okinawa, the ritual human sacrifices of the Aztecs, and the tragedies to which innocence may lead. In doing so, he shakes us out of our deep-seated ways of thinking, enlarging our understanding of the possibilities available to us as we struggle with the problems that stand in the way of how we want to live. The result is a highly interesting journey through time and space that illuminates and helps us cope with some of the most basic predicaments we all face as human beings.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50346017194257,"sku":"CIN022635945XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/022635945X.jpg?v=1772275873"},{"product_id":"how-should-we-live-book-john-kekes-9780226155654","title":"How Should We Live?","description":"What is your highest ideal? What code do you live by? We all know that these differ from person to person. Nonetheless philosophers have long sought a single, overriding ideal that should guide everyone, always, everywhere, and after centuries of debate we're no closer to an answer. In How Should We Live?, John Kekes offers a refreshing alternative, one in which we eschew absolute ideals and instead consider our lives as they really are. Kekes argues that ideal theories are abstractions from the realities of everyday life and its problems. The well-known arenas where absolute ideals conflict-dramatic moral controversies about complex problems involved in abortion, euthanasia, plea bargaining, privacy, and other hotly debated topics - should not be the primary concerns of moral thinking. Instead, he focuses on the simpler problems of ordinary lives in ordinary circumstances. In each chapter he presents the conflicts that a real person - a schoolteacher, lawyer, father, or nurse, for example - is likely to face. He then uses their situations to shed light on the mundane issues we all must deal with in everyday life, such as how we use our limited time, energy, or money; how we balance short- and long-term satisfactions; how we deal with conflicting loyalties; how we control our emotions; how we deal with people we dislike; and so on. Along the way he engages some of our most important theorists, including Donald Davidson, Thomas Nagel, Christine Korsgaard, Harry Frankfurt, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Bernard Williams, ultimately showing that no ideal - whether autonomy, love, duty, happiness, or truthfulness-trumps any other. Rather than rejecting such ideals, How Should We Live? offers a way of balancing them by a practical and pluralistic approach - rather than a theory - that helps us cope with our problems and come closer to what our lives should be.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50346836361489,"sku":"CIN022615565XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/022615565X.jpg?v=1750779534"},{"product_id":"facing-evil-book-john-kekes-9780691073705","title":"Facing Evil","description":"Arguing that the prevalence of evil presents a fundamental problem for our secular sensibility, John Kekes develops a conception of character-morality as a response. 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Dogmatism is committed to there being only one justifiable system of values. Pluralism recognizes many such systems, and yet it avoids a chaotic relativism according to which all values are in the end arbitrary. Maintaining that good lives must be reasonable, but denying that they must conform to one true pattern, Kekes develops and justifies a pluralistic account of good lives and values, and works out its political, moral, and personal implications.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50359482056977,"sku":"CIN0691032300G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0691032300.jpg?v=1751009378"},{"product_id":"roots-of-evil-book-john-kekes-9780801443688","title":"The Roots of Evil","description":"\"Evil is the most serious of our moral problems. All over the world cruelty, greed, prejudice, and fanaticism ruin the lives of countless victims. Outrage provokes outrage. Millions nurture seething hatred of real or imagined enemies, revealing savage and destructive tendencies in human nature. Understanding this challenges our optimistic illusions about the effectiveness of reason and morality in bettering human lives. But abandoning these illusions is vitally important because they are obstacles to countering the threat of evil. The aim of this book is to explain why people act in these ways and what can be done about it.\"—John KekesThe first part of this book is a detailed discussion of six horrible cases of evil: the Albigensian Crusade of about 1210; Robespierre's Terror of 1793–94; Franz Stangl, who commanded a Nazi death camp in 1943–44; the 1969 murders committed by Charles Manson and his \"family\"; the \"dirty war\" conducted by the Argentinean military dictatorship of the late 1970s; and the activities of a psychopath named John Allen, who recorded reminiscences in 1975. John Kekes includes these examples not out of sensationalism, but rather to underline the need to hold vividly in our minds just what evil is. The second part shows why, in Kekes's view, explanations of evil inspired by Christianity and the Enlightenment fail to account for these cases and then provides an original explanation of evil in general and of these instances of it in particular.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50362848641297,"sku":"CIN0801443687G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0801443687.jpg?v=1761388930"},{"product_id":"enjoyment-book-john-kekes-9780199546923","title":"Enjoyment","description":"In this book John Kekes examines the indispensable role enjoyment plays in a good life. The key to it is the development of a style of life that combines an attitude and a manner of living and acting that jointly express one's deepest concerns. Since such styles vary with characters and circumstances, a reasonable understanding of them requires attending to the particular and concrete details of individual lives. Reflection on works of literature is a better guide to this kind of understanding than the futile search for general theories and principles that preoccupies much of contemporary moral thought.  Enjoyment proceeds by the detailed examination of particular cases, shows how this kind of reflection can be reasonably conducted, and how the quest for universality and impartiality is misguided in this context. Central to the argument is a practical, particular, pluralistic, and yet objective conception of reason that rejects the pervasive contemporary tendency to regard reasons as good only if they are binding on all who aspire to live reasonably and morally. Reason in morality is neither theoretical nor general. Reasons for living and acting in particular ways are individually variable and none the worse for that.   Kekes aims to reorient moral thought from deontological, contractarian, and consequentialist preoccupations toward a reasonable but pluralistic reflection on what individuals can do to make their lives better.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50451456000273,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50451457638673,"sku":"GOR006012589","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0199546924.jpg?v=1751101564"},{"product_id":"against-liberalism-book-john-kekes-9780801484001","title":"Against Liberalism","description":"Liberalism is doomed to failure, John Kekes argues in this penetrating criticism of its basic assumptions. Liberals favor individual autonomy, a wide plurality of choices, and equal rights and resources, seeing them as essential for good lives. 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What code do you live by? We all know that these differ from person to person. Artists, scientists, social activists, farmers, executives, and athletes are guided by very different ideals. Nonetheless for hundreds of years philosophers have sought a single, overriding ideal that should guide everyone, always, everywhere, and after centuries of debate we're no closer to an answer. In How Should We Live?, John Kekes offers a refreshing alternative, one in which we eschew absolute ideals and instead consider our lives as they really are, day by day, subject to countless vicissitudes and unforeseen obstacles.  Kekes argues that ideal theories are abstractions from the realities of everyday life and its problems. The well-known arenas where absolute ideals conflict--dramatic moral controversies about complex problems involved in abortion, euthanasia, plea bargaining, privacy, and other hotly debated topics--should not be the primary concerns of moral thinking. Instead, he focuses on the simpler problems of ordinary lives in ordinary circumstances. In each chapter he presents the conflicts that a real person--a schoolteacher, lawyer, father, or nurse, for example--is likely to face. He then uses their situations to shed light on the mundane issues we all must deal with in everyday life, such as how we use our limited time, energy, or money; how we balance short- and long-term satisfactions; how we deal with conflicting loyalties; how we control our emotions; how we deal with people we dislike; and so on. Along the way he engages some of our most important theorists, including Donald Davidson, Thomas Nagel, Christine Korsgaard, Harry Frankfurt, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Bernard Williams, ultimately showing that no ideal--whether autonomy, love, duty, happiness, or truthfulness--trumps any other. No single ideal can always guide how we overcome the many different problems that stand in the way of living as we should. Rather than rejecting such ideals, How Should We Live? offers a way of balancing them by a practical and pluralistic approach--rather than a theory--that helps us cope with our problems and come closer to what our lives should be.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50907070398737,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50907070824721,"sku":"GOR010680178","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/022663907X.jpg?v=1751426098"},{"product_id":"wisdom-book-john-kekes-9780197514047","title":"Wisdom","description":"In this book, renowned philosopher John Kekes develops and defends a humanistic conception of wisdom as a personal attitude--one that can guide how we face adversities and evaluate the often conflicting possibilities and limits of life in the context in which we live.  Wisdom includes basic assumptions about the concrete and constantly changing conditions of life; reflective understanding of how we can rely on reason to evaluate the possibilities open to us and recognize the limits we have no choice but to accept; and it includes depth that enables us to accept that perennial problems are part of the human condition and yet to restrain our false hopes and disenchanted reactions to the vicissitudes of life.   The evaluative attitude of wisdom is personal, not theoretical; anthropocentric, not metaphysical; context-dependent, not universal; and humanistic, not scientific. It recognizes that there are many forms of worthwhile lives, and denies that there is one ideal of The Good that everyone should try to approximate. It accepts that all of our beliefs, emotions, and desires are fallible, yet they are correctable provided we are sufficiently critical of them. The resulting conception of wisdom is intended as a contribution to philosophy as a humanistic discipline. It is a radical departure from traditional ways of thinking about wisdom.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50999905845521,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50999908761873,"sku":"NIN9780197514047","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0197514049.jpg?v=1751037846"},{"product_id":"roots-of-evil-book-john-kekes-9780801473814","title":"The Roots of Evil","description":"\"Evil is the most serious of our moral problems. All over the world cruelty, greed, prejudice, and fanaticism ruin the lives of countless victims. Outrage provokes outrage. Millions nurture seething hatred of real or imagined enemies, revealing savage and destructive tendencies in human nature. Understanding this challenges our optimistic illusions about the effectiveness of reason and morality in bettering human lives. But abandoning these illusions is vitally important because they are obstacles to countering the threat of evil. The aim of this book is to explain why people act in these ways and what can be done about it.\"—John KekesThe first part of this book is a detailed discussion of six horrible cases of evil: the Albigensian Crusade of about 1210; Robespierre's Terror of 1793–94; Franz Stangl, who commanded a Nazi death camp in 1943–44; the 1969 murders committed by Charles Manson and his \"family\"; the \"dirty war\" conducted by the Argentinean military dictatorship of the late 1970s; and the activities of a psychopath named John Allen, who recorded reminiscences in 1975. John Kekes includes these examples not out of sensationalism, but rather to underline the need to hold vividly in our minds just what evil is. The second part shows why, in Kekes's view, explanations of evil inspired by Christianity and the Enlightenment fail to account for these cases and then provides an original explanation of evil in general and of these instances of it in particular.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51007212159249,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51007215075601,"sku":"NIN9780801473814","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52387356311825,"sku":"GOR011951755","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52716700958993,"sku":"CIN0801473810G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53404847898897,"sku":"GOR014907843","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0801473810.jpg?v=1761387570"},{"product_id":"illusions-of-egalitarianism-book-john-kekes-9780801473395","title":"The Illusions of Egalitarianism","description":"In this systematic and scathing attack on the dominant contemporary version of liberalism, John Kekes challenges political assumptions shared by the majority of people in Western societies. 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His provocative book will compel many readers to question their faith in liberalism.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51007345492241,"sku":"NIN9780801473395","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51695628321041,"sku":"CIN080147339XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/080147339X.jpg?v=1761391255"},{"product_id":"art-of-politics-book-john-kekes-9781594032356","title":"The Art of Politics","description":"The political system of contemporary Western democracies is far from perfect. Nevertheless it is the envy of the world. The Art of Politics explains what makes our system as good as it is. It is about the political goods we have reason to value: justice, liberty, order, peace, prosperity, rights, security, and toleration. This book is of interest to thinking people and is not the closed turf of academics and theorists.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51038527324433,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51038530699537,"sku":"NIN9781594032356","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52681291497745,"sku":"NLS9781594032356","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1594032351.jpg?v=1750830531"},{"product_id":"enjoyment-book-john-kekes-9780199592494","title":"Enjoyment","description":"In this book John Kekes examines the indispensable role enjoyment plays in a good life. The key to it is the development of a style of life that combines an attitude and a manner of living and acting that jointly express one's deepest concerns. Since such styles vary with characters and circumstances, a reasonable understanding of them requires attending to the particular and concrete details of individual lives. Reflection on works of literature is a better guide to this kind of understanding than the futile search for general theories and principles that preoccupies much of contemporary moral thought.   Enjoyment proceeds by the detailed examination of particular cases, shows how this kind of reflection can be reasonably conducted, and how the quest for universality and impartiality is misguided in this context. Central to the argument is a practical, particular, pluralistic, and yet objective conception of reason that rejects the pervasive contemporary tendency to regard reasons as good only if they are binding on all who aspire to live reasonably and morally. Reason in morality is neither theoretical nor general. Reasons for living and acting in particular ways are individually variable and none the worse for that.   Kekes aims to reorient moral thought from deontological, contractarian, and consequentialist preoccupations toward a reasonable but pluralistic reflection on what individuals can do to make their lives better.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51089318019345,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51089320214801,"sku":"NIN9780199592494","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52455970373905,"sku":"NLS9780199592494","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/B00BG70AM4.jpg?v=1750876471"},{"product_id":"examined-life-book-john-kekes-9780838751329","title":"The Examined Life","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52326431260945,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52326432211217,"sku":"CIN0838751326G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780838751329.jpg?v=1758046748"},{"product_id":"human-condition-book-john-kekes-9780199588886","title":"The Human Condition","description":"The Human Condition is a response to the growing disenchantment in the Western world with contemporary life. John Kekes provides rationally justified answers to questions about the meaning of life, the basis of morality, the contingencies of human lives, the prevalence of evil, the nature and extent of human responsibility, and the sources of values we prize. He offers a realistic view of the human condition that rejects both facile optimism and gloomy pessimism; acknowledges that we are vulnerable to contingencies we cannot fully control; defends a humanistic understanding of our condition; recognizes that the values worth pursuing are plural, often conflicting, and that there are many reasonable conceptions of well-being. Kekes emphasizes the importance of facing the fact that man's inhumanity to man is widespread. He rejects as simple-minded both the view that human nature is basically good and that it is basically bad, and argues that our well-being depends on coping with the complex truth that human nature is basically complicated. Finally, Kekes argues that the scheme of things is indifferent to our fortunes and that we can rely only on our own resources to make what we can of our lives.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52422721536273,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52422722191633,"sku":"NLS9780199588886","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780199588886.jpg?v=1759148826"},{"product_id":"human-condition-book-john-kekes-9780199687480","title":"The Human Condition","description":"The Human Condition is a response to the growing disenchantment in the Western world with contemporary life. John Kekes provides rationally justified answers to questions about the meaning of life, the basis of morality, the contingencies of human lives, the prevalence of evil, the nature and extent of human responsibility, and the sources of values we prize. He offers a realistic view of the human condition that rejects both facile optimism and gloomy pessimism; acknowledges that we are vulnerable to contingencies we cannot fully control; defends a humanistic understanding of our condition; recognizes that the values worth pursuing are plural, often conflicting, and that there are many reasonable conceptions of well-being. Kekes emphasizes the importance of facing the fact that man's inhumanity to man is widespread. He rejects as simple-minded both the view that human nature is basically good and that it is basically bad, and argues that our well-being depends on coping with the complex truth that human nature is basically complicated. Finally, Kekes argues that the scheme of things is indifferent to our fortunes and that we can rely only on our own resources to make what we can of our lives.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52422735200529,"sku":"NLS9780199687480","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52734600053009,"sku":"NIN9780199687480","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53366334849297,"sku":"GOR014881758","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53366335734033,"sku":"GOR007101214","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780199687480.jpg?v=1759148870"},{"product_id":"nature-of-philosophical-problems-book-john-kekes-9780198712756","title":"The Nature of Philosophical Problems","description":"We must all make choices about how we want to live. We evaluate our possibilities by relying on historical, moral, personal, political, religious, and scientific modes of evaluations, but the values and reasons that follow from them conflict. Philosophical problems are forced on us when we try to cope with such conflicts. There are reasons for and against all proposed ways of coping with the conflicts, but none of them has been generally accepted by reasonable thinkers. The constructive aim of The Nature of Philosophical Problems is to propose a way of understanding the nature of such philosophical problems, explain why they occur, why they are perennial, and propose a pluralist approach as the most reasonable way of coping with them. This approach is practical, context-dependent, and particular. It follows from it that the recurrence of philosophical problems is not a defect, but a welcome consequence of the richness of our modes of understanding that enlarges the range of possibilities by which we might choose to live. The critical aim of the book is to give reasons against both the absolutist attempt to find an overriding value or principle for resolving philosophical problems and of the relativist claim that reasons unavoidably come to an end and how we want to live is ultimately a matter of personal preference, not of reasons.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52453467783441,"sku":"NLS9780198712756","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780198712756.jpg?v=1759368038"},{"product_id":"case-for-conservatism-book-john-kekes-9780801485527","title":"A Case for Conservatism","description":"In his recent book Against Liberalism, philosopher John Kekes argued that liberalism as a political system is doomed to failure by its internal inconsistencies. In this companion volume, he makes a compelling case for conservatism as the best alternative. His is the first systematic description and defense of the basic assumptions underlying conservative thought.   Conservatism, Kekes maintains, is concerned with the political arrangements that enable members of a society to live good lives. These political arrangements are based on skepticism about ideologies, pluralism about values, traditionalism about institutions, and pessimism about human perfectibility.    The political morality of conservatism requires the protection of universal conditions of all good lives, social conditions that vary with societies, and individual conditions that reflect differences in character and circumstance. Good lives, according to Kekes, depend equally on pursuing possibilities that these conditions establish and on setting limits to their violations.   Attempts to make political arrangements reflect these basic tenets of conservatism are unavoidably imperfect. Kekes concludes, however, that they represent a better hope for the future than any other possibility.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52783921430801,"sku":"CIN0801485525VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53072146694417,"sku":"GOR014727966","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780801485527.jpg?v=1764057882"},{"product_id":"justification-of-rationality-book-john-kekes-9780873953504","title":"A Justification of Rationality","description":"The aim of this book is to defend rationality against skepticism fideism, and irrationalism. Rationality is an ideal which represents the best in our civilization. The ideal, however, must be reaffirmed from time to time and this is done here by expressing it in a contemporary idiom and by defending it against new doubts. 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In each chapter he offers fascinating new ways of thinking about a particular problem that is fundamental to how we live, such as facing difficult choices, uncontrollable contingencies, complex evaluations, the failures of justice, the miasma of boredom, and the inescapable hypocrisies of social life.   Kekes considers how we might deal with these predicaments by comparing how others in different times and cultures have approached them. He examines what is good, bad, instructive, and dangerous in the sexually charged politics of the Shilluk, the Hindu caste system, Balinese role-morality, the religious passion of Cortes and Simone Weil, the fate of Colonel Hiromichi Yahara during and after the battle for Okinawa, the ritual human sacrifices of the Aztecs, and the tragedies to which innocence may lead. In doing so, he shakes us out of our deep-seated ways of thinking, enlarging our understanding of the possibilities available to us as we struggle with the problems that stand in the way of how we want to live. The result is a highly interesting journey through time and space that illuminates and helps us cope with some of the most basic predicaments we all face as human beings.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53251327885585,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53251327918353,"sku":"NIN9780226638911","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780226638911.jpg?v=1773580930"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/de-de\/collections\/autor-buecher-von-john-kekes.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}