Suchergebnisse

"Philosophies of Gratitude is a study of gratitude as a philosophical concept. It explores what past philosophers from Aristotle to Kant have said about gratitude, and examines what role the idea of gratitude has played in their philosophies. It also looks at the three primary ways we think about gratitude - as an emotion we feel in response to a gift or benefit, as an act we perform to express our thankfulness, and as a virtuous disposition in which we are and feel ready to be grateful to the world we inhabit. Like love and trust, gratitude is a way we react to other people in our lives, sometimes for who they are (lovable or trustworthy) and sometimes for what they do (act benevolently towards us). It is a way we feel and act towards others. It is, in other words, a primary way we situate ourselves in relationships. Philosophies of Gratitude examines the key historical moments when gratitude was an important philosophical concept - in classical antiquity, in the early modern era, and in the Enlightenment - in order to discover what gratitude meant for those who produced our fundamental Western notions of ethics. It then examines the forms gratitude assumes - as a feeling, an act, a disposition - in order to discern what role our emotions play in our ethical responses to the world. Finally, it examines what we can say about ingratitude as a response that usually strikes us as base, in other words, as a moment when a human being fails to act morally, but also as a response that sometimes indicates a deeper kind of ethical stand against injustice"--

After Injury explores the practices of forgiveness, resentment, and apology in three key moments when they were undergoing a dramatic change. The three moments are early Christian history (for forgiveness), the shift from British eighteenth-century to Continental nineteenth-century philosophers (for resentment), and the moment in the 1950s postwar world in which British ordinary language philosophers and American sociologists of everyday life theorized what it means to express or perform an apology. The debates that arose in those key moments have largely defined our contemporary study of these practices.

"Public apologies have become increasingly common scenes and representative moments in what appears to be a global process of forgiveness. The apology-forgiveness dynamic is familiar to all of us, but what do these rituals of atonement mean when they are applied to political and historical events? In his timely, topical, and incisive book A Guilted Age, Ashraf Rushdy argues that the proliferation of apologies by politicians, nations, and churches for past events--such as American slavery or the Holocaust--can be understood as a historical phenomenon. In our post-World War II world, Rushdy claims that we live in a 'guilted age.' A Guilted Age identifies the two major forms of apologies--political and historical--and Rushdy defines the dynamics and strategies of each, showing how the evolution of one led to the other. In doing so, he reveals what apology and forgiveness do to the past events they respectively apologize for and forgive--and what happens when they fail."--Publisher's Web site.

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- Introduction: When Is an American Lynching? -- 1. The Accountant and the Opera House -- 2. Date Night in the Courthouse Square -- 3. The End of American Lynching -- 4. The Last American Lynching -- Conclusion: The Subject of Lynching -- Notes -- Index