Life, Sex and Ideas The Good Life without God

by Grayling, A. C.

• ISBN13: 9780195177558
• ISBN10: 019517755X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-12-16
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Short and elegantly written, this volume contains 60 essays organized under the categories of moral matters, public culture, community and society, anger and war, and grief and remembrance.

Author Biography

A.C. Grayling is a British literary journalist and university professor of philosophy, who contributes the weekly column "The Reason of Things" to The London Times and writes frequently for Financial Times and The New York Review of Books. He is a Reader in Philosophy at Birbeck College, University of London, and Supernumerary Fellow of St. Anne's College, Oxford. His books include Meditations for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age.

Table of Contents

Introduction	xi
Moral Matters
Emotion	3	(3)
Moral Education	6	(5)
Emancipation and Ethics	11	(5)
Symbols	16	(4)
Religion	20	(4)
Credulity	24	(3)
Fasting	27	(3)
Meat	30	(3)
Evil	33	(3)
Luxury	36	(3)
Games	39	(3)
Marriage	42	(3)
Sex	45	(15)
Benevolence	60	(3)
Morality	63	(6)
Public Culture
Identity	69	(3)
Cultures	72	(4)
Conservation	76	(6)
Teachers	82	(2)
Intellectuals	84	(7)
Community and Society
Politics	91	(3)
Voting	94	(3)
Utopia	97	(4)
Profit	101	(3)
Power	104	(2)
Protest	106	(3)
Justice	109	(3)
Liberty	112	(4)
Pluralism	116	(5)
Anger and War
Anger	121	(3)
Conflict	124	(2)
Guns	126	(3)
War	129	(3)
War's Causes	132	(3)
Western Victories	135	(3)
Triumph	138	(3)
Safety	141	(3)
War Crimes	144	(2)
Vengeance	146	(2)
Capital Punishment	148	(3)
Bystanders	151	(3)
Slavery	154	(3)
Experience	157	(6)
Grief and Remembrance
Suicide	163	(3)
Loss	166	(3)
Obsequies	169	(3)
Remembrance	172	(5)
Nature and Naturalness
Naturalness	177	(4)
Nature	181	(3)
Monsters	184	(3)
Madness	187	(6)
Clones	193	(3)
Decay	196	(5)
Reading and Thinking
The Essay	201	(5)
Reading and Reviewing	206	(9)
Biography	215	(4)
Becoming Philosophical	219	(9)
Philosophy	228	(3)
Reality	231	(3)
Values and Knowledge	234