By R. M. Hare

From the cover: 'What I think about morals is up to me.' 'You can't think just what you like about moral questions.' Mr. Hare's aim is to resolve this antinomy by showing how, when thinking morally, a man can be both free and rational. Out of his earlier suggestions, in The Language of Morals, about the logical character and function of moral judgements, he de­velops an account of the main features of moral reasoning.. Topics touched upon include: 'ought' and 'can' and the problem of moral weakness; the place of imagination in moral thinking; ideals, moral and aesthetic; and the rational basis of toleration. The book ends with a more detailed practical illustration of moral reasoning, drawn from argu­ments about our attitudes toward racial conflicts.”

New York. Oxford University Pres. 1965. 230p.

By William Frankena

FROM THE PREFACE: This book is intended to introduce students and the general reader to the branch of philosophy called “ethics.” I shall try, among other things, to present some of the standard material of ethics that beginners and others should know. Idris will not, however, be a summary of what moral philosophers are agreed upon, as introductions to other subjects may be summaries of what the experts in those fields agree upon. Such a substantial body of agreement does not exist in philosophy. Nor will this be simply an introductory review of the various differing positions moral philosophers have taken, although many of these positions will be presented and discussed. My aim in this book is not just to introduce the problems and positions of moral philosophers, but also to do moral philosophy.

New Jersey. Prentice Hall. 1963. 113p.

By Ernest Becker

From the Preface: “The prospect of death. Dr, Johnson said, wonderfully concentrates the mind. The main thesis of this book is that it does much more than that: the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity—activity de­signed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man. The noted anthro­pologist A. M. Hocart once argued that primitives were not bothered by the fear of death; that a sagacious sampling of anthropological evidence would show that death was, more often than not, ac­companied by rejoicing and festivities; that death seemed to be an occasion for celebration rather than fear—much like the traditional Irish wake. Hocart wanted to dispel the notion that (compared to modem man) primitives were childish and frightened by reality; anthropologists have now largely accomplished this rehabilitation of the primitive. But this argument leaves untouched the fact that the fear of death is indeed a universal in the human condition. To be sure, primitives often celebrate death—as Hocart and others have shown—because they believe that death is the ultimate promotion, the final ritual elevation to a Higher form of life, to the enjoyment of eternity in some form. Most modem Westerners have trouble believing this any more, which is what makes the fear of death so prominent a part of our psychological make-up.

In these pages I try to show that the fear of death is a universal that unites data from several disciplines of the human sciences, and makes wonderfully clear and intelligible human actions that we have buried under mountains of fact, and obscured with endless with endless back and forth arguments about “true” human motives.”

NY. The Free Press. 1973. 326p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

By Daniel C. Dennett

From the preface: Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection has always fascinated me, but over the years I have found a surprising variety of thinkers who cannot conceal their discomfort with his great idea, ranging from nagging skepti­cism to outright hostility. I have found not just lay people and religious thinkers, but secular philosophers, psychologists, physicists, and even biol­ogists who w'ould prefer, it seems, that Darwin were wrong. This book is about why Darwin’s idea is so powerful, and why it promises—not threat­ens—to put our most cherished visions of life on a new foundation.

NY. Touchstone.1995. 568p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

By G. J. Warnock

From the introduction: “The aim of this essay is to provide a compendious survey of moral philosophy in English since about the beginning of the present century. Fortunately, the tale that thus falls to be told is not in outline excessively complex, and can be seen as a quite intelligible sequence of distinguishable episodes……It will be found that my critical discussions of the major doc­trines to be surveyed are (I fear) somewhat uniformly hostile; and I have brought in, in the later pages of my essay, perhaps more controversial matter than would ordinarily be looked for in a mainly expository review. But I would defend this, if I had to, as lying in the nature of the case. For the case is, I believe, that the successive orthodoxies of moral philosophy in English in the present century have been, notwithstanding the often admirable acumen of their authors, remarkably barren. Certain questions about the nature and the basis of moral judgment which have been regarded, at least in the past, as centrally important have not only not been examined in recent theories; those theories have seemed deliberately to hold that, on those questions, there is nothing whatever that can usefully be said….”

Macmillan St. Martin’s Press. 1867. 88p.

By Thomas Bullfinch.

From thePublishers’ Preface: No new edition of Bulfinch’s classic work can be con­sidered complete without some notice of the American scholar to whose wide erudition and painstaking care it stands as a perpetual monument. “The Age of Fable” has come to be ranked with older books like “Pilgrim’s Progress,” “Gulliver’s Travels,” “The Arabian Nights,” “Robinson Crusoe,” and five or six other productions of world-wide renown as a work with which every one must claim some acquaintance before his education can be called really complete. Many readers of the present edition will probably recall coming in contact with the work as children, and, it may be added, will no doubt discover from a fresh perusal the source of numerous bits of knowledge that have remained stored in their minds since those early years. Yet to the majority of this great circle of readers and students the name Bulfinch in itself has no significance.

NY. Crown Publishers Avenel Books. 1978 1021p..

Translated by Joseph Smith Jr.

An account written by the Hand of Mormon, upon Plates taken from the Plates of Nephi. Wherefore It Is an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanltes; written to the Lamanites who are a remnant of the house of Israel; and also to Jew and Gentile: written by way of commandment, and also by the Spirit of prophecy and of revelation. Written and sealed up, and hid up unto the Lord, that they might not be destroyed; to come forth by the gift and power of God unto the inter­pretation thereof: sealed by the hand of Moroni, and hid up unto the Lord, to come forth in due time by the way of Gentile; the interpretation thereof by the gift of God.

An abridgment taken from the Book of Ether also; which Is a record of the people of Jared; who were scattered at the time the Lord con­founded the language of the people when they were building a tower to get to heaven; which is to shew unto the remnant of the House of Israel whut great things the Lord hath done for their fathers; and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever; and also to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that JESUS is the CHRIST, the ETERNAL GOD, manifesting himself unto all nations. And now if there are faults, they are the mistakes of men; wherefore condemn not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the Judgment-seat of Christ.

Chicago. Press of Henry C. Often & Co.1905. 637p.

By Dennis Barone

In Beyond Memory, Dennis Barone uncovers the richness and diversity of the Italian Protestant experience and places it in the context of migration and political and social life in both Italy and the United States. Italian Protestants have received scant attention in the fields of Italian American studies, religious studies, and immigration studies, and through literary sources, church records, manuscript sources, and secondary sources in various fields, Barone introduces such forgotten voices as the Baptist Antonio Mangano, the Methodist Antonio Arrighi, and his great-grandfather Alfredo Barone, a Baptist minister to congregations in Italy and Massachusetts. Examining the complex histories of these and other Italian Protestants, Barone argues that Protestantism ultimately served as a means to negotiate between Old World and New World ways, even as it resulted in the double alienation of rejection by Roman Catholic immigrants and condescension by Anglo-Protestants. Though the book focuses on the years of high immigration (1890-1920), it also looks at precursors to post-reunification Protestants as well as Protestants in Italy today, now that the nation has become a country of in-migration.

NY. SUNY Press. 2016. 182p.

Edited by Gianni Paganini, Margaret C. Jacob, and John Christian Laursen

Clandestine Philosophy examines the circulation and consequences of 'clandestine philosophical manuscripts', a genre that flourished in the eighteenth century and included forbidden works such as erotic texts, political pamphlets, satires of court life and of the nobility, forbidden religious texts, and books about alchemy and the occult. The editors have brought together leading experts on the history of European philosophy to explore the circulation of radical ideas during the eighteenth century and the social, political, and cultural impact they had on eighteenth-century society.

Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019. 449p.

By George Edward Moore

From the preface: “It appears to me that in Ethics, as in all other philosophical studies, the difficulties and disagreements, of which its history is full, are mainly due to a very simple cause: namely to the attempt to answer questions, without first discovering precisely what question it is which you desire to answer.”

London. Cambridge University Press. 1903. 264p.

By F. H. Bradley

THE object of this volume is not the construction of a system of Moral Philosophy. It is very far from attempting either an exhaustive or a systematic treatment of ethical questions. Nor is the Author so much as pre- pared to define the sphere of Moral Philosophy, to say what does fall within it and what docs not. The writer’s object in this work has bceti mainly critical. He sees that ethical theories rest in the end on pre- conceptions metaphysical and psychological. He believes that many of the fundamental ideas now current, especially and he has en- deavoured, by the correction of some of these, at least to remove what seem obstacles to the apprehension of moral facts. These Essa^^s arc a critical discussion of some lead- ing questions in Ethics, and ai'e so far connected that, for the most part, they must be read in the order in which they stand. (Author’s preface)

Oxford : At The Clarendon Press. (1876)1927. 358p.

By Emile Durkheim.

“‘Our first obligation at this time is to create a moral consensus.’ Thus Durkheim concludes his thesis which began with the assertion ‘that science can help us determine the way in which we ought to orient our conduct’.”

NY. The Free Press. 1961. 322p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

By Crane Brinton.

Hailed by The New York Times as "tantalizing" and "learned," A History of Western Morals brings together an impressive range of knowledge of Western civilization. From the ancient cultures of the Near East, through the Ancient Greek and Roman worlds, to the Middle Ages, the Reformation, the Renaissance, the Age of Reason and the twentieth century, Crane Brinton searches human history for the meaning of ethics. A History of Western Morals raises controversial conclusions about the value of religion in society, the practices of sex, the nature of crime and the possibility of progress.

NY. Harcourt Brace. (1959) 507p.

By Mary K. Farag.

Legal and Ritual Perspectives from Late Antiquity. “The making of churches into res sacrae occurred, legally and canonically, from Constantine to Justinian. But even though church property in many ways was already treated as a res sacra by Constantine and his successors, it was not until the time of Justinian that church buildings and their properties explicitly became res sacrae. Part I tells the story of how a definition of “the sacred” conceived for traditional Greco-Roman temples was applied to ecclesial property and expanded in scope in the process. I craft this story on the basis of two kinds of rules: the laws of emperors and the canons of bishops.”

UC Press. (2021) 348 pages.

By Richard S. Weiss..

Religion on the Margins of Colonialism. “In this book, I present a narrative of the emergence of modern Hinduism that challenges these conventional accounts. I do this through a close study of the writ- ings, teachings, and innovations of Ramalinga Swami (1823–1874). Ramalinga was a Shaiva leader who spoke and wrote in Tamil in a local setting, was marginal to colonial and Hindu institutional authority, was grounded in Hindu traditions, and did not engage the West in any visible way. I argue that Ramalinga’s teachings were modern because they displayed an acute awareness of challenges of the present, innovated in ways that addressed those challenges, were founded on a desire to transform the world in specific ways, and presaged later developments in Hindu traditions.”

UC Press. 2019. 222 pages.

By John H. Evans.

Recasting the Contemporary U.S. Conflict Between Religion and Science. “This book is dedicated to trying to dislodge the myth that there is, in the pub- lic, a foundational conflict between religion and science, specifically that there is conflict over “ways of knowing” about the natural world. I know that discredit- ing this myth will not be easy. In popular accounts, “religion” and “science” have always been at war over knowledge, with the first battle being between Galileo and the 17th century Catholic Church.

UC Press. (2018) 240 pages.

By W. E. H. Lecky.

This is the second volume of Lecky’s huge works on the history of morals in Western Civilization. It’s a bit of a surprise that it took two volumes to do it. Looking back from the 21st century, one doubts that the West had enough morals to fill even one volume. This volume contains: Chapter IV. From Constantine To Charlemagne. Chapter V. The Position Of Women. Perhaps we can conclude from these contents that were is no place for men in the history of morals.

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. London. Longmans. 1880. 440p.

By W. E. H. Lecky.

This is the first volume of Lecky’s huge works on the history of morals in Western Civilization. It’s a bit of a surprise that it took two volumes to do it. Looking back from the 21st century, one doubts that the West had enough morals to fill even one volume. This volume contains: ChapterI.The Natural History Of Morals. Chapter II. The Pagan Empire. Chapter III.The Conversion Of Rome.

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. London, Longmans. 1890. 480p.

By Friedrich Nietzsche.

Vilified and adored, the works of Nietzsche wreaked havoc with 20th century philosophers, his then far out ideas used by politicians, tyrants, worshippers of the free, and the like to justify their lofty aims, and for some, their unmitigated adoration of violence. Some how, God was lost, perhaps forever. Or perhaps was transformed into the antichrist.

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. 1885.

The bastion of “Middle Eastern” thought, the staunch competitor to the Holy Bible, though in many ways, as is common with arch-rivals, reflecting much of its content (or vice-versa).

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint.