J. Roth – Ethics. Revised Edition

Автор: J. Roth
Название книги: Ethics. Revised Edition
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Философия
Страницы: 1719
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

An encyclopedic work with more than 1,000 essays covering the full spectrum of ethics issues: animal rights, arts and censorship, bioethics, business and labor, children's rights, civil rights, environmental issues, human rights, international relations, legal and judicial issues, the media, the military, personal and social ethics, political and economic ethics, psychological ethics, race and ethnicity, religion, science and technology, sex and gender, and theory. Subjects of individual articles include persons, organizations, court cases, concepts, theories, human behavior, business practices, events, laws, political systems, and much more.
Ethics, Revised Edition, is the first revision of Salem
Press’s well-received Ethics, which was published in
1994. This new edition adds more than 200 completely
new articles to the set, raising the total to
1,007 essays and 6 appendices. This edition also updates
and expands many of the original essays and
adds other new features. The main thrust of this edition
is on applied ethics, with particular emphasis on
current issues.
Ethics, in one form or another, has been a central
issue in history since the earliest human beings began
living together in communities. Throughout human
history, people have always wondered whether they
were being held accountable for their actions by a
higher power or powers. Those believing that such
higher powers exist have needed to know what their
relationships with those powers are and what they are
required to do or not to do. Those lacking such beliefs
have needed to believe that their lives have meaning;
they, in turn, have wondered how they should act and
what they should do. In addition, all people need to
know what other people expect of them and what the
limits of their freedom of action are. All these questions
are essentially ethical matters.
Issues in Ethics
Many of the basic ethical issues with which early
human societies wrestled still confront modern societies.
However, early societies did not confront the vast
variety of complex ethical issues that modern societies
face. As societies have grown larger and more complex,
and as human knowledge and technological ability
have increased, the numbers and varieties of ethical
issues that human beings face have also increased.
For example, the twentieth century development of
computer technology introduced knotty problems
regarding privacy rights, the replacement of human
workers by robots, and the possibility of artificially
created intelligent beings. Along with the modern
medical technologies that have extended human life
spans have come complex bioethical questions such
as balancing the needs of the productive young and
the nonproductive old. Recent advances in biotechnology
have raised a host of new ethical questions about
genetic engineering and other matters that members
of earlier societies could never have imagined.
Recent decades have seen unprecedented concerns
about gross inequities in the worldwide distribution
of food, resources, and power. These questions
become more glaring as the world becomes more
crowded and more interdependent and as the gaps between
the rich and the poor and the powerful and the
weak growlarger. These changes are raising questions
about how much responsibility those who have the
means to prosper should take for promoting the welfare
of those who lack the resources to survive.
Religion is another field in which new ethical
questions are being posed. Throughout much of the
world, traditional attitudes toward religion have
changed, and many societies have seen growing
numbers of their members reject the old ethical and
moral codes of the religions into which they were
born, while not finding other codes to replace them.
At the same, many religious leaders, politicians, and
other public figures have demonstrated that their own
personal codes of ethics will not bear scrutiny. These
developments and others have led many people to
focus more attention on secular ethics. As a consequence,
governments, professional organizations,
industries, and individual businesses have adopted
codes of ethics in attempts to improve their images,
and many educational institutions have added ethics
classes and programs to their curricula.
Expanded Coverage in This Edition
As the world enters the twenty-first century, new
questions are being asked about political, economic,
social, and scientific ethics. Examples of topics new
to this edition range from the etiquette of cell-phone
use and the pirating of digital media to the permissible
limits of stem-cell research and the role of religion
in world terrorism. As Dr. John K. Roth points
out in his Introduction to this revised edition, the past
decade alone has raised ethics questions that were not
imagined when the first edition of Ethics was published.
Before the appearance of the first edition of Ethics
in 1994, students interested in learning more about
ethics had to consult many separate, specialized studies
to gain a general knowledge of applied ethics.
Salem Press created Ethics in its Ready Reference
series to provide the first comprehensive reference work examining all aspects of applied ethics as well
as the more traditional ethical areas of religion and
philosophy. Ethics, Revised Edition, expands the
earlier work’s coverage by addressing many ethics
issues that have come to prominence over the past decade.
These include such religious topics as churchstate
separation, faith healers, Islamic ethics, the jihad
concept, religion and violence, the Roman Catholic
priests sexual abuse scandal, Scientology, and
televangelists.
Ethics, Revised Edition, also gives particular attention
to business and labor ethics, with newarticles
on such topics as advertising, several aspects of computer
misuse, corporate compensation, professional
athlete incomes, downsizing and outsourcing, and
the tobacco industry. New topics relating to political
and economic issues include Congress, distributive
justice, famine as an instrument of oppression, care
of the homeless, lobbying, lotteries, minimum wage
laws, and the fairness of taxes. Personal and social
ethics issues are the subject of a similar number of
new essays, which include topics ranging from cellphone
etiquette and workplace dress codes to premarital
sex and professional resumes.
The revised edition’s increased emphasis on applied
ethics can also be seen in the newessays on contemporary
newsmakers whose ethical behavior—
whether positive or negative—has been in the news.
These people includeWilliam Bennett, Bill Clinton,
Louis Farrakhan, Saddam Hussein, Jesse Jackson,
Martha Stewart, and Desmond Tutu.
Some of the most important topics of the new essays
concern the burgeoning field of bioethics. New
topics in this field include biometrics, assisted suicide,
cloning, genetic engineering, and stem-cell research.
International relations is another field that is
constantly raising new ethics questions. Among the
topics covered in new essays in this field are the
Bosnia conflict; globalization; Iraq; and terrorism.
New topics dealing with ethics questions relating to
more purely military issues include biological warfare
and bioterrorism, child soldiers, the just war theory,
mercenary soldiers, peacekeeping missions, and
war crimes trials.
Formatting of Articles
Every article is written to emphasize the relevance
of ethics to its subject. To that end, each essay
begins with ready-reference top matter providing
such information as dates and places of birth and
death for important personages; dates of important
events; a line identifying the most relevant type of
ethics to which the topic relates; and a summary
statement of the subject’s significance in the field of
ethics. In addition, at the end of every entry, a list of
cross-references to other articles is provided to help
guide readers to related subjects covered in the set.
Within the main body of each article, clear subheads
are provided to help guide readers.
More than half the articles in the set—all those
500 or more words in length—include bibliographies.
The bibliographies of all the original articles in
the set have been updated through mid-2004. Additional
bibliographical information is provided in an
appendix in volume 3.
Special Features
The essays in Ethics, Revised Edition, are illustrated
by 180 photographs and more than 200 maps,
graphs, charts, and textual sidebars. The set’s attention
to current ethical concerns can be seen in the selection
of photographs—more than one third of
which were created after the publication of the first
edition of Ethics.
The 6 appendices in volume 3 include an annotated
list of organizations and Web sites devoted to
ethics issues, with addresses and Web site information;
a comprehensive and categorized bibliography;
a glossary of basic ethics terminology; a biographical
directory of people mentioned in the essays; a list of
Nobel Peace Prize winners through 2004; and a Time
Line of PrimaryWorks in Moral and Ethical Philosophy
The set’s three indexes include a categorized list
of essay topics arranged by types of ethics, an index
of personages, and a detailed subject index.
Acknowledgments
Reference works of this kind would not be possible
without the generous support of many scholars.
Salem Press would like to thank the 366 writers who
contributed essays to the original and revised editions.
We are especially grateful to contributors who
responded to our call for updates of original articles.
We are also grateful to Professor John K. Roth, of
Southern California’s Claremont McKenna College,
who has served as consultant for both editions of
Ethics.