Generations Of Reason

An intimate, accessible history of British intellectual development across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, through the story of one family This book recounts the story of three Cambridge-educated Englishmen and the women with whom they chose to share their commitment to reason in all parts of their lives. The reason this family embraced was an essentially human power with the potential to generate true insight into all aspects of the world. In exploring the ways reason permeated three generations of English experience, this book casts new light on key developments in English cultural and political history, from the religious conformism of the eighteenth century through the Napoleonic era into the Industrial Revolution and prosperity of the Victorian age. At the same time, it restores the rich world of the essentially meditative, rational sciences of theology, astronomy, mathematics, and logic to their proper place in the English intellectual landscape. Following the development of their views over the course of an eventful one hundred years of English history illuminates the fine structure of ways reason still operates in our world.

The things we do today may make life worse for future generations. But why should we care what happens to people who won't be born until after all of us are gone? Some philosophers have treated this as a question about our moral responsibilities, and have argued that we have duties of beneficence to promote the well-being of our descendants. Rather than focusing exclusively on issues of moral responsibility, Samuel Scheffler considers the broader question of why and how future generations matter to us. Although we lack a developed set of ideas about the value of human continuity, we are more invested in the fate of our descendants than we may realize. Implicit in our existing values and attachments are a variety of powerful reasons for wanting the chain of human generations to persist into the indefinite future under conditions conducive to human flourishing. This has implications for the way we think about problems like climate change. And it means that some of our strongest reasons for caring about the future of humanity depend not on our moral duty to promote the good but rather on our existing evaluative attachments and on our conservative disposition to preserve and sustain the things that we value. This form of conservatism supports rather than inhibits a concern for future generations, and it is an important component of the complex stance we take toward the temporal dimension of our lives.

Utopian Generations develops a powerful interpretive matrix for understanding world literature--one that renders modernism and postcolonial African literature comprehensible in a single framework, within which neither will ever look the same. African literature has commonly been seen as representationally naïve vis-à-vis modernism, and canonical modernism as reactionary vis-à-vis postcolonial literature. What brings these two bodies of work together, argues Nicholas Brown, is their disposition toward Utopia or "the horizon of a radical reconfiguration of social relations.? Grounded in a profound rethinking of the Hegelian Marxist tradition, this fluently written book takes as its point of departure the partial displacement during the twentieth century of capitalism's "internal limit" (classically conceived as the conflict between labor and capital) onto a geographic division of labor and wealth. Dispensing with whole genres of commonplace contemporary pieties, Brown examines works from both sides of this division to create a dialectical mapping of different modes of Utopian aesthetic practice. The theory of world literature developed in the introduction grounds the subtle and powerful readings at the heart of the book--focusing on works by James Joyce, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Ford Madox Ford, Chinua Achebe, Wyndham Lewis, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and Pepetela. A final chapter, arguing that this literary dialectic has reached a point of exhaustion, suggests that a radically reconceived notion of musical practice may be required to discern the Utopian desire immanent in the products of contemporary culture.

Based on an extensive national survey of workers and four separate industry-specific surveys, Generations and Work will examine and provide answers to the most common issues and problems of multi generational work by assessing differences and commonalities between and among generations.

Existing human beings stand in a unique relationship of asymmetrical influence over future generations. Our choices now can settle whether there are any human beings in the further future; how many will exist; what capacities and abilities they might have; and what the character of the natural world they inhabit is like. This volume, with contributions from both new voices and prominent, established figures in moral and political philosophy, examines three generally underexplored themes concerning morality and our relationship to future generations. First, would it be morally wrong to allow humanity to go extinct? Or do we have moral reasons to try and ensure that humanity continues into the indefinite future? Second, if humanity is to continue into the future, how many people should there be? And is it morally important whether they have lives that are of high quality or are just barely worth living? And third, how can we best make sense of the intuitive idea that by not taking action on climate change and preserving natural resources, we are in some way wronging future generations? This book was originally published as a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.

“The Generations Project offers churches in Singapore tangible data and an interpretive map for navigating congregational life and leadership today. This courageous study by Graceworks gifts congregations and church leaders with a vital and contextualised map of different generations of Christians in Singapore. ... The rest is up to us—you and me. Will we take Jesus’ command to love one another seriously? One of the ways we can do this is to use this study as a conversation starter and catalyst for careful study in our local churches. This book is a compelling encouragement for us to love one another better. We get better at loving one another by gaining more understanding and learning to be more practiced in bridging our generational differences.” — From the Foreword by Rev Dr Bernard Chao

A groundbreaking, “lavishly informative” (The New York Times) portrait of the six generations that currently live in the United States and how they connect, conflict, and compete with one another—from the acclaimed author of Generation Me and iGen. Upending the conventional theory that generational differences are caused by major events, Dr. Jean Twenge analyzes data on 39 million people from robust national surveys—some going back nearly a century—to show that changes in technology are the underlying driver of each generation’s unique makeup. In this revelatory work, Twenge outlines key shifts in attitudes and lifestyle choices that define each generation regarding gender, income, politics, race, sexuality, marriage, mental health, and much more. Surprising, engaging, and informative, Generations “gets you thinking about how appreciating generational differences can, ironically, bring us together” (Angela Duckworth, New York Times bestselling author). It will forever change the way you view your parents, peers, coworkers, and children, no matter which generation you call your own.

Sustainable development requires consideration of the quality of life that future generations will be able to enjoy, and as the adjustment to sustainable lifestyles gathers momentum, the rights of future generations and our responsibility for their wellbeing is becoming a central issue. In this, the first book to address this emerging area of international law, leading experts examine the legal and theoretical frameworks for representing and safeguarding the interests of future generations in current international treaties. This unique volume will be required reading for academics and students of international environmental law and policy. Emmanuel Agius is Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Theology and Coordinator of the Future Generations Programme at the Foundation for International Studies, University of Malta. Salvino Busuttil is former Director General of the Foundation for International Studies. Future Generations and International Law is the seventh volume in the International Law and Sustainable Development series, co-developed with FIELD. The series aims to address and define the major legal issues associated with sustainable development and to contribute to the progressive development of international law. Other titles in the series are: Greening International Law, Interpreting the Precautionary Principle, Property Rights in the Defence of Nature, Improving Compliance with International Environmental Law, Greening International Institutions and Quotas in International Environmental Agreements. 'A legal parallel to the Blueprint series - welcome, timely and provocative' David Pearce Originally published in 1997