The Honorable Self

This is a book about psychology and coping with stress. When you cope with the stresses of everyday living, you have chosen to live, to face life and its challenges. Too many people choose not to face their problems—to stay in their comfort zone—and let life pass them by. We present a coping model based on accountability, humility, and empathy, traits that comprise honorable character. We believe that effective coping requires acting with integrity and morality according to your values. Using real-life examples, we show you how to develop an action plan for your life based on decency and honesty, a plan that will allow you to discover your honorable self, and bring you closer to realizing your potential.

This is a book about psychology and coping with stress. When you cope with the stresses of everyday living, you have chosen to live, to face life and its challenges. Too many people choose not to face their problems--to stay in their comfort zone--and let life pass them by. We present a coping model based on accountability, humility, and empathy, traits that comprise honorable character. We believe that effective coping requires acting with integrity and morality according to your values. Using real-life examples, we show you how to develop an action plan for your life based on decency and honesty, a plan that will allow you to discover your honorable self, and bring you closer to realizing your potential.

Pursuing the Honorable argues that our modern understanding of honor, as seen through example of today’s military training, is deficient. To remedy this, the book returns to an understanding of the honorable good, especially manifested for philosophers like Aristotle and Cicero in a life of the human virtues. However, because honor as defined by the honorable good needs to be applicable to the 21st Century occidental world of liberal democratic values, the study includes careful attention to those conditions under which honor can once again become a live option. While special attention is given to military training, including concrete proposals for its renewal, what the study discovers extends to many forms of human life

Abruptly roused from his prosaic existence as a small-town magistrate in Ming Dynasty China, Lin Jiang is summoned to the house of Lord Chang Da, an extremely wealthy landowner and cousin of the emperor. To Lin’s consternation, the crime he is asked to investigate is the supposedly deliberate killing of Chang Da’s pet songbird. Honor-bound to undertake the task, Lin soon discovers there is much more at stake in the great family of Chang. With the help of his trusty manservant Chen Ping, who himself has a dark connection to the House of Chang, Lin sets about discovering the truth. In so doing, he lays bare a tangled story of illicit love, jealousy, fraternal rivalry, and violent death.

From an authoritative and compelling author, "An Honorable Profession" is a "splendid novel" realized "superbly well" ("Newark Star-Ledger") about an ordinary New England school where a young English teacher's life is about to undergo the most serious of tests. A "New York Times" Notable Book.

This volume explores the concept of the honest merchant, taking a broad perspective and covering a wide range of aspects. It looks at the different types of “honest merchant” conceptions originating from different cultures and literary traditions. The book covers Japanese, Islamic, Scandinavian, Russian, German, Spanish, as well as other aspects, and studies different disciplinary backgrounds of the honest merchant, such as philosophical, economic, neuroethical, sociological and literary ones. The concept of the honest merchant has a long tradition in business ethics. In the Hanseatic League and in medieval Italy, the ideal of the honest businessman was taught since the late Middle Ages. It originated during a time when travelling merchants were often regarded with a sceptical eye. The honest merchants of their time however held clear principles in their business and took responsibility for their community. In later times, the religious notions of the concept lost their pivotal place to reason and morality. This book goes beyond the tradition of discussing business ethics in association with concepts from the Hanseatic League and medieval Italy, and puts the central concept of business ethics in a much greater perspective.

This study explores the relationship between the individual person (the self), the divine, and other people in the writings of the apostle Paul and the Roman Stoic Epictetus. It does so by examining self-involving actions expressed with reflexive pronouns (myself, yourself, etc.) in various kinds of sentences: for example, “Examine yourself” and “You do not belong to yourself.” After situating the topic within the fields of linguistics and ancient Greek, the study then examines the reflexive constructions in Epictetus’s Discourses, showing that reflexive texts express fundamental aspects of his ethic of rational self-interest in imitation of the indwelling rational deity. Next, the investigation examines the 109 reflexive constructions in Paul, providing an exegesis of each reflexive text and then synthesizing the results. Paul’s reflexive phrases are essential statements of his theology and ethics, expressing an interconnected narrative Christology, narrative apostolic identity, and narrative ethic. Most importantly, the study finds that for Epictetus, concern for others is a rational means to self-realization, whereas for Paul, concern for others is a community ethic grounded in the story of the indwelling Christ and is the antithesis of self-interest.