Power, Pleasure, and Profit

Power, Pleasure, and Profit
Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Total Pages : 401
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780674989900
ISBN-13 : 0674989902
Rating : 4/5 (902 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Power, Pleasure, and Profit by : David Wootton

Download or read book Power, Pleasure, and Profit written by David Wootton and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-08 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative history of the changing values that have given rise to our present discontents. We pursue power, pleasure, and profit. We want as much as we can get, and we deploy instrumental reasoning—cost-benefit analysis—to get it. We judge ourselves and others by how well we succeed. It is a way of life and thought that seems natural, inevitable, and inescapable. As David Wootton shows, it is anything but. In Power, Pleasure, and Profit, he traces an intellectual and cultural revolution that replaced the older systems of Aristotelian ethics and Christian morality with the iron cage of instrumental reasoning that now gives shape and purpose to our lives. Wootton guides us through four centuries of Western thought—from Machiavelli to Madison—to show how new ideas about politics, ethics, and economics stepped into a gap opened up by religious conflict and the Scientific Revolution. As ideas about godliness and Aristotelian virtue faded, theories about the rational pursuit of power, pleasure, and profit moved to the fore in the work of writers both obscure and as famous as Hobbes, Locke, and Adam Smith. The new instrumental reasoning cut through old codes of status and rank, enabling the emergence of movements for liberty and equality. But it also helped to create a world in which virtue, honor, shame, and guilt count for almost nothing, and what matters is success. Is our world better for the rise of instrumental reasoning? To answer that question, Wootton writes, we must first recognize that we live in its grip.


Power, Pleasure, and Profit Related Books

Power, Pleasure, and Profit
Language: en
Pages: 401
Authors: David Wootton
Categories: Political Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2018-10-08 - Publisher: Harvard University Press

GET EBOOK

A provocative history of the changing values that have given rise to our present discontents. We pursue power, pleasure, and profit. We want as much as we can g
Pleasure in Profit
Language: en
Pages: 323
Authors: Laura Moretti
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2020-12-22 - Publisher: Columbia University Press

GET EBOOK

In the seventeenth century, Japanese popular prose flourished as waves of newly literate readers gained access to the printed word. Commercial publishers releas
The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction
Language: en
Pages: 172
Authors: Alan Jacobs
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011-05-26 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

GET EBOOK

In recent years, cultural commentators have sounded the alarm about the dire state of reading in America. Americans are not reading enough, they say, or reading
Experiencing Pleasure and Profit in Bible Study
Language: en
Pages: 110
Authors: Dwight L. Moody
Categories: Religion
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013-01-24 - Publisher: Moody Publishers

GET EBOOK

The Word of God. It is undoubtedly the key resource for a faithful, fulfilling Christian life. Has your study of the Bible been consistent and fruitful or do yo
What We Talk About When We Talk About Books
Language: en
Pages: 165
Authors: Leah Price
Categories: Language Arts & Disciplines
Type: BOOK - Published: 2019-08-20 - Publisher: Basic Books

GET EBOOK

Reports of the death of reading are greatly exaggerated Do you worry that you've lost patience for anything longer than a tweet? If so, you're not alone. Digita