Offering an inspiring mix of history and biography, Saints on Earth tells the stories of the diverse people commemorated in the Common Worship calendar of Holy Days, with over 250 saints’ days, festivals and commemorations that greatly enrich the Christian year. This wide-ranging selection of spiritually significant men and women features Celtic and Catholic saints, Reformers, Tractarians, bishops and missionaries together with poets, writers, martyrs, social reformers, kings and queens. Recent heroes and heroines of faith, both Anglican and from other Christian traditions, are celebrated alongside those who inspired the Early Church. This versatile companion is a rich source of inspiration for preaching and leading prayers and worship throughout the year. It is now updated to include figures added to the Common Worship calendar in recent years.
Life in the Market Ecosystem, the second book inthe Nature of Liberty trilogy, confronts evolutionary psychology head on. It describes the evolutionary psychologists’ theory of gene-culture co-evolution, which states that although customs and culture are not predetermined by anyone’s genetic makeup, one’s practice of a custom can influence the likelihood of that person having children and grandchildren. Therefore, according to the theory, customs count as evolutionary adaptations. Extending that theory further, as entire systems of political economy—capitalism, socialism, and hunter-gatherer subsistence—consist of multiple customs and institutions, it follows that an entire political-economic system can likewise be classified as an evolutionary adaptation. Considering that liberal-republican capitalism has, insofar as the system has been implemented, done more to reduce the mortality rate and secure human fertility than other models of societal structure, it stands to reason that liberal-republican capitalism is itself a beneficent evolutionary adaptation. Moreover, as essential tenets of Rand’s Objectivism—individualism, observation-based rationality, and peaceable self-interest—have been integral to the development of the capitalist ecosystem, important aspects of the Objectivism are worthwhile adaptations as well. This book shall uphold that position, as well as combat critiques by evolutionary psychologists and environmentalists who denounce capitalism as self-destructive. Instead, capitalism is the most sustainable and fairest political model. This book argues that of all the philosophies, Objectivism is the one that is most fit for humanity.
Hunting Down Social Darwinism is the third and final installment in the trilogy, The Nature of Liberty. The trilogy gives a secular, ethical defense of laissez-faire capitalism, inspired by Ayn Rand’s ideas. The trilogy’s first book, The Freedom of Peaceful Action, provided the philosophic theory behind the ethics of a free-enterprise system based on the individual rights to life, liberty, and private property which John Locke described. The second installment, Life in the Market Ecosystem, explained how free enterprise functions much as a natural ecosystem wherein behavioral norms develop, bottom-up, from repeat interactions among individual participants in the economy. As such defenses of free enterprise are frequently criticized as “social Darwinism,” however, this third and final installment of the trilogy asks the question, “What is social Darwinism?” The book embarks on a hunt for the term’s meaning, explores social Darwinism’s beginnings, and examines whether it is fair to describe such nineteenth-century free-market advocates as Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner as social Darwinists. It then addresses the accusation that the free-market Darwinism commonly ascribed to Spencer and Sumner rationalized bigotry and founded the pseudoscience of eugenics. In the process, the book refutes various myths about the topic popularized by such scholars as Richard Hofstadter and John Kenneth Galbraith. The extent to which the popular narratives about social Darwinism prove to be inaccurate holds enormous ramifications for current controversies. It has implications for debates over the ethical appropriateness of reducing taxpayer spending on social welfare programs, and also sheds new light on the pros and cons of attempts to apply biological evolutionary theory to the study of human social institutions. Additionally discussed is the manner in which various prominent figures in economics, evolutionary psychology, and Complexity Theory have grown famous for advancing ideas which Spencer and Sumner originated, even as such figures simultaneously downplay the importance of Spencer and Sumner to their field. Following the hunt for social Darwinism, this work sums up the trilogy with some final thoughts on the importance that liberty holds for every effort to live life to the fullest.
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