A Common Humanity: Thinking About Love and Truth and Justice

A Common Humanity: Thinking About Love and Truth and Justice

by RaimondGaita (Author)

Synopsis

The Holocaust and attempts to deny it, racism, murder, the case of Mary Bell. How can we include these and countless other examples of evil within our vision of a common humanity? These painful human incongruities are precisely what Raimond Gaita boldly harmonizes in his powerful new book, A Common Humanity.
Hatred with forgiveness, evil with love, suffering with compassion, and the mundane with the precious. Gaita asserts that our conception of humanity cannot be based upon the empty language of individual rights when it is our shared feelings of grief, hope, love, guilt, shame and remorse that offer a more potent foundation for common understanding. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, Simon Weil, Primo Levi, George Orwell, Iris Murdoch and Sigmund Freud, Gaita creates a beautifully written and provocative new picture of our common humanity.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 336
Edition: 1
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 18 Jan 2002

ISBN 10: 0415241146
ISBN 13: 9780415241144

Media Reviews
'an absorbing read from beginning to end, its discussions are memorable and in many places moving. A quite exceptional work.' - Tim Crane, University College London 'A wise and beautifully written book. It is a wonderful example of how philosophy can still speak without any condescension to the educated reader.' - Professor Simon Critchley, University of Essex 'A wonderful piece of writing. The disciplined individuality of Gaita's voice shows how a humanly serious practice of philosophy might make a decisive contribution to our public culture.' - Stephen Mulhall, New College Oxford 'Clear, passionate, subtle and profound.' - Christopher Cordner, University of Melbourne 'A book for anyone who is prepared to think seriously. It is also moving in a way that is rare in philosophy.' - Anthony Duff, University of Stirling 'Challenging and disturbing' - Sydney Herald 'An exploration of how people make moral and ethical judgments by a controversial Autralian moral philosopher. Raimond Gaita's insights are original and his prose is as eloquent as it is affecting.' - The Economist, Books of the Year, 2000- 'Gaita's genius... is his ability to weigh the soul on a scale, and to show how goodness and justice might yet prevail.' - The Scotsman-