Raymond Martin and John Barresi trace the development of Western ideas about personal identity and reveal the larger intellectual trends, controversies, and ideas that have revolutionized the way we think about ourselves. They begin with ancient Greece, where the ideas of Plato, Aristotle, and the materialistic atomists laid the groundwork for future theories. They then discuss the ideas of the church fathers and medieval and Renaissance philosophers, including St. Paul, Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, and Montaigne. In their coverage of the emergence of a new mechanistic conception of nature in the seventeenth century, Martin and Barresi note a shift away from religious and purely philosophical notions of self and personal identity to more scientific and social conceptions, a trend that has continued to the present day. They explore modern philosophy and psychology, including the origins of different traditions within each discipline, and explain the theoretical relevance of both feminism and gender and ethnic studies and also the ways that Derrida and other recent thinkers have challenged the very idea that a unified self or personal identity even exists.

It is beyond debate that the world is troubled with numerous problems. We live in a time of political, economic and social uncertainty. While all of us earnestly hope that these problems will be worked out, we all differ widely in our views of the best route to get to these solutions. Perhaps the most basic issue in seeking solutions to our problems is the identification of the cause or source of these problems. As the world is an interconnected system where we all have some impact on the whole, it is logical to assume that the most basic issues of the world's problems lie within each of us individually. This book takes this approach. If we are to ever hope to move toward solutions to the world situation we must begin with each of our own individual situations. This is not a look at our physical situation but with our psychological and spiritual situation. The only way we can ever hope to build a better world is to build better people. The making of better people begins with a proper constitution of our "self" or the person we truly are. In the end, there are only two versions of our self that we can elect to live in-the independent self or the individual self. One of these versions leads to a life of bondage and the other leads to a healthy life of positive impact. This impact touches both our own life and the condition of all those we have contact with.

A trenchant expose of the inside workings of the,FBI which reveals - with numerous examples - the,extraordinarily severe problems of racism,experienced by black officers.

Belief in the afterlife is still very much alive in Western civilisation, even though the truth of its existence is no longer universally accepted. Surprisingly, however, heaven, hell and the immortal soul were all ideas which arrived relatively late in the ancient world. Originally Greece and Israel - the cultures that gave us Christianity - had only the vaguest ideas of an afterlife. So where did these concepts come from and why did they develop? In this fascinating, learned, but highly readable book, Jan N. Bremmer - one of the foremost authorities on ancient religion - takes a fresh look at the major developments in the Western imagination of the afterlife, from the ancient Greeks to the modern near-death experience.

Morality is not declining in the modern world. Instead, a new morality is replacing the previous one. Centered on individual self-fulfillment, and linked to administrative government, it permits things the old morality forbid, like sex for pleasure, but forbids things the old morality allowed, like intolerance and equality of opportunity.

A comprehensive introduction to the nature of the self and its relation to the body, this title places the problem of personal identity in the context of more general puzzles about identity, and discusses the major related theories.