Boston University Studies in Philosophy & Religion

3 primary works • 7 total works

Religious Pluralism

by Leroy S. Rouner

Published 1 October 1984

The Breakthrough courses are aimed at adult education classes and also at the self-study learner. Each course offers authentic, lively, conversational language through a coherent and carefully structured approach. The books have a wealth of illustrations including attractive photographs and artwork giving a real sense of the country and its culture. There are three hours of audio material to accompany this course.

On Nature

by Leroy S. Rouner

Published 1 October 1984

Changing Face of Friendship

by Leroy S. Rouner

Published 30 November 1994

Loneliness

by Leroy S. Rouner

Published 1 February 2009

Loneliness is precious because it is the source of much human creativity; but it is also a cause of distress, because we are social animals, born into families, needing each other to be whole in ourselves. This work covers the different stances of loneliness.

Foundations of Ethics

by Leroy S. Rouner

Published 1 October 1983

Just when we need them the most, our ethical resources seem least clear and reliable. Hence our search for foundations of ethics. Our intent in this volume has not been to solve any specific moral problem, but to explore basic issues: the prospects for a rational ethic; the relation between ethics and a religious mythos; the challenge of non-Western ethical values; problems raised by the practice of confession, the evaluation of privacy, the ubiquity of science, and more. We obviously have not explored all the foundation issues. We cannot even claim that the ones we have explored are always the most significant. We do claim, however, that these explorations give a vivid picture of our ethical dilemma, and present some of the best thinking currently being done. —from the Introduction

On Community

by Leroy S. Rouner

Published 1 October 1991

The individualism and restless mobility of modernity have become disorienting and frightening. Our nostalgia for premodern times, when natural bonds to kith and kin were unshakable, continues to surface - most recently in the popular phenomenon of support groups. "On Community" examines this philosophical issue of community for the postmodern mind by presenting 13 original essays by specialists currently working on this problem. The first four essays, by Eliot Deutsch, R.W. Hepburn, Hilary Putnam, and Leroy S. Rouner, examine philosophies of community, emphasizing metaphysical analysis and definition of the nature of community. The second section considers the theme in a cross-cultural context. Merry White, Katherine Platt, Benjamin Schwartz, and Huston Smith illustrate in this section the various ways in which community is understood and experienced in Japan, North Africa, China, and India. The final section, which contains contributions by Patrick Hill, Jurgen Moltmann, Catherine Keller, and George Rupp, explores the future of community, focusing on community building in Western societies. While the authors represent diverse interests, they also share common ground.
Virtually all agree that a creative community needs some form of individualism in order to make a community effective. And there is a consensus among the essays that community is a good thing that the quest for community in our time is a significant fact. Finally, the contributors suggest that the critique of the liberal view of the autonomous individual, in vogue in recent years, now seems to have waned.

Civility

by Leroy S. Rouner

Published 1 April 2000

Are Americans less civil than they used to be? If so, is that a bad thing? Perhaps we are just learning to be more honest. And what does civility mean? Is it just good manners? It so, perhaps it is only the complaint of privileged classes, annoyed that taxi drivers are increasingly rude and that men no longer give up their seats to women on public transportation. Or is civility a question of morality? The philosopher Peter Bertocci once argued that promptness is a fundamental form of social justice. In this lively conversation on an increasingly significant theme, major philosophers and religious scholars argue the issue on three levels. The first is manners: Henry Rosemont argues the Confucian case that manners are the substance of social relations, while Edwin Delattre and Adam Seligman believe that the issue is deeper than that; and the sociologist Alan Wolfe is persuaded that we are not less civil or ill-mannered than our predecessors. Secondly, as a social issue, James Schmidt, Lawrence Cahoone, and Adam Seligman turn to questions of structure and meaning in a civil society; Ninian Smart, David Wong, and Virginia Straus put the issue in a cross-cultural context; and Carrie Doehring warns that civility may be a barrier to honest Communication in family life. Finally, the metaphysical and religious dimensions of civility are explored by Robert Pippin and Adam McClellan. There seems to be a consensus that the lack of civility is, indeed, an increasing problem, that it is more than a class issue of manners, and that its current loss is troubling for contemporary society.