The good life and the greater good in a global context / edited by Laura Savu Walker.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Savu Walker, Laura, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Conduct of life.

Ethics.

Physical Description:

x, 284 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Maryland : Lexington Books, [2015]

Summary:

The Good Life and the Greater Good in a Global Context offers a timely contribution to the debates about the good life that surround us every day in the media, politics, the humanities, and social sciences. The contributors examine the relationship between the good life and the greater good as represented across different genres, media, cultures, and disciplines. This enables them to develop a framework of values that transcends the overly rational and individualistic model of to develop a framework of values that transcends the overly rational and individualistic model of the good life advanced by neoliberalism and the "happiness industry," Thus, over and against normative conceptualizations of the good life that reduce meaning to money, creativity to consumption, and compassion to self-help, the contributors propose an ethically charged philosophy of living that views the care for the self, for the other, and for the planet as the catalysts of true human flourishing. In addition to recovering the original usage of "the good life" form classical thought-especially the Aristotelian understanding of eudaimonia as living well and doing well-the essays gathered her highlight its entanglement with distinctly modern ideas of happiness, well-being, flourishing, progress, revolution, democracy, the American Dream, utopia, and sustainability. As such, the essays capture the breadth and depth of the conversation about the good life that is a central importance to how we relate to past, engage the present, and envision the future. Book jacket.

Contents:

Preface

Introduction: mapping the global imaginary of the good life / by Laura Savu Walker

The stoic muse : clues to the good life in English poetry / by Laura Inman

"Raising the sun" : same-sex love, the good life, and the greater good in the poetry of Ellen Bass / by Lisa Hoffman-Reyes

"Can I breathe this rarer air?" : exploring the good life in the plays of Susan Glaspell and the camps of the occupy movement / by Susan Gorman

Rethinking utopia for the twenty-first century : the good life after occupy and the Arab spring / by Joseph Donica

Capturing amae : why tragedy matters and what it still offers / by Jeremy Killian

Territorializing the good life : fetishism of commodity and homeland in Nicole Krauss's great house / by Laini Kavaloski

The mogul ethos and the American dream in contemporary mainstream rap / by Jamila M. Kareem

The gift of the good life : anchor babies and Asian adoptees / by Jenny Heijun Wills

The gaps in the wall : the enemy within Gish Jen's American dreams / by Joseph George

From money to meaning : the pursuit of "fundamentals" in Mohsin Hamid's how to get filthy rich in rising Asia / by Laura Savu Walker

Courageous play : an ethical practice for the good of (digital) culture / by Katherine Hanzalik

Making the good life : cultivating green citizenship in Shakespeare's cymbeline / by Patrick Crapanzano

Denaturing the human conceit for the greater good : an ecocritical perspective / by Ron Milland

Bibliography.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781498522328

1498522327

OCLC:

925498223