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The Antarctic Treaty System: Politics, Law, And Diplomacy
by Jeffrey D MyhreBecause negotiations for the Antarctic Treaty were kept secret, the issues that shaped the treaty system have been poorly understood. Dr. Myhre breaks new ground by examining the records of the first Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings and evaluating the events of the Special Consultative Meetings on Antarctic Mineral Resources. Introducing the reader to Antarctic politics, Dr. Myhre examines legal and political problems arising from some nations' claims to sovereignty in Antarctica, reviews initial efforts to create an international administration for the region, and studies in detail the terms of the treaty and the rules of procedure for the consultative meetings. Turning to the diplomatic events that molded the treaty system, he concentrates on the issues that emerged in the 1960s: conservation, the role of Meetings of Experts, the position of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research within the treaty system, the obligations of acceding states to uphold previous agreements, and the Consultative Powers' failure to establish an Antarctic Secretariat. Finally, he reviews the two main challenges to the system's survival—mineral extraction and Third World opposition to the present structure.
Persuasion and Legal Reasoning in the ECtHR Rulings: Balancing Impossible Demands
by Aleksandra Mężykowska Anna Młynarska-SobaczewskaThis book analyses the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) from the point of view of argumentative tools used by the Court to persuade the audience – States, applicants and public opinion – of the correctness of its rulings. The ECtHR judgments selected by the authors concern justification of some of the most difficult issues. These are matters related to human life, human dignity and the right to self-determination in matters concerning one's private life. The authors looked for paths and repetitive patterns of argumentation and divided them into three categories of argumentative tools: authority, deontological and teleological. The work tracks how ECtHR judges aim to find a consensual, universal, and at the same time pragmatic and axiologically neutral narrative, on the collisions of rights and interests in the areas under discussion. It analyses whether the voice of the ECtHR carries the overtones of an ethical statement and, if so, to which arguments it appeals. The book will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the areas of jurisprudence, human rights law, and law and language.
National Security, Public Health: Exceptions to Human Rights?
by Myriam Feinberg, Laura Niada-Avshalom and Brigit ToebesThe book deals with the complicated relationships between national security and human rights, and between public health and human rights. Its premise is the fact that national security and public health are both included in human rights instruments as ‘exceptions’ to the human rights therein sanctioned, yet they can arguably be considered as human rights themselves and be equally valuable. The book therefore asks to what extent the protection of the individual could – or should – be overridden to enable the protection of the national security or public health of the general public. Both practice and case law have shown that human rights risk being set aside when they clash with the protection of national security or public health. Through theoretical analysis and practical examples, the book addresses the conflicts that arise when the concepts of national security and public health are used – and abused – and other rights, including freedom of speech, procedural freedoms, individual health, are violated as a consequence. It provides many interesting findings on the values that states are ready to protect – and forego – to ensure their safety, which can contribute to the ongoing debate on the protection of human rights. This book was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of Human Rights.
Ethics and Christian Musicking (Congregational Music Studies Series)
by Nathan Myrick Mark PorterThe relationship between musical activity and ethical significance occupies long traditions of thought and reflection both within Christianity and beyond. From concerns regarding music and the passions in early Christian writings through to moral panics regarding rock music in the 20th century, Christians have often gravitated to the view that music can become morally weighted, building a range of normative practices and prescriptions upon particular modes of ethical judgment. But how should we think about ethics and Christian musical activity in the contemporary world? As studies of Christian musicking have moved to incorporate the experiences, agencies, and relationships of congregations, ethical questions have become implicit in new ways in a range of recent research - how do communities negotiate questions of value in music? How are processes of encounter with a variety of different others negotiated through musical activity? What responsibilities arise within musical communities? This volume seeks to expand this conversation. Divided into four sections, the book covers the relationship of Christian musicking to the body; responsibilities and values; identity and encounter; and notions of the self. The result is a wide-ranging perspective on music as an ethical practice, particularly as it relates to contemporary religious and spiritual communities. This collection is an important milestone at the intersection of ethnomusicology, musicology, religious studies and theology. It will be a vital reference for scholars and practitioners reflecting on the values and practices of worshipping communities in the contemporary world.
AIDS, Communication, and Empowerment: Gay Male Identity and the Politics of Public Health Messages
by Roger MyrickAIDS, Communication, and Empowerment examines the cultural construction of gay men in light of discourse used in the media’s messages about HIV/AIDS--messages often represented as educational, scientific, and informational but which are, in fact, politically charged. The book offers a compelling and substantive look at the social consequences of communication about HIV/AIDS and the reasons for the successes and failures of contemporary health communication. This analysis is important because it provides a reading of health communication from a marginal perspective, one that has often been kept silent in mainstream academic research. AIDS, Communication, and Empowerment offers a critical, historical analysis of public health communication about HIV/AIDS; the ways this communication makes sense historically and culturally; and the implications such messages have for the marginal group which has been most stigmatized as a consequence of these messages. It covers such topics as: the relationship among gay identity, language, and power cultural studies of the historical development of gay identity studies in health communication about HIV/AIDS and health risk communication the political consequences of public health education about HIV/AIDS on gay men the political consequences of media representations of gay identity and its relationship to disease Based primarily on the French scholar Michel Foucault’s critical, historical analysis of discourse and sexuality, this book takes a timely and original approach which differs from traditional, quantitative communication studies. It examines the relationship between language and culture using a qualitative, cultural studies approach which places medicalization theories in the broader context of histories of sexuality, the discursive development of contemporary gay identity, and recent public health communication.Author Roger Myrick explains how mainstream communication about HIV/AIDS relentlessly stigmatizes and further marginalizes gay identity. He describes how national health education stigmatizes groups by associating them with images of disease and “otherness.” Even communication which originates from marginal groups, particularly those relying on federal funds, often participates in linking gay identities with disease. According to Myrick, government funding, while often necessary for the continuation of community-based health campaigns, poses obvious and direct restrictions on effective marginal education. AIDS, Communication, and Empowerment allows for a rethinking of ways marginal groups can take control of their own education on public health issues. As HIV/AIDS cases continue to rise dramatically among marginalized and disenfranchised groups, analysis of health communication directed toward them becomes crucial to their survival. This book provides valuable insights and information for scholars, professionals, readers interested in the relationship among language, power and marginal identity, and for classes in gay and lesbian studies, health communication, or political communication.
Organisations and Humanisation: Perspectives on organising humanisation and humanising organisations
by Myrte van de Klundert Robert Van BoeschotenThe term humanisation was introduced in humanistic studies to develop a humanist way of thinking about organisations and human relations. It stems from a need to think about questions of justice and living a good life in practice but not from some absolute or abstract point of view. As it is often framed, humanisation is concerned with working towards a more human type of organisation. Organisation studies are concerned with understanding organisations and their role in our society, and developing perspectives and methods to improve them, while humanisation theories, on the other hand, do not represent a managerial blueprint as they tend to incorporate notions of situated knowledge, sense-making and relational value, drawing our attention to specific processes rather than offering universal truths. Although Critical Management Studies counters mainstream managerialism, it still tends to produce the same kind of ‘truths’ that are supposed to apply to all organisations. Much of the existing management literature is related to control and offers strategies on how to do things but this is not about prescriptions, rather how to explore possibilities from both theoretical and practical perspectives. It offers managers as well as theoreticians of organisations the possibility to question their grounding principles. In the variety of contributions to this book the authors reflect on their understanding of what it is to be human and whether this can be found in the way that organisations are run. They consider the value of humanisation to understand and intervene in organisations and the challenges they face.
Law, Migration, and the Construction of Whiteness: Mobility Within the European Union
by Dagmar Rita MyslinskaThis book addresses the hidden dynamics of race within the European Union.Brexit supporters’ frequent targeting of European Union (EU) movers, especially those from Central and Eastern Europe, has been popularly assumed as at odds with the EU project’s foundations based on equality and inclusion. This book dispels that notion. By interrogating the history, wording, omissions, assumptions and applications of laws, policies and discourses pertinent to mobility and equality, the argument developed throughout the book is that the parameters of CEE nationals’ status within the EU have been closely circumscribed, in line with the entrenched historical positioning of the west as superior to the east. Engaging current legal, economic, political and moral issues--against the backdrop of Brexit and contestations over EU integration and globalisation--this work opens avenues of thought to better understand law’s role in producing and sustaining social stratifications. Europe is a postcolonial space, as this book demonstrates. By addressing fractures within the construct of whiteness that are based on ethnicity, class and migrant status, the book also provides a theoretically nuanced, and politically useful, understanding of contemporary European racisms.This book will appeal to scholars, students and others interested in migration, EU integration and EU citizenship, equality law, race and ethnicity, social policy, and postcolonialism.
Allow Me To Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution
by Elie MystalAllow Me to Retort is an easily digestible argument about what rights we have, what rights Republicans are trying to take away, and how to stop them. <p><p>Mystal explains how to protect the rights of women and people of color instead of cowering to the absolutism of gun owners and bigots. He explains the legal way to stop everything from police brutality to political gerrymandering, just by changing a few judges and justices. He strips out all of the fancy jargon conservatives like to hide behind and lays bare the truth of their project to keep America forever tethered to its slaveholding past. <p><p> Mystal brings his trademark humor, expertise, and rhetorical flair to explain concepts like substantive due process and the right for the LGBTQ community to buy a cake, and to arm listeners with the knowledge to defend themselves against conservatives who want everybody to live under the yoke of 18th-century White men. The same tactics Mystal uses to defend the idea of a fair and equal society on MSNBC and CNN are in this book, for anybody who wants to deploy them on social media. <p><p> You don’t need to be a legal scholar to understand your own rights. You don’t need to accept the “Whites only” theory of equality pushed by conservative judges. You can listen to this book to understand that the Constitution is trash but doesn’t have to be.
Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating The Future Of Shari`a
by Abdullahi Ahmed Na ʻAbd Allāh NaʻīmWhat should be the place of Shari'a - Islamic religious law - in predominantly Muslim societies of the world? In this book, a Muslim scholar and human rights activist envisions a positive and sustainable role for Shari'a, based on a profound rethinking of the relationship between religion and the secular state in all societies.
Descartes' Deontological Turn
by Noa Naaman-ZaudererThis book offers a new way of approaching the place of the will in Descartes' mature epistemology and ethics. Departing from the widely accepted view, Noa Naaman-Zauderer suggests that Descartes regards the will, rather than the intellect, as the most significant mark of human rationality, both intellectual and practical. Through a close reading of Cartesian texts from the Meditations onward, she brings to light a deontological and non-consequentialist dimension of Descartes' later thinking, which credits the proper use of free will with a constitutive, evaluative role. She shows that the right use of free will, to which Descartes assigns obligatory force, constitutes for him an end in its own right rather than merely a means for attaining any other end, however valuable. Her important study has significant implications for the unity of Descartes' thinking, and for the issue of responsibility, inviting scholars to reassess Descartes' philosophical legacy.
You Can Keep the Damn China!
by Robert J. Nachsin Jennifer Bright ReichAlmost 50% of American marriages end in divorce, so it stands to reason that most people have experienced the effects of divorce in some way. Breaking up is hard to do, but that rocky road can be smoothed with this guide featuring contributions by hundreds of former spouses who've made it out in one piece. Eye-opening stories and advice cover getting through the initial tough times; how to break the news to your children and help them cope; dealing with bitter in-laws and other family members; legal wrangling and dividing your stuff; maintaining a relationship with your ex (is it possible?); and more.
Internal and External Aspects of Corporate Governance (Routledge Studies in Corporate Governance)
by Ahmed NaciriAn effective system of corporate governance has both internal and external aspects that have to be sufficiently responsive if governance is to succeed. In this book, Ahmed Naciri examines these two core aspects or the latest buzzword in business and management theory. Internal aspects include ownership structure, the board of directors and committees, internal control, risk management, transparency and financial reporting. External aspects can either be market-oriented, or can take the form of credit ranking, and/or social requirements. Due to the original orientation of the Sarbanes/Oxley Law, concentrating solely on financial disclosure and given its decisive and tremendous influence on all other similar corporate governance legislations all over the world, most writings on corporate governance have dealt with solely internal corporate governance mechanisms. This book aim is to fill up the gap by using a systemic approach and giving a global picture of the corporate governance theoretical foundations, mainly by putting the emphasis on its double dimension: internal and external.
Sovereign Credit Rating: Questionable Methodologies (Routledge Studies in Corporate Governance)
by Ahmed NaciriThe current degradation of sovereign balance sheets raises very real concerns about how sovereign creditworthiness is measured by credit rating agencies. Given the disastrous economic and social effects of any downgrade, the book offers an alternative and calls for more transparency about the quantitative measures used in calibrating the rating process and how sovereign ratings are validated. It argues that oversight is required and procedures improved, including subjecting methodologies of assessing default to more standardization and monitoring. Sovereign Credit Rating explains the process of sovereign creditworthiness assessment and explores the consequences of possible inaccuracies in the process. Developing an innovative new methodology to assess ratings accuracy, it shows that the announcement of each rating action by the major credit rating agencies show alarming inconsistencies. Written by an internationally recognized author and professor, this unique book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in corporate governance, accounting, public finance and regulation.
American by Birth: Wong Kim Ark and the Battle for Citizenship
by Carol Nackenoff Julie NovkovIn this abridged edition for the Landmark Law Cases and American Society series American by Birth is now available in a format designed for students and general readers and includes a chronology outlining the key points in the case plus a bibliographical essay. <p><p>American by Birth explores the history and legacy of Wong Kim Ark and the 1898 Supreme Court case that bears his name, which established the automatic citizenship of individuals born within the geographic boundaries of the United States. In the late nineteenth century, much like the present, the United States was a difficult, and at times threatening, environment for people of color. Chinese immigrants, invited into the United States in the 1850s and 1860s as laborers and merchants, faced a wave of hostility that played out in organized private violence, discriminatory state laws, and increasing congressional efforts to throttle immigration and remove many long-term residents. The federal courts, backed by the Supreme Court, supervised the development of an increasingly restrictive and exclusionary immigration regime that targeted Chinese people. This was the situation faced by Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco in the 1870s and who earned his living as a cook. Like many members of the Chinese community in the American West he maintained ties to China. He traveled there more than once, carrying required reentry documents, but when he attempted to return to the United States after a journey from 1894 to 1895, he was refused entry and detained. Protesting that he was a citizen and therefore entitled to come home, he challenged the administrative decision in court. <p><p>Remarkably, the Supreme Court granted him victory. This victory was important for Wong Kim Ark, for the ethnic Chinese community in the United States, and for all immigrant communities then and to this day. because the Supreme Court's ruling inscribed the principle in constitutional terms and clarified that it extended even to the children of immigrants who were legally barred from becoming citizens.
Animals In Brazil: Economic, Legal and Ethical Perspectives (The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series)
by Carlos NaconecyThis book presents a collection of essays exploring the legal, economic, socio-environmental, and ethical dimensions of human-animal interaction in Brazil. As one of the primary global producers and exporters of beef, with a level of biodiversity in its rain-forests found nowhere else under threat, the importance of Brazil for animal life is unquestionable. Shedding light on the profound transformations in the consumption and production of animal-sourced foods that have taken place over the last five decades, the authors examine the consequences of this phenomenon for the lives of animals, the health of the population, and the environment. The book also offers an analysis of the animal welfare and animal protection legislation in Brazil, before presenting a number of notable cases involving animal advocacy and activism in recent years. An important and timely collection, this book concludes with an exploration of the historical, socio-cultural and economic aspects that influence the Brazilian ethos regarding the morality of the treatment of animals.
Sovereignty's Entailments: First Nation State Formation in the Yukon
by Paul NadasdyIn recent decades, indigenous peoples in the Yukon have signed land claim and self-government agreements that spell out the nature of government-to-government relations and grant individual First Nations significant, albeit limited, powers of governance over their peoples, lands, and resources. Those agreements, however, are predicated on the assumption that if First Nations are to qualify as governments at all, they must be fundamentally state-like, and they frame First Nation powers in the culturally contingent idiom of sovereignty. Based on over five years of ethnographic research [carried out] in the southwest Yukon, Sovereignty’s Entailments is a close ethnographic analysis of everyday practices of state formation in a society whose members do not take for granted the cultural entailments of sovereignty. This approach enables Nadasdy to illustrate the full scope and magnitude of the "cultural revolution" that is state formation and expose the culturally specific assumptions about space, time, and sociality that lie at the heart of sovereign politics. Nadasdy’s timely and insightful work illuminates how the process of state formation is transforming Yukon Indian people’s relationships with one another, animals, and the land.
Roadmap to Hell: Sex, Drugs and Guns on the Mafia Coast
by Barbie Latza NadeauFrom sex slaves to drug mules, The Daily Beast's Rome Bureau Chief uncovers a terrifying and intricate web of criminal activity right on Europe&’s doorstep. Chasing the money from kidnapped Nigerian hair braiders to ISIS gunrunners, this is the story of modern slavery in Europe and how the plight of those most in need is being wilfully disregarded. Caught between Camorra arms dealers and Nigerian drug gangs along Italy&’s attractive coast, each year thousands of refugees and migrants are lured into their murky underworld. In this powerful exposé, investigative journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau follows the weapons trail, meets the sex-trafficked women trapped by black magic, the nuns who try to save them and the Italian police who turn a blind eye as the most urgent issues facing Europe play out in broad daylight.
At Home Abroad: A Look at Rule of Law Projects and Other International Insights
by Joseph NadeauThe authors of this book - judges, lawyers, educators, researchers, and administrators - provide personal insights into international cooperative efforts to promote the rule of law in emerging democracies throughout the world. The progress made and the challenges ahead are described with equal doses of idealism and reality. It has been said of many reform efforts that they are not for the faint of heart. Readers will soon discover that the authors of this book are of stout heart. With more than one hundred and fifty years of combined experience, the writers' accounts serve as a roadmap for those who wish to follow in their footsteps and will truly help them to feel at home abroad.
Moral Psychology: Historical and Contemporary Readings
by Thomas Nadelhoffer Eddy Nahmias Shaun NicholsMoral Psychology: Historical and Contemporary Readings is the first book to bring together the most significant contemporary and historical works on the topic from both philosophy and psychology. Provides a comprehensive introduction to moral psychology, which is the study of psychological mechanisms and processes underlying ethics and morality. Unique in bringing together contemporary texts by philosophers, psychologists and other cognitive scientists with foundational works from both philosophy and psychology. Approaches moral psychology from an empirically informed perspective. Explores a wide range of topics from passion and altruism to virtue and responsibility. Editorial introductions to each section explain the background of and connections between the selections.
The Rebellious CEO: 12 Leaders Who Did It Right
by Ralph NaderOne of corporate America's greatest foes shows how 12 CEOs he has known uniquely rejected narrow yardsticks of shareholder value by leading companies to larger models of prosperity and justiceOver the course of 7 decades Ralph Nader has been Corporate America&’s fiercest critic. Supreme Court Justice William Powell singled out Nader in his infamous memo as the &“single most effective antagonist of American business… [the] target of his hatred… is corporate power.&”But now, in a book that will surprise both his fans and critics, Nader profiles a small group of CEOs who he believes performed extraordinarily well as business leaders and civic reformers, some well-known, some not, who should be celebrated as exceptions whose life and career should be a course of emulation and inspiration for students of business, executives and the wider citizenry. This select group of mavericks and iconoclasts — which includes The Body Shop&’s Anita Roddick, Patagonia&’s Yvon Chouinard, Vanguard&’s John Bogle and Busboys and Poets' Andy Shallal —give us, Nader writes, &“a sense of what might have been and what still could be if business were rigorously framed as a process that was not only about making money and selling things but improving our social and natural world.&”
Censored 2015
by Ralph Nader Khalil Bendib Project Censored Mickey Huff Andy Lee RothEvery year since 1976, Project Censored, our nation's oldest news-monitoring group--a university-wide project at Sonoma State University founded by Carl Jensen, directed for many years by Peter Phillips, and now under the leadership of Mickey Huff--has produced a Top-25 list of underreported news stories and a book, Censored, dedicated to the stories that ought to be top features on the nightly news, but that are missing because of media bias and self-censorship.A perennial favorite of booksellers, teachers, and readers everywhere, Censored is one of the strongest life-signs of our current collective desire to get the news we citizens need--despite what Big Media tells us.From the Trade Paperback edition.x havens. . . . And so much more that didn't make the front page (or even back page). Informative and timely, appalling and sometimes uplifting, Censored alerts readers to the stories that were quashed in favor of media bias, celebrity scandals, and self-censorship, in hopes that we the people, armed with knowledge, put our bodies upon the gears--before it's too late.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Rethinking Food Systems
by Nadia C.S. Lambek Priscilla Claeys Adrienna Wong Lea BrilmayerTaking as a starting point that hunger results from social exclusion and distributional inequities and that lasting, sustainable and just solutions are to be found in changing the structures that underlie our food systems, this book examines how law shapes global food systems and their ongoing transformations. Using detailed case studies, historical mapping and legal analysis, the contributors show how various actors (farmers, civil society groups, government officials, international bodies) use or could use different legal tools (legislative, jurisprudential, norm-setting) on various scales (local, national, regional, global) to achieve structural changes in food systems. Section 1, Institutionalizing New Approaches, explores the possibility of institutionalizing social change through two alternative visions for change - the right to food and food sovereignty. Individual chapters discuss Vía Campesina's struggle to implement food sovereignty principles into international trade law, and present case studies on adopting food sovereignty legislation in Nicaragua and right to food legislation in Uganda. The chapters in Section 2, Regulating for Change, explore the extent to which the regulation of actors can or cannot change incentives and produce transformative results in food systems. They look at the role of the state in regulating its own actions as well as the actions of third parties and analyze various means of regulating land grabs. The final section, Governing for Better Food Systems, discusses the fragmentation of international law and the impacts of this fragmentation on the realization of human rights. These chapters trace the underpinnings of the current global food system, explore the challenges of competing regimes of intellectual property, farmers rights and human rights, and suggest new modes of governance for global and local food systems. The stakes for building better food systems are high. Our current path leaves many behind, destroying the environment and entrenching inequality and systemic poverty. While it is commonly understood that legal structures are at the heart of food systems, the legal academy has yet to make a significant contribution to recent discussions on improving food systems - this book aims to fill that gap.
Open Internationalization Strategy (Routledge Frontiers in the Development of International Business, Management and Marketing)
by Nadine Tournois; Philippe VeryOpen internationalization is a concept that brings a new perspective on the process of firm internationalization. As theories of internationalization show, some companies expand abroad only on their own, known as closed internationalization, while others combine their resources with those of other firms or use their networks for facilitating foreign implantation, known as open internationalization. Parallel to the development of the well-known concept of open innovation, open internationalization can be conceived as a meta-model for understanding companies’ expansion abroad. This book gathers a selection of contemporary research works dedicated to open internationalization, either seen as a way to analyze expansion in foreign countries, or as a way to investigate the management of geographically dispersed activities. All the authors of the chapters are researchers specialized in the internationalization field. Readers will benefit from this new lens for understanding, studying or practising international business, from the decision to go abroad to its implementation and its efficiency. Open Internationalization Strategy includes both academic empirical investigations and literature reviews on specific topics, making it valuable to researchers, academics, managers, and students in the fields of business and management history, international business, organizational studies, and economics.
International Criminal Law and Sexual Violence against Women: The Interpretation of Gender in the Contemporary International Criminal Trial (Routledge Research in International Law)
by Daniela NadjThis book explores the prosecution of wartime sexual violence in international criminal law and asks what the juridicalisation of gender-based violence signifies for women. The book explores the portrayal of the various gendered identities that surface in armed conflict and it asks whether the law is capable of reflecting these in subsequent judgements. Focusing on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda as well as subsequent developments in the International Criminal Court, the book shows how the tribunals have delivered landmark jurisprudence in the area of sexual violence against women and provided a legacy for how gender justice is incorporated into international law. However, Daniela Nadj argues that in the relevant cases there is a tendency to depict women in monolithic fashion with little agency or sense of identity beyond their ethnicity. By bringing to the surface the complexity and multi-faceted gendered identities in wartime, the book calls for a reconceptualisation of notions of femininity in armed conflict.
Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die
by Steven NadlerFrom Pulitzer Prize-finalist Steven Nadler, an engaging guide to what Spinoza can teach us about life’s big questionsIn 1656, after being excommunicated from Amsterdam’s Portuguese-Jewish community for “abominable heresies” and “monstrous deeds,” the young Baruch Spinoza abandoned his family’s import business to dedicate his life to philosophy. He quickly became notorious across Europe for his views on God, the Bible, and miracles, as well as for his uncompromising defense of free thought. Yet the radicalism of Spinoza’s views has long obscured that his primary reason for turning to philosophy was to answer one of humanity’s most urgent questions: How can we lead a good life and enjoy happiness in a world without a providential God? In Think Least of Death, Pulitzer Prize–finalist Steven Nadler connects Spinoza’s ideas with his life and times to offer a compelling account of how the philosopher can provide a guide to living one’s best life.In the Ethics, Spinoza presents his vision of the ideal human being, the “free person” who, motivated by reason, lives a life of joy devoted to what is most important—improving oneself and others. Untroubled by passions such as hate, greed, and envy, free people treat others with benevolence, justice, and charity. Focusing on the rewards of goodness, they enjoy the pleasures of this world, but in moderation. “The free person thinks least of all of death,” Spinoza writes, “and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life."An unmatched introduction to Spinoza’s moral philosophy, Think Least of Death shows how his ideas still provide valuable insights about how to live today.