This book considers the nature and exercise of moral imagination in situations in which our ability to act and choose meaningfully is limited by unarticulated expectations. Moral imagination is a cognitive attitude, in which we regard propositions as true. But it also involves orientation. In moral imagination, we regard propositions as true in order to make something else true, and we act and interpret as if it were true. The demand for explanatory unity in such situations - what I call 'explanatory burden' - involves self-constitution, with seeing oneself as a certain sort of person and developing relevant expectations. Whereas it is common to define human well-being in terms of choice and capacities, I suggest that meaningful choice and human capacities are sometimes defined in terms of the actual pursuit and achievement of human well-being. I draw upon examples from literature, film, and historical narrative to suggest that while we think autonomy and agency consist, at least in part, in taking control, we must sometimes be controlled by circumstances and relations in order to occupy an appropriate interpretive perspective for real freedom. I consider the implications of this point for such concepts as respect, friendship and democracy.

Artless presents some of the most compelling images created by contemporary artists and illustrators using the simplest of tools, such as color pencils, crayons, watercolor, scissors, and glue. Work produced in this manner represents a growing and particularly resilient trend in the visual arts world. Through individual interviews with over 50 artists, Artless looks at how and why these particular artists find the intimate connection between the unassuming tools they use and the art thus created so enthralling. For creator and viewer alike there seems to be a particular kind of pleasure to be had in short-circuiting the sophisticated and often elusive strategies of contemporary art in favor of something disarmingly uncomplicated. This book divides the artists' work in terms of the techniques they use, from color pencils and pens to ceramics and mixed media, with some artists mixing these techniques digitally. The end results are images imbued with a great sense of fun and spontaneity.

Lady Darby returns to London with her new husband, Sebastian Gage, but newlywed bliss won't last for long when her past comes back to haunt her in the latest exciting installment in this national bestselling series. November 1831. After fleeing London in infamy more than two years prior, Lady Kiera Darby's return to the city is anything but mundane, though not for the reasons she expected. A gang of body snatchers is arrested on suspicion of imitating the notorious misdeeds of Edinburgh criminals, Burke and Hare--killing people from the streets and selling their bodies to medical schools. Then Kiera's past--a past she thought she'd finally made peace with--rises up to haunt her. All of London is horrified by the evidence that "burkers" are, indeed, at work in their city. The terrified populace hovers on a knife's edge, ready to take their enmity out on any likely suspect. And when Kiera receives a letter of blackmail, threatening to divulge details about her late anatomist husband's involvement with the body snatchers and wrongfully implicate her, she begins to apprehend just how precarious her situation is. Not only for herself, but also her new husband and investigative partner, Sebastian Gage, and their unborn child. Meanwhile, the young scion of a noble family has been found murdered a block from his home, and the man's family wants Kiera and Gage to investigate. Is it a failed attempt by the London burkers, having left the body behind, or the crime of someone much closer to home? Someone who stalks the privileged, using the uproar over the burkers to cover his own dark deeds?

Conventional wisdom holds that Judaism is indifferent or even suspiciously hostile to the visual arts due to the Second Commandment's prohibition on creating "graven images," the dictates of monotheism, and historical happenstance. This intellectual history of medieval and modern Jewish attitudes toward art and representation overturns the modern assumption of Jewish iconophobia that denies to Jewish culture a visual dimension. Kalman Bland synthesizes evidence from medieval Jewish philosophy, mysticism, poetry, biblical commentaries, travelogues, and law, concluding that premodern Jewish intellectuals held a positive, liberal understanding of the Second Commandment and did, in fact, articulate a certain Jewish aesthetic. He draws on this insight to consider modern ideas of Jewish art, revealing how they are inextricably linked to diverse notions about modern Jewish identity that are themselves entwined with arguments over Zionism, integration, and anti-Semitism. Through its use of the past to illuminate the present and its analysis of how the present informs our readings of the past, this book establishes a new assessment of Jewish aesthetic theory rooted in historical analysis. Authoritative and original in its identification of authentic Jewish traditions of painting, sculpture, and architecture, this volume will ripple the waters of several disciplines, including Jewish studies, art history, medieval and modern history, and philosophy.

Using Mies' writings the author presents a reconstruction of the metaphysical and philosophical inquiry upon which he based his modernism. It aims to present an integrated view of Mies' philosophy of building including his American career.