Articulating an Augustinian treatment of the nature, limits, meaning, and end of work, this volume will push Augustinian studies toward a more-detailed engagement with issues of political economy. Zachary Settle argues that we inhabit a culture that insists that our life's meaning is bound up in our work; we experience constant pressures at work to be more efficient and productive; and we know the ways in which our work-structures contribute to a seemingly ever-growing, corrosive system of poverty and oppression. These cultural assumptions regarding work, along with a cluster of other labor-related problems (i.e. automation, wage depression, wage theft, the rise of a flexible labor force, a lack of worker representation, over-work, and productivism) have rightfully raised a number of questions about the nature, meaning, and limits of our working lives and working structures. This book sets out the ways in which St. Augustine offers us-in piecemeal fashion-elements with which we can assemble an alternative vision. By examining his understanding of the role of work in the context of the monastery, we see his understanding of both the ways we should undertake our work and the ends toward which we should direct that work during our lives in a sinful world. Settle draws on these piecemeal treatments of work scattered throughout St. Augustine's varied writings in order to develop and articulate a unified theology of work.

Examines the factors which limit human economic and population growth and outlines the steps necessary for achieving a balance between population and production. Bibliogs

Reissued on the tenth anniversary of its publication, this classic work on our environmental crisis features a new introduction by the author, reviewing both the progress and ground lost in the fight to save the earth. This impassioned plea for radical and life-renewing change is today still considered a groundbreaking work in environmental studies. McKibben's argument that the survival of the globe is dependent on a fundamental, philosophical shift in the way we relate to nature is more relevant than ever. McKibben writes of our earth's environmental cataclysm, addressing such core issues as the greenhouse effect, acid rain, and the depletion of the ozone layer. His new introduction addresses some of the latest environmental issues that have risen during the 1990s. The book also includes an invaluable new appendix of facts and figures that surveys the progress of the environmental movement. More than simply a handbook for survival or a doomsday catalog of scientific prediction, this classic, soulful lament on Nature is required reading for nature enthusiasts, activists, and concerned citizens alike.

In 1977 the sixty-nine-year-old Czech philosopher Jan Patočka died from a brain hemorrhage following a series of interrogations by the Czechoslovak secret police. A student of Husserl and Heidegger, he had been arrested, along with young playwright Václav Havel, for publicly opposing the hypocrisy of the Czechoslovak Communist regime. Patočka had dedicated himself as a philosopher to laying the groundwork of what he termed a "life in truth." This book analyzes Patočka's philosophy and political thought and illuminates the synthesis in his work of Socratic philosophy and its injunction to "care for the soul." In bridging the gap, not only between Husserl and Heidegger, but also between postmodern and ancient philosophy, Patočka presents a model of democratic politics that is ethical without being metaphysical, and transcendental without being foundational.

On the agricultural frontier and through technological progress, Europeans and others and their descendants have sought to fulfill their dreams of improvement. Through businesses, governments, and other bodies, city dwellers expedited these desires by organizing settlements, communications, trade, finance, and manufacturing. In turn, cities grew mightily. To assess the present condition of cities, Liberal Dreams and Nature's Limits focuses on five large North American cities at various times in the past --Philadelphia (about 1760), New York (1860), Chicago (1910), Los Angeles (1950), and Toronto (1975). Life inside these cities--specifically the economy, society and politics, public services, land development, and the geographies of circulation, workplaces, and residential districts--is the central concern of this book. Another concern is drawing contrasts and similarities between the American and Canadian urban experiences. North Americans, most now living in cities, face the challenge of a social frontier--how to maintain civility in a near-stagnant economy. Despite recent advances in cyberspace, nature has imposed limits on technical progress defined by speed, convenience, and comfort; Promethean gains through creative destruction are no longer possible. Increased preoccupation with money, status, and safety suggests that the striving inspired by liberalism is still appealing. Yet without growth, liberal dreams cannot be fulfilled. To ensure work, income equity, and a degree of freedom in thought and action, citizens and leaders in both countries will have to commit themselves as never before to managing fairness through social democracy. Sustainable cities are not possible otherwise.

Despite some significant advances in the creation and protection of rights affecting women’s health, these do not always translate into actual health benefits for women. This collection asks: 'What is an effective law and what influences law’s effectiveness or ineffectiveness? What dynamics, elements, and conditions come together to limit law’s capacity to achieve instrumental goals for women’s health and the advancement of women’s health rights?' The book presents an integrated, co-referential and sustained critical discussion of the normative and constitutive reasons for law’s limited effectiveness in the field of women’s health. It offers comprehensive and cohesive explanatory accounts of law’s limits and for the first time in the field, introduces a distinction between formal and substantive effectiveness of laws. Its approach is trans-systemic, multi-jurisdictional and comparative, with a focus on six countries in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa and international human rights case law based on matters arising from Hungary, Portugal, Spain, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Peru and Bolivia. The book will be a valuable resource for educators, students, lawyers, rights advocates and policymakers working in women’s health, socio-legal studies, human rights, feminist legal studies, and legal philosophy more broadly.