A Community of Individuals

Drawing on the spirit of classical American Philosophy, "A Community of Individuals" is an original, highly engaging, and important philosophical exploration of pressing personal and social problems. With clear, compelling, spirited writing, Lachs tackles a wide range of topics from the responsibility of educators and the role of education to the problems of aging and the desire for immortality, from genetic engineering and biomedical research to genocide and moral progress. The work also includes new, significant discussion of major American thinkers. The common theme running through the book is the complex relationships between individuality and community, and how we might think through their competing demands to live better lives.

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Introduction


Part I. Intellectuals and Courage
1. Intellectuals and Courage'
2. Reflections on Philosophy
Part I. Philosophy at the Center
Part II.A Future for Philosophy
3. Teaching as a Calling
4. Education in the Twenty-First Century

Part II. Issues for Individuals
1. What Humans did not Make
2. Valuation Species
3. Improving Life
4. Transcendence in Philosophy and in Everyday Life
5. The Vague Hope of Immortality

Part III. Problems for Communities
1. Both Better Off and Better: Moral Progress Amid Continuing Carnage
2. The Significance of Purposes for Bioethics
3. Grand Dreams of Perfect People
4. Researchers and their Subjects as Neighbors
5. Dying Old as a Social Problem

Part IV. American Philosophers
1. The Insignificance of Individuals
2. Santayana as Pragmatist
3. Neoplatonic Elements in the Spiritual Life
4. Peirce: Inquiry as Social Life
5. Peirce and Santayana on Purposes
6. Metaphysics and the Social Construction of Human Nature

John Lachs is Centennial Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. He has been President of the Society of the Advancement of American Philosophy, the C.S. Peirce Society, and the Metaphysical Society of America, and served on the national board of the American Philosophical Association. Lachs has written numerous books on a wide range of philosophical topics, including recently In Love with Life(1998).