Power, pleasure, and profit insatiable appetites from Machiavelli to Madison

By:

Wotton, David

Material type: Text

TextPublication details: Cambridge The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2018Description: 386p. : ill. ; 25 cmISBN:

9780674976672

Subject(s):

Conduct of life -- History; Power (Social sciences) -- History; Values -- History; Enlightenment; Ambition -- History; Pleasure; Profit

DDC classification:

170.903woo

Summary: We pursue power, pleasure, and profit. We want as much as we can get, and we deploy instrumental reasoning―cost-benefit analysis―to get it. We judge ourselves and others by how well we succeed. It is a way of life and thought that seems natural, inevitable, and inescapable. As David Wootton shows, it is anything but. In Power, Pleasure, and Profit, he traces an intellectual and cultural revolution that replaced the older systems of Aristotelian ethics and Christian morality with the iron cage of instrumental reasoning that now gives shape and purpose to our lives.

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Holdings
Item type	Current library	Call number	Status	Barcode
Book	UONGOZI Institute Resources Centre - Dar es Salaam	170.903woo (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Available	007657

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Includes bibliographical references and index.

We pursue power, pleasure, and profit. We want as much as we can get, and we deploy instrumental reasoning―cost-benefit analysis―to get it. We judge ourselves and others by how well we succeed. It is a way of life and thought that seems natural, inevitable, and inescapable. As David Wootton shows, it is anything but. In Power, Pleasure, and Profit, he traces an intellectual and cultural revolution that replaced the older systems of Aristotelian ethics and Christian morality with the iron cage of instrumental reasoning that now gives shape and purpose to our lives.

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