Foundations of Futures Studies: Human Science for a New Era: Values, Objectivity, and the Good Society, Volume 2

Couverture
Transaction Publishers, 31 déc. 2011 - 392 pages
Futures studies is a new field of inquiry involving systematic and explicit thinking about alternative futures. Wendell Bell's two-volume work Foundations of Futures Studies is widely acknowledged as the fundamental work on the subject. In Volume 2, Bell goes beyond possible and probable futures to the study of preferable futures. He shows that concern with ethics, morality, and human values follows directly from the futurist purposes of discovering or inventing, examining, and proposing desirable futures. He examines moral judgments as an inescapable aspect of all decision-making and conscious action, even in the everyday lives of ordinary people. Now available in paperback with a new preface from the author, Volume 2 of Foundations of Futures Studies moves beyond cultural relativism to critical evaluation. Bell compares depictions of the good society by utopian writers, describes objective methods of moral judgment, assesses religion and law as sources of what is morally right, documents the existence of universal human values, and shows that if human beings are to thrive in the global society of the future, some human values must be changed.
 

Table des matières

Introduction
1
Chapter 1
7
Chapter 2
67
Chapter 3
113
Chapter 4
171
Chapter 5
229
Chapter 6
279
Epilogue
315
References
333
References 2004
373
Index
377
About the Author
385
Droits d'auteur

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À propos de l'auteur (2011)

Wendell Bell is professor emeritus of sociology at Yale University, where he also served as chair of the department. Bell has written more than 200 articles and authored or co-authored numerous books, including Social Area Analysis, Public Leadership, and Foundations of Futures Studies (two volumes).

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