Oshkosh Public Library

Why can't we be good?, Jacob Needleman

eng

Includes bibliographical references (p. 275-278) and index

index present

non fiction

Why can't we be good?

bibliography

76261835

Jacob Needleman

The one question -- The first step -- The world of ideas -- Ideas alone are not enough -- But ideas are the first step -- The good universe -- The teacher waits -- Ideas live in people -- God is one -- The pupil waits -- One God; two hearts -- The problem of evil -- The secret of Socrates or thinking together as a work of love -- Enter Socrates -- The secret of Socrates -- The taste of thinking -- The mountain of Plato -- The missing page -- Freedom from answers -- Bread and stone -- The ethics of communal thought -- The transformation of the question -- The world of appearances -- Two halves of one great idea -- The real world can be known only by the real self -- The question of the heart is a moral demand -- The authentic teacher and the authentic seeker -- A kind of love -- The white dove -- A rehearsal for morality -- Life without ethics? -- Turtles -- Passion and attention -- The shock of the question -- The moral power of listening -- A movement toward conscience -- Something exceedingly fine -- Love and listening -- Between wonder and despair -- On the way to good and evil -- On the meaning of the human body -- The Socratic threshold -- Interlude: the garment of the Buddha -- Glimpses -- "Knowledge" and knowledge -- A new kind of body -- Intermediate morality -- The ethics of attention -- Our world and our life -- The fountain of all that is good -- This new power of the mind -- Real philosophy -- The "least powerful" man in the world -- On the measure of friendship -- An invitation -- "Oh, I forgot!" -- Dr. Kinderu's misunderstanding -- Mary Adijian's discovery -- The ethics of attention -- Why do moral codes fail? -- I am my attention -- The first obligation of man -- The great aim of education -- The two moralities -- The log-off club -- The tragedy of attention -- What is evil? and why does evil exist? -- The anguish of Fred Prozi -- The face of Fred Prozi -- At the heart of what we call ethics -- The reconstruction of Mr. Prozi -- Awakening to darkness, or the meaning of silence -- Sacred silence -- What is taken away? what is given? -- The essential -- Not this, not that -- The action of the guide -- Words turn back -- Moral mysticism -- The freedom that leads to freedom -- The ethics of the lesser morality --The duty that is at the heart of duty -- We are not yet man -- The two truths that are errors -- A dangerous question -- The greatest idea in the world -- Hillel the Elder and the idea of the universal moral law -- The life of Hillel -- What did Hillel find? -- The seed and the fruit of all that is good -- Another dimension of love -- If I am not for myself, who will be for me? -- And if I am for myself alone, what am I? -- The hidden bridge : an essential digression -- The seed and the fruit of inner morality -- If not now, when? -- The metaphysics of morality -- The doctrine of angels and the obligation offered to man -- The ethical animal and the meaning of our freedom -- A meditation on crossing the Socratic threshold -- The great unknown -- The birth of the human -- A transforming fire -- The shock of love -- A kind of summation : why can't we be good?