John McMurtry is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Guelph, Canada. Most recently, he has focused his research on the value structure of economic theory and its consequences for global civil and environmental life. McMurtry’s principal research project in Philosophy spanning over seven years has followed from the invitation by the Secretariat of UNESCO/EOLSS (Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems, Paris-Oxford) to construct, author and edit Philosophy and World Problems as a multi-volume study of world philosophy.

Three sub-volumes entitled Western Philosophy and the Life-Ground, Modes of Reason, and Philosophy, Human Nature and Society have been written with internationally distinguished philosophers contributing to five topic areas in each of these general fields. The central title study by McMurtry, entitled, “What is Good, What is Bad? The Value of All Values Across Time, Place and Theories”, is an encompassing in-depth critical study of known world philosophies and fields to explain the inner logic of each canon and school in relationship to world problems across languages and eras including the method of life value onto-axiology which is deployed to excavate, explain and resolve life-blind presuppositions of the world’s major thought-systems from the ancients East and West to modern and contemporary philosophy. McMurtry was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC) in June 2001 for his outstanding contributions to the study of humanities.

Table of Contents

• I. THE RIGHTS OF THE “HUMAN” OVER THE “NON-HUMAN”: THE UNDECLARED WORLD WAR OF HUMAN RIGHTS VERSUS CORPORATE RIGHTS
  • Right to Life: From Right-Wing Slogan to Life-Grounded Comprehension
  • Intrinsic Life Worth and Humanity’s Universal Being
  • Projecting Personhood onto the Non-Human to Deprive the Human
  • The Life-Value Onto-Ethic in Contrast
• II. FINDING THE LOST LIFE-VALUE GROUND AND MEASURE: THE COMMON LIFE INTEREST OF LEGITIMATE RIGHTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
  • Capabilities: Regrounding Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum in Life Need and Value
  • Individual Differences and the Life-Value Criterion and Measure of Legitimate Rights
  • Thinking Past the Life-Blind Paradigms
  • The Universal Human Life Necessities
  • Universal Life Needs the Basis of All Legitimate Rights
• III. GROWING THE LIFE GOODS BASE: BEYOND MONEY, IDEOLOGY AND PRODUCTIVE FORCES
  • Why Marx Does not Solve the Problem
  • Predictable Downfall of Human and Planetary Life Until Life-Value Turn
  • From Moral and Legal Philosophy to Marxian Revolution: The Missing Life-Ground
  • The Modern Blind Eye: No Life-Value Standard to Steer Productive Development
  • The First Requirement of Social Justice: Re-Grounding in Universal Human Life Goods
  • Recognising the Human Vocation Above All
  • Right of Access to Universal Life Goods: The Missing Argument
• IV. THE UNIVERSAL HUMAN LIFE NECESSITIES: THE LIFE GROUND OF ECONOMICS AND HUMAN RIGHTS DEFINED
  • Blocking Out Life Necessity: The Compulsion of High Theory
  • The Universal Life Needs and Goods: Explaining the Base of All Rights and Obligations
  • Beyond the Invisible Hand: Naming Humanity’s Universal Life Necessities and Goods
  • How to Test the Universal Life Goods and Necessities for Validity
  • Sufficiency and Insufficiency of Provision Recognised by Life Capacity Margins
  • Thinking Through “From Each According to Ability, To Each According to Needs”
• V. RECOVERING THE BASES OF OUR LIVES FROM SILENCE AND OCCUPATION: THE HUMAN VOCATION, THE CIVIL COMMONS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
  • Being Human: Why We Must Work for Our Own Life Good and Others’ at the Same Time
  • The Civil Commons: Real Economic Base and Social Correlative of the Human Vocation
  • The Corporate-Rich War on Civil Commons to Expropriate and Degrade Them for Profit
  • From Commons-Blind Theory on Both Sides of Class Division to Life-Goods Economy and Justice.
  • Regaining the Lost Bearings of Civil Commons as First Premise of Human Evolution
  • From Corporate State versus Social State to Life-Coherent Rationality
• VI. EVOLVED CIVIL COMMONS VERSUS CORPORATE GLOBALIZATION: A PERFORMANCE EVALUATION ACROSS UNIVERSAL LIFE GOODS
  • Re-Setting to the Common Life-Ground of Our Existence
  • Economic Advance and Social Justice Both Decided by Universal Provision of Life Goods
  • Atmospheric Goods
  • Bodily Goods
  • Home and Habitat Goods
  • Environmental Integrity
  • Life-Protective Goods of Security and Healthcare
  • Cultural Life Goods
  • The Good of Human Vocation
• VII: WHY CONTEMPORARY JUSTICE THEORY FAILS: THE MISSING COMMON INTEREST OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND REASON
  • Abstracting Away Everything that Ultimately Matters: Mapping High Theory’s Correspondence to the Life-Blind Ruling System
  • G.A. Cohen’s Egalitarian Rescue Remains Within the Ruling Alibi as First Premise
  • Economic Science and Pareto Optimum/Efficiency Unmasked in Principle
  • Rawlsian Justice as Trickle-Down Myth in Formal Costume
• VIII. BEYOND EQUIVOCAL EQUALITY AND MASKING MYTHS: GROUNDING JUSTICE IN WHAT WE ALL NEED TO LIVE AS HUMAN
  • From Rational Plan of Life to Human Vocation: The Ultimate Moral Regrounding
  • Life-Ground Ethics Rejects a Career Plan as a Universal Good of Justice or Morality
  • Linking Life Right and Obligation at System-Wide and Historical Levels
  • The Life-Coherence Principle, Civil Commons, and the Human Vocation
• IX. REGAINING THE REAL ECONOMY FROM THE CANCER SYSTEM: THE CHOICE SPACE FOR HUMANITY’S EVOLUTION OR DESTRUCTION
  • Evolution of Humanity by Rules of Life-Enabling Economy and Justice
  • Progressive or Regressive Meta Pattern of History?
  • The Corporate-State War Against Human Evolution
  • Recovering the Real Economy in Principle and Fact
• X. THE SOCIAL STATE VERSUS THE CORPORATE STATE: FROM EUROPEAN FASCISM TO GLOBAL MONEY-SEQUENCE ABSOLUTISM
  • Social State Evolution versus Corporate State Growth: The Battle Lines Defined
  • From the Depression, Anti-Fascist War and Decolonisation to the Corporate Occupation
  • The Morality of Corporate Rights: No Rights Except for Private Money Sequences
  • Social Justice and Economic Integrity: The Life Code in Social Defence
• XI. THE LIFE-AND-DEATH WAR OF RIGHTS SYSTEMS DEFINED
  • Defining the Global Corporate Mechanism in Formal Terms
  • The Age-Old Life Economy of the Civil Commons versus the Corporate-Rights System
  • Holding and Advancing the Life-Ground of Resistance: Clarifying the Civil Commons of Economic and Human Rights Around and Under Us
  • Beyond Amnesiac Despair: The Life Economy and Human Rights Base Already Won
  • The Real Private Sector is the Opposite of Global Corporate For Profit
• XII. HUMANITY’S EVOLUTION AND THE GREAT REVERSAL: AN ANATOMY OF THE CORPORATE RIGHT COUNTER-REVOLUTION
  • Getting Our Historical Bearings in the Turning-Point Time
  • The Great Reversal
  • The Historic Choice Today
• XIII. HISTORY’S LONG WAR FOR LIBERATION: RECLAIMING THE LIFE RIGHTS WHICH HAVE BEEN WON
  • The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights
  • Societies’ Life Rights Against Corporate Fascism Across Borders
  • Resolving Confusions of Meaning to See the Historical Pattern Across Generational Time
  • Reclaiming and Moving Beyond the Human Life Rights That Have Already Been Won.
• REFERENCES
  

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REFERENCES

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