Justice and Hope

Essays, Lectures and Other Writings

Raimond Gaita, Scott Stephens (editor)
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Justice and Hope

Published

21 November 2023

ISBN

9780522880236

Pages

600

Imprint

Melbourne University Press

Justice and Hope

Essays, Lectures and Other Writings

Raimond Gaita, Scott Stephens (editor)
The collected writings of Raimond Gaita
'From where will we draw the moral energy to stay true to justice?' For more than three decades the incomparable voice of Raimond Gaita has been summoning us to new conversations that deepen our understanding of what matters most to human life and awaken the sense of our common humanity. For Gaita, we are never more fully alive than when we are fully present to one another in conversation. In a time when modes of communication tend to superficiality and self-promotion, when political debates are increasingly inured to lies and even violence, and the moral demands of dialogue give way to a torrent of competing monologues, Gaita's invitation to rediscover what genuine conversation requires of us could not be more timely. These collected writings at once invite us into that conversation and enact its severe demands. Gaita asks us to confront the distinctive evil of genocide, to examine the true…
'From where will we draw the moral energy to stay true to justice?' For more than three decades the incomparable voice of Raimond Gaita has been summoning us to new conversations that deepen our understanding of what matters most to human life and awaken the sense of our common humanity. For Gaita, we are never more fully alive than when we are fully present to one another in conversation. In a time when modes of communication tend to superficiality and self-promotion, when political debates are increasingly inured to lies and even violence, and the moral demands of dialogue give way to a torrent of competing monologues, Gaita's invitation to rediscover what genuine conversation requires of us could not be more timely. These collected writings at once invite us into that conversation and enact its severe demands. Gaita asks us to confront the distinctive evil of genocide, to examine the true cost of the 'War on Terror', to interrogate what justice requires in response to Australia's dispossession of its First Peoples, to understand our need for truth in politics, especially during war, to see what is at stake in the decline of the universities, to grasp what was lost during the Black Summer bushfires, and to reckon with the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic-when we learned, he writes, 'how much we needed to touch and hold other people'. Gaita's astonishing range of concerns is held together by the consistency and unrelenting tenderness of his moral vision. To see the world through Gaita's eyes is to discover, once again, what it means to love the world and to remain faithful to it. He tells us that an unconditional love of the world is the deepest form of hope and the truest source of our energies to honour the demands of justice. This is how we learn to be human.

An invaluable treasury of profound wisdom on the most urgent issues of our time, always from the point of view of searching for our common humanity.”
Anna Funder

Read this book ... and wait. Wait for love. Because we become what we love.”
Stan Grant

The questioning and moral clarity that Gaita brings to the notions of justice and hope—and to history—are galvanising and crucial. What is even more profoundly moving is his writing about love, of how any exploration of justice and hope—and of being human—cannot ignore the question of how we love and care for one another. ”
Christos Tsiolkas

One senses behind every portrayal, every conversation recounted, every abstract philosophical rumination, the personal well of love for the world that is not only one among Gaita’s explicit themes but also the attitude that lends a generosity of spirit to every page.”
Miranda Fricker

An ethically serious, fiercely humane, exquisitely fair-minded, pained but hopeful, exploration of our human condition and the politics and law that seek to respond to it [from] one of our wisest and most generous thinkers.”
Gerry Simpson

Raimond Gaita

Raimond Gaita

Raimond Gaita is honorary professorial fellow in the Melbourne Law School and emeritus professor of Moral Philosophy at King's College London. He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. The University of Antwerp awarded him the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa ‘for his exceptional contribution to contemporary moral philosophy and for his singular contribution to the role of the intellectual in today’s academic world’.

His books include Good and Evil: An Absolute

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Scott Stephens

Scott Stephens

Scott Stephens is the ABC’s Religion and Ethics online editor and the co-host (with Waleed Aly) of The Minefield on ABC Radio National. He has published widely on moral philosophy and theological ethics, and co-edited (with Rex Butler) and translated two volumes of the selected writings of Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, Interrogating the Real and The Universal Exception. With Waleed Aly, he is the co-author of Quarterly Essay 87, Uncivil Wars: How Contempt is

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Hardback
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Other formats available