The morality of everyday life : rediscovering an ancient alternative to the liberal tradition / Thomas Fleming.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fleming, Thomas, 1945- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ethics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (280 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Columbia, Missouri ; London, [England] : University of Missouri Press, 2004.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Fleming offers an alternative to enlightened liberalism, where moral and political problems are looked at from an objective point of view and a decision made from a distant perspective that is both rational and universally applied to all comparable cases. He instead places importance on the particular, the local, and moral complexity, advocating a return to premodern traditions for a solution to ethical predicaments. In his view, liberalism and postmodernism ignore the fact that human beings by their very nature refuse to live in a world of abstractions where the attachments of friends, neighbors, family, and country make no difference. Fleming believes that a modern type of "casuistry" should be applied to moral conflicts, using examples from history, literature, and religion to explain this moral ecology that refuses to divorce organisms from their interactions with each other and with their environment.

Contents:

Hell and other people

Citizens of the world

Too much reality

Growing up un-absurd

Problems of perspective

The myth of individualism

Goodbye, old rights of man.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-8262-6250-3

OCLC:

70739695