Ethical Life : The Past and Present of Ethical Cultures

Ethical Life sets out to act as a guide for those of us who want to better understand ethics. It offers answers to the two simplest and yet most difficult questions facing individuals who have fallen into the perplexities of contemporary life: Why be ethical, and how?

Ethical Life sets out to act as a guide for those of us who want to better understand ethics. It offers answers to the two simplest and yet most difficult questions facing individuals who have fallen into the perplexities of contemporary life: Why be ethical, and how? Redner enlightens his readers with a comprehensive survey of the nature of ethics, touching briefly in his introduction on present ethical concerns and then drawing his readers into a deeper examination of the ethical systems and cultures from which those concerns emerge. The author poses the question: To what extent is our global technological civilization conducive or averse to ethical matters, and how does it compare in this respect to the cultures of the past, both in the West and the East? The book is an excellent and thought provoking introduction to ethics, and an engaging resource for new students of ethics and moral theory. Ethical Life is distinctive in its format and approach, synthesizing in one book both an historical and comparative account of ethical systems, and an engaging discussion of contemporary ethical challenges. The book begins with an introduction to the ethics of ancient Israel, Greece, China, India, and Persia, before moving on to a diagnosis of the twentieth century crisis in ethics, and finally, a discussion of contemporary ethical concerns, exploring our social, cultural, and individual responses to them.