Addressing himself to basic ethical questions -- What is the essential value of life? What is right action? What is the nature of a good social order? -- the author seeks to find his answers in the humanist spirit of philosophy. The author takes his quest beyond the limits of personal ethics. Viewing man both as an individual and as a member of society, he examines, among various themes, the meaning and implications of the community as an ethical concept. In (...) so doing, he refers to such related fields as religion, law, sociology and political theory, but the primary focus of the book is on basic sources and central issues. Far more than most writers on ethics, he deals with the concept of justice, and with human rights and liberties; the values of democracy he treats at length and relates to the individual. The result is a text of depth and distinction that deals with the total human personality in the dynamic context of a functioning society. (shrink)

A searching examination of marx's writings reveals that he has no single, Consistent theory of the economic basis of art. The more extreme marxist position, With its metaphor of economic base and cultural superstructure, Is misleading and belies marx's own deeper insight. His doctrine of creativity, And of alienation and its overcoming, Is aesthetic in tinge, And points to a less reductionist theory than that of orthodox marxism.