Preface: Why be Ethical?
Part I: Basics
1. Social Viability as the Goal of Ethical Life
2. The Role of Emotions in Ethical Life
3. Power in Ethical Life
4. Social and Personal Ethics
5. Conflicts and Universals
Part II: Alternatives
6. Ethics: Religious and Secular
7. Freedom in Liberal Ethics
8. The Place of Reasons and Authority
9. Our Democratic Modernity
10. Social Change and Ethical Transcendence
Part III: Extensions
11. Market Values in Ethical Life
12. Common Goods in Ethical Life
13. Practical Ethics: Public Goods and Cooperation
14. Justice as Balancing
15. Local and Global Ethics
Biography
Milton Fisk is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Indiana University Bloomington, USA
"Fisk's approach is thought-provoking and challenging, especially for many schools of contemporary ethics. Anyone interested in contemporary ethics, and its relation to political activism, will find much to ponder in this very readable book." —Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
"Milton Fisk explores one of the core questions of ethics in this important book: why be moral? This question is fundamentally connected to the long term stability of a well-ordered society. Fisk makes a valuable contribution in his sustained argument for social viability as the driving reason to be moral." —Dale T. Snauwaert, University of Toledo, USA
"Fisk offers an intriguing account of the necessity and actuality of ethics. He takes into account the modern ambivalence about ethical norms prompted by cultural diversity and change, not to mention conflict and questions of power, and yet he offers a constructive conceptualization of the universality and validity proper to ethical life. This book should awaken new debates by philosophers interested in ethics, but it also raises themes of major concern to those thinking about politics." —Richard Peterson, Michigan State University, USA
