An examination and defence of the concept of personality, long central to Western moral culture but now increasingly under attack. Robert Spaemann tackles urgent practical questions, such as our treatment of the severely disabled human and the moral status of intelligent non-human animals.

An examination and defence of the concept of personality, long central to Western moral culture but now increasingly under attack, by a leading European philosopher. It takes issue with major contemporary philosophers, especially in the English-speaking world, who have contributed to the eclipse of the idea, and traces the debate back to the foundations of modern philosophy in Descartes and Locke. There are extended discussions of the sources of the idea in Christian theology and its development in Western philosophy. There (...) are also a number of pointed discussions of pressing practical questions - for example, our treatment of the severely disabled human and the moral status of intelligent non-human animals. The book covers a great deal of ground before coming to a focused conclusion: all human beings are persons - and perhaps all porpoises, too! (shrink)

In this excellent and clearly-written introduction to ethical thinking, Spaemann provides a stimulating discussion of the fundamental concepts we use everyday when we deliberate, alone or with others, about the moral aspects of our action.

This book is written for theologians as well as philosophers - indeed for anyone who is concerned with the meaning of a 'life well lived', with good and evil ...

The several stages in the progresive abandoning of teleology in the natur from the constitution of the modern science and the new attempts of its reintroduction, are reconstructed. In contemporary thought the crisis of unlimited dominion over the nature favours the adoption of the teleological point of view. Only the consciousness of an end given in a natural way makes the conscious aim of objectives possible.

Nietzsche diagnosed a tendency for self-destruction within the Enlightenment movement. According to him, in giving up the idea of God, the idea of non-perspective truth, that is the faith in reason, falls victim to it. Wittgenstein und Jaspers reflected upon the characteristics of this faith in reason, which starts where scientific knowledge ends, respectively, where it becomes aware of its hypothetical status. Plato reserved the term of “knowing” for this relation of a presuppositionless conceptually inexplicable “megiston mathema”. In Jaspers′s concept (...) of a philosophical faith not based on revelation, both elements of the platonic knowing of the “good itself” can be found: the greatness of the matter, transcending everything being the case, and the intensity of being really touched. Yet with regard to philosophical radicalness, the explanatory function of the “absolute knowing” for each kind of truth seems to exceed the faith of Jaspers. (shrink)

The beginning and end of human life is in our days a controversial issue. The most significant achievement of actual discussion is that a human being does not "become" a human being; but rather, that he "is" a human being from the moment of conception. Such demands an adequate treatment of his dignity in all stages of existence.

The analysis of relations between morals and rituals show how morals are not unconditional. Ethics are refereed to an ethos which has a continuity with its ritual origin, and, at the same time, ethics are expressed in rituals which constitutes our Lebenswelt.