The Morality of Everyday Life: Rediscovering an Ancient Alternative to the Liberal Tradition

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University of Missouri Press, 2004 - Philosophy - 270 pages
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.

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Contents

Prisoners of Dilemmas
1
Hell and Other People
18
Citizens of the World
42
Too Much Reality
69
Growing Up Unabsurd
94
Problems of Perspective
135
The Myth of Individualism
167
Goodbye Old Rights of Man
194
Bibliography
235
Index
251
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