Description
Book SynopsisFor over thirty years Susan Wolf has been writing about moral and nonmoral values and the relation between them. This volume collects Wolf''s most important essays on the topics of morality, love, and meaning, ranging from her classic essay Moral Saints to her most recent The Importance of Love.Wolf''s essays warn us against the common tendency to classify values in terms of a dichotomy that contrasts the personal, self-interested, or egoistic with the impersonal, altruistic or moral. On Wolf''s view, this tendency ignores or distorts the significance of such values as love, beauty, and truth, and neglects the importance of meaningfulness as a dimension of the good life. These essays show us how a self-conscious recognition of the variety of values leads to new understandings of the point, the content, and the limits of morality and to new ways of thinking about happiness and well-being.
Trade ReviewThe Variety of Values is a valuable contribution to contemporary ethics suitable for both professional philosophers and a more general readership. * Lucas Scripter, The Philosophical Quarterly *
Table of Contents1. Introduction ; Part I: Moral and Nonmoral Values ; 2. Moral Saints ; 3. Morality and Partiality ; 4. Morality and the View From Here ; 5. Good-for-Nothings ; Part II: Meaning in Life ; 6. The Meanings of Lives ; 7. Happiness and Meaning: Two Aspects of the Good Life ; 8. Meaning and Morality ; Part III: Love ; 9. One Thought Too Many: Love, Morality, and the Ordering of Commitment ; 10. Loving Attention: Lessons in Love from The Philadelphia Story ; 11. The Importance of Love ; Part IV: The Concept of Duty ; 12. Above and Below the Line of Duty ; 13. The Role of Rules ; 14. Moral Obligations and Social Commands
