A geography of good and evil
"Do good and evil exist? Not according to fashionable thinking in the Western world. The typical modern view holds that good and evil are merely subjective judgments, figments of the mind. But in this book, the eminent Dutch philosopher Andreas Kinneging turns such thinking on its head. Good and evil, he declares, are objective, universal, and unchanging. They are not to be invented, but must be discovered - or, in our age, rediscovered." "In mapping the geography of good and evil, Kinneging reclaims, and reintroduces us to, the great tradition of ancient and Christian thought. That tradition is not merely of historical interest; it is of direct existential interest to us all. Traditional wisdom enables us to address the eternal questions of good and evil that confront us in both public and private life. Though it is common to accept uncritically the blessings of modernity and its intellectual sources, the Enlightenment and Romanticism, Kinneging shows that traditional thinking is richer and more realistic. Indeed, we see how, in more than a few respects, the Enlightenment and Romanticism brought not progress but deterioration." "Kinneging reformulates and defends the insights of traditional thinking for today's readers, demonstrating how an objective morality is to be understood and how we can know what morality demands of us. At a time when the traditional virtues have practically disappeared from our language (that is, all but one - "tolerance"), he lays out the foundations of virtue and vice. Ultimately, Kinneging reveals the lasting significance of these seemingly archaic notions - to our own lives, to our families, to our culture, and to civilization."--Jacket.
