In Man for Himself , Erich Fromm examines the confusion of modern women and men who, because they lack faith in any principle by which life ought to be guided, become the helpless prey forces both within and without. From the broad, interdisciplinary perspective that marks Fromm’s distinguished oeuvre, he shows that psychology cannot divorce itself from the problems of philosophy and ethics, and that human nature cannot be understood without understanding the values and moral conflicts that confront us all. (...) He shows that an ethical system can be based on human nature rather than on revelations or traditions. As Fromm asserts, “If man is to have confidence in values, he must know himself and the capacity of his nature for goodness and productiveness.”. (shrink)

"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made."--Immanuel Kant Isaiah Berlin was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century--an activist of the intellect who marshaled vast erudition and eloquence in defense of the endangered values of individual liberty and moral and political pluralism. In the Crooked Timber of Humanity he exposes the links between the ideas of the past and the social and political cataclysms of our present century: between the Platonic belief (...) in absolute Truth and the lure of authoritarianism between the eighteenth-century reactionary ideologue Joseph de Maistre and twentieth-century fascism between the romanticism of Schiller and Byron and the militant--and sometimes genocidal--nationalism that convulses the modern world. (shrink)

The Christian does not live in a vacuum, says the author, but in a world of government, politics, labor, and marriage. Hence, Christian ethics cannot exist in a vacuum what the Christian needs, claims Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is concrete instruction in a concrete situation. Although the author died before completing his work, this book is recognized as a major contribution to Christian ethics. The root and ground of Christian ethics, the author says, is the reality of God as revealed in Jesus (...) Christ. This reality is not manifest in the Church as distinct from the secular world such a juxtaposition of two separate spheres, Bonhoeffer insists, is a denial of God's having reconciled the whole world to himself in Christ. On the contrary, God's commandment is to be found and known in the Church, the family, labor, and government. His commandment permits man to live as man before God, in a world God made, with responsibility for the institutions of that world. (shrink)

Originally published in 1934, and undertaken at the suggestion of Sayajirao Gaekwad III, then Maharajah of Baroda, this book examines the similarities and differences of ethical traditions in the East and the West. Saunders uses Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Hebrew and Christian texts to compare and contrast each system with the others, noting that 'East and West must cease from provincialism in a world now made one'. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in comparative religion (...) and in the history of Western reception of Eastern ideas. (shrink)

Originally published in 1934, and undertaken at the suggestion of Sayajirao Gaekwad III, then Maharajah of Baroda, this book examines the similarities and differences of ethical traditions in the East and the West. Saunders uses Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Hebrew and Christian texts to compare and contrast each system with the others, noting that 'East and West must cease from provincialism in a world now made one'. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in comparative religion (...) and in the history of Western reception of Eastern ideas. (shrink)