The Moral Imagination and Public Life

This provides a really interesting analysis of applied morality and ethics. It is useful for students of philosophy, philosophy of education and education as either a background to the ethics of their everyday lives or their practice.

• Public policy and the ethical question; public policy and political life; limitation of this approach; the problem stated; the quest for a public ethic; ethics as the critical analysis of morality; the ethical self; posing the ethical question; public ethics; the moral imagination; value and community; moral community and pluralistic society; knowledge and responsibility; earth day; symbol and reality; community, society and ethics; medieval community and the rise of modernity; the science to come; the economic revolution; morality and the marketplace; modern society and social theory; the loss of community in utilitarianism; the problem of order in utilitarianism; the pioneers of sociology; community as a form of social thought; communal society?; the ethical dialectic of community and society; the search for a social ethic; justice; the common good; the public realm; the idea of the public; from revolution to constitution; the fathers of liberal theory; the pluralist concept of politics; the ethical limitations of pluralism; the problematic notion of community; individualism as a form of social thought; individualism in America; the debate over community; lifeworld and system world; public discourse and public philosophy; public ethics as the creation of the public; the perversion of public speech; public speech versus bureaucratic language; standing by our words; lifeworld and public policy; the public interest and the public; choosing who we are; core values in the American liberal tradition; religion and property; the American Indian; liberty and equality; liberty, equality and slavery; conflict of values; root metaphors of the self-atomistic individualism; the metaphor a model; the self as person-in-community; interests and values; colectivity of individuals or commonwealth?; who are we?; religion and property - a vision of economic justice; liberty and equality - a city chooses what it will be; starting from here - the information society; the television culture; the citizen as spectator; the citizen as consumer; who am I?; recovering the self; what is my personal relation to what I don't know?; the aim of policy - a flourishing life; an emerging perspective on public policy; the community approach to public policy; the religious factor; churches as public interest groups; getting involved; moral imagination and hope.