Description:
Knud Ejler Logstrup s "The Ethical Demand" is the most original influential Danish contribution to moral philosophy in this century. This is the first time that the complete text has been available in English translation. Originally published in 1956, it has again become the subject of widespread interest in Europe, now read in the context of the whole of Logstrup s work.
"The Ethical Demand" marks a break not only with utilitarianism and with Kantianism but also with Kierkegaard s Christian existentialism and with all forms of subjectivism. Yet Logstrup s project is not destructive. Rather, it is a presentation of an alternative understanding of interpersonal life. The ethical demand presupposes that all interaction between human beings involves a basic trust. Its content cannot be derived from any rule. For Logstrup, there is not Christian morality and secular morality. There is only human morality."The Ethical Demand "is of the highest relevance to contemporary debate, especially around those issues raised by Levinas. It will exert a steadily increasing influence both in theology and philosophy.
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Brief description:
Alasdair MacIntyre is Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Contemporary Aristotelian Studies in Ethics and Politics at London Metropolitan University and Rev John A. O'Brien Senior Research Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of numerous books, including After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, A Short History of Ethics, and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition, all published by the University of Notre Dame Press.
Review Quotes:
"Løgstrup's The Ethical Demand is a challenging and valuable addition to the growing ethical literature meeting the desperate needs of our own time. The book is a particularly valuable addition because of its attempt to meet the difficulties implicit in the Kantian and Kierkegaardian moral traditions which have been so influential in Europe in the past one hundred years." --The Canadian Catholic Review