WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
A preface to morals cover

A preface to morals

Chapter 93: APPENDIX ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
By Walter Lippmann
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

Philosophy & EthicsReligion/SpiritualitySociology

About This Book

The essays trace the erosion of traditional religious authority and moral certainty under modern social and intellectual forces, diagnosing the resulting sense of unbelief and loss of meaning. They analyze how modern science, capitalism, art, and politics dissolve ancestral orders, then propose a secular humanism grounded in a balance of freedom and restraint, the cultivation of virtue, and institutions that channel creativity and loyalty. Subsequent sections explore practical implications for business, government, and intimate life, including sexual ethics and social policy, arguing for moral frameworks compatible with democratic pluralism and the creative energies of modernity.

APPENDIX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

At the suggestion of the publishers, the references which follow have been segregated in an appendix instead of being scattered as footnotes through the text. They felt, rightly enough, I think, that in a book of this character the purpose of the notes was to acknowledge indebtedness for the material cited rather than to support the argument, and that the reader would prefer not to have the text encumbered by the apparatus of a kind of scholarship to which the author makes no pretensions.

While these notes, except in a few instances, refer only to matter actually used in the text, they are also an approximate bibliography of the works which I have consulted. I wish I could adequately acknowledge the obligation I owe to my teachers, William James, George Santayana, and Graham Wallas, though that perhaps is self-evident. I should like to thank Miss Jane Mather and Miss Orrie Lashin for help in the preparation of the manuscript. I am under special obligation to my wife, Faye Lippmann, without whose assistance I could not have completed the book.

W. L.

New York City, January, 1929.