General Ethics

This work is an attempt to present a theory of morals that is at once broad but specific, non-reductive but coherent. Professor Heller's approach is governed by the question: "good persons exist - how are they possible?" "General Ethics" makes no sweeping, normative claims; rather, it explores what is good, or has been considered to be good within various normative systems of belief. Central to this method is Agnes Heller's premise that our social world view is constructed around a hierarchy of ethical norms. Ethics are therefore a condition of our world, because our presence in the world is governed by social meanings which are the instruments of social regulation. Agnes Heller explores the social corollaries of this grounding of ethics in the normative categories of our social "life-world". Analyzing the central concepts of ethics (such as voluntary actions, responsibility, consequences, justice, as well as wider notions of moral authority and mental states), Agnes Heller provides a vastly suggestive and comprehensive grounding for a general theory of morals.