A Preface to Morals

By Walter Lippmann

Categories: Politics & Social Sciences, Religion & Spirituality

In A Preface to Morals (1929), journalist Walter Lippmann asks how people should live once science, democracy and urban life have weakened the old authority of church and tradition. He rejects both easy disbelief and a return to orthodoxy, and offers humanism in their place: a morality of self-restraint and "disinterestedness," learned from sages such as Aristotle, Buddha, Confucius and Spinoza, that puts clear sight ahead of desire.

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• Fareed Zakaria: “A Preface to Morals is an amazing book written in the 20s, during the Jazz Age.”