The Moral Imagination and Public Life: Raising the Ethical Question

Thomas E. McCollough explores the relationship of personal values to public policy, and he poses the concept of moral community as the vital link between the concerned citizen and the body politic. He delineates a collective vision of the public good that might be brought to bear on policy issues such as health care, education, civil liberties, and the environment.

Table of Contents:
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.