Living Together av David (Presidential Chair of Moral Science Presidential Chair of Moral Science Chambers College of Business and Economics West Virg

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Is moral philosophy more foundational than political theory? It is often assumed to be. David Schmidtz argues that the reverse is true: the question of how to live in a community is more fundamental than questions about how to live. This book questions whether we are getting to the foundations of human morality when we ignore contingent features of communities in which political animals live.Schmidtz disputes the idea that reflection on how to live needs to begin with timeless axioms. Rather, theorizing about how to live together should take its cue from contemporary moral philosophy''s attempts to go beyond formal theory, and ask which principles have a history of demonstrably being organizing principles of actual thriving communities at their best. Ideals emerging from such research should be a distillation of social scientific insight from observable histories of successfulcommunity building. What emerges from ongoing testing in the crucible of life experience will be path-dependent