000 02622cam a22003373u 4500
001 77019
003 UtSlPG
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010 _a29010228
040 _aUtSlPG
041 7 _aen
_2iso639-1
050 4 _aBJ
100 1 _aLippmann, Walter,
_d1889-1974
245 1 2 _aA preface to morals
264 1 _aSalt Lake City, UT :
_bProject Gutenberg,
_c2025
300 _a1 online resource :
_bmultiple file formats
336 _atext
_btxt
_2rdacontent
337 _acomputer
_bc
_2rdamedia
338 _aonline resource
_bcr
_2rdacarrier
500 _aRelease date is 2025-10-09
508 _aSean/IB@DP
520 _a"A preface to morals" by Walter Lippmann is a work of social and moral philosophy written in the early 20th century. It examines the modern loss of religious certainty and authority, the emptiness that can follow emancipation from orthodoxy, and the need to find a credible, disciplined humanism to guide conduct in a secular world. Lippmann probes why both triumphant disbelief and nostalgic return fail to satisfy, and why moral life requires more than taste, mood, or fashion. The opening of the book traces the “problem of unbelief”: those no longer anchored by ancestral faith feel aimless despite newfound freedoms, and the liberal prophecy of deliverance has disappointed, leaving people nervously credulous and tempted by new cults. Lippmann contrasts modernist redefinitions of God (abstract, symbolic, or metaphysical) that lack compelling authority with fundamentalist demands for literal historical facts; he shows how the former cannot sustain popular devotion, while the latter, lacking a sure arbiter, collapses into schism—Catholic critique included. He argues that higher criticism and “decoding” Scripture (e.g., turning immortality into a platonic ideal) strip religion of the certainty and external sanction that once consoled, commanded, and unified ordinary believers. Finally, he sketches the “acids of modernity”: shifting political analogies for God, urbanization, mobility, media-driven novelty, and the loss of familiar landmarks all corrode piety; fundamentalist agitation appears as anxious compensation for a confidence that has already ebbed. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
534 _pOriginally published:
_cNew York: The Macmillan Company, 1929
653 _aPhilosophy and religion
653 _aEthics
856 4 _uhttps://archive.org/details/bwb_S0-DSD-768/page/n5/mode/2up
856 4 0 _uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77019
999 _c117743
_d117743