Ethics and Community

This book is a comprehensive introductory approach to what liberation theology has to say about ethics and morals. Dussel begins by making a fundamental distinction between two types of ethical systems: community ethics and social morality. The first grows out of a central concern with community; the second out of isolated individualism. Dussel first poses ten questions basic to a discussion of ethics (on good and evil; personal and social sin; relative morals and absolute ethics, and others). Next, he examines ten contemporary issues requiring an ethical stance, among them: labor and the work ethic; capitalism and socialism; the arms race; and Third World debt and dependency. Rigorous in design and scholarship, yet clear and accessibly written, Ethics and Community offers the first single, systematic treatment of an ethics rooted, as liberation theology is rooted, in the concerns of the poor of Latin America--and the world.