Product Description

What is the difference between right and wrong? What does it mean to lead a good life? How binding is the marriage vow? What are your obligations to an employer? To your friends? To yourself? Is it always immoral to tell a lie? "[A]n alert and knowledgeable social critic," Alan Wolfe asked Americans around the country such questions in "his intriguing exploration of our collective character, testing prevailing notions of the culture war" (New York Times Book Review). Focusing on the traditional virtues of loyalty, honesty, self-restraint, and forgiveness, Wolfe "strips away ulterior agendas to give us a look at the raw material of the American conscience" (New York Observer) and discovers that "Americans...have not so much left traditional morality behind as they have redefined it in ways that suit their individual tastes, purposes, and situations" (Washington Post).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #432016 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
"Is loyalty still appreciated in America? Can one still be honest in America today? Is sexual promiscuity a sign of bad character?... What kinds of acts and behaviors are unforgivable?" Using interviews with a diverse group of Americans ranging from gays and lesbians in the San Francisco area and mill workers in small-town America to born-again Christians and Silicon Valley suburbanites sociologist Wolfe (One Nation, After All) poses these and other questions as he surveys the moral landscape of contemporary America. His team's questions focus on the traditional virtues of loyalty, honesty, self-restraint and forgiveness. Throughout their conversations, Wolfe and his interviewers found that even though contemporary Americans reject what they believe are outmoded versions of these virtues, these same Americans struggle to fashion their own versions of them. Moral freedom, Wolfe notes, "means that individuals should determine for themselves what it means to lead a good and virtuous life." He traces the rise of moral freedom to the 1960s and 1970s, and contends that, although it may have some regrettable consequences, this individualistic and pragmatic method of forging morality will shape our moral discourse well into the 21st century. Although there is little new here for keen observers of contemporary American culture and morality, Wolfe's study has the potential to change the ways we think about society and morality in the same way that Robert Bellah's classic Habits of the Heart changed the ways we think about society and religion. (Apr.)Forecast: Wolfe's poll was done in conjunction with the New York Times Magazine, which published the results in a special issue. Wolfe's last book was widely reviewed, and this should be as well.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Wolfe here discusses the results of a national public opinion poll he helped design on American beliefs about values, which he supplemented with detailed interviews of people from eight different U.S. communities. These ranged widely, from the Castro district of San Francisco to San Antonio. Though many writers argue that Americans live in a moral crisis, Wolfe does not concur. He claims, instead, that Americans are still firmly committed to morality, although current values often differ from those of the past. The notion that people are of necessity sinful has lost force. Many of Wolfe's respondents view people as capable of articulating their own values in freedom. The changed emphasis affects a number of particular issues. For example, the virtue of honesty is now taken as more flexible than it was in past eras, and forgiveness has become more central as a trait to be cultivated. Wolfe's sensitive study is highly recommended. David Gordon, Bowling Green State Univ., OH
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Twenty years after Alasdair MacIntyre's landmark study After Virture, Wolfe revisits the same cultural issue from a very different perspective. Whereas MacIntyre saw a society in moral chaos, Wolfe sees a society fashioning a new kind of liberty, one claimed by Americans living by principles validated neither by inherited traditions nor by religious authority but rather by individual choice and personal experience. From conservatives distressed at how family disintegration is hurting children to radicals ecstatic about how sexual experimentation is unlocking psychic energies, Americans from all walks of life and with dramatically diverse voices speak here with urgency and passion. Conservatives will complain that Wolfe's sociological objectivity legitimizes liberal relativism (giving as much credibility to the man defending sadomasochism as to the woman quoting Scripture). But such complaints count for little with Wolfe, who argues that, for all of the perplexities it brings, the new moral freedom now permeates virtually all U.S. institutions, compelling Americans of every persuasion to meet its challenge. Disturbing for some, provocative for all. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Worth your time
This would be a great book to read with a book club or a couple friends. The content makes for great conversation. It is also written in a way that makes reading easy.

Exceptional Assessment of American Values
Wolfe provides a litmus test of where we are in America today as we move towards greater moral freedom. He does not provide personal pronouncements of what should be considered right or wrong. Rather, he interviews people from varying social backgrounds to get their views on matters ranging from indulgence of the self to forgiveness of others. Wolfe captures Americans' search for a moral compass in world that has drastically changed from their parents' time. He shows how individuals are trying to cultivate their own sense of morality while trying to balance allegiance to one's self and to society as a whole. In the face of monumental change, American conversation regarding our values has been polarized between two competing, and extreme, dogmas. Wolfe provides a balanced framework to assess where we're headed. "Moral Freedom" is a must read for anyone wishing to find solutions that work for mainstream America.

Moral Anarchy
The subtitle of Alan Wolfe's latest social study is "The Impossible Idea That Defines The Way We Live Now." Professor Wolfe purports to study the idea of moral freedom and its applicability to the brave new world in which we live. This is a highly literate, reasonably well-designed popular study, the general conclusions of which are,insofar as Prof. Wolfe's interviews and surveys extend, no doubt generally accurate. For Prof. Wolfe tells us, in essence, that ours is a secular society in which relativism, materialism, subjectivism, and hedonism are displacing Christian humanism. That will come as no surprise to anyone. These isms, corrupt as they are, have led to a long train of sorrow and suffering: abortion, drug abuse, rampant crime, mass murder, and ethical confusion and chaos. When the idea of the sacred disappears, it will be replaced by a new god, and his reflection can be seen daily in our bathroom mirrors. One's complaint about Prof. Wolfe's study does not concern the question of its accuracy but rather the issue of whether he has even the foggiest notion of what "moral freedom" really is. He defines it as the idea "that individuals should determine for themselves what it means to lead a good and virtuous life" (p. 195),which, of course, means that we should, much as Charles Reich once told us, "build [our] own philosophy and values" (p. 216)and re-define or re-design our own god (because the "old" one just isn't accommodating enough [cf. p. 226]).
But of course this is not moral freedom at all; it is, rather, licentious and libidinous anarchy. Prof. Wolfe's (selected?)interviews of often well-meaning but inarticulate Christians unfortunately do not make the point one finds presented so powerfully in Pope John Paul's 1993 letter "The Splendor of Truth": "People today need to turn to Christ once again in order to receive from Him the answer to their questions about what is good and what is evil" (#8). Moreover, the idea that freedom means the opportunity to "serve one another through love" (Gal 5:13; cf. 1 Pt 2:16) and the notion that freedom is selfless devotion to God (Mt 22:37)--and that therein lies the source of human dignity--Prof. Wolfe and a number of his readers would no doubt perfunctorily dismiss. Consider that one of his interviewees says of Mother Teresa that she was a "[vixen] on wheels" (p. 194). How can one react in the face of such stunted moral "vision" except to feel, not anger, not disgust, but pity? To think, even for a moment, that such a person (the interviewee) has a glimmer of "moral freedom" is to misunderstand both "moral" and "freedom." For the source of "morality" is not to be found in our appetites and urges; and the meaning of "freedom" is not to be found in the seven deadly sins (pride, envy, lust, anger, gluttony, sloth, greed), but in ordering our lives so that we live as we should, in the service not of the one we design to approve the indulgence of our urges, but of the One who designed us (cf. Rom 6:15-23, 12:2) to know His peace (Phil 4:7) in eternal life (1 Jn 5:13).