Ethics

Dietrich von Hildebrand offers here the most nuanced version we have of a value-based ethics, building on the ethics of Max Scheler, but going far beyond it. On this basis he develops his signature concept of value-response, wherein a person gives value its due, along with his signature concept of the transcendence of the person in value-response. He re-thinks virtue theory on the basis of his value philosophy, and in doing so he places virtue at the center of his ethics long before the revival of virtue theory in Anglo-American thought.

The task of ethics is to attain to a full philosophical prise de conscience of moral data (that is, a philosophical awareness implying an explicit and fully conscious grasping of these data) and to arrive thereby at a precise notion of their specific nature, of their full significance, and of the presuppositions of man’s conduct required for the possession of moral goodness. Ethics is further bound to inquire into the difference between the moral sphere and all other spheres and to discover especially the relations existing between the moral sphere and God, and between moral goodness and man’s destiny.

Dietrich von Hildebrand | From the Foreword