An American Ethic: A Philosophy of Freedom Applied to Contemporary Issues

An American Ethic takes the basis for American life, freedom, and describes the reality behind that abstraction, the transcendent nature of human beings. The book analyzes freedom and communication along with the inalienable rights and obligations that necessarily flow from this transcendent nature. It explains and distinguishes the usual norms of morality: natural law, positive law, religion, and conscience; and then proceeds to discuss contemporary moral issues: sanction for crime, animal rights, business ethics, sexual morality, homosexuality, and abortion. In the light of that analysis, the book critiques three recent and well-known works on ethics: Robert Pirsig's Lila, James Q. Wilson's The Moral Sense, and Peter Singer's Practical Ethics.

An American Ethic provides a forceful and sometimes controversial interpretation of the principles of equality and liberty. While exploring the notion of what being a responsible American adult means in today's society, Gerken offers candid, and often novel, alternatives to the contemporary reliance upon moral relativism to solve social ills.