Landscapes of the Soul: The Loss of Moral Meaning in American Life

"The meaning of life for me is just to enjoy myself." "It's all relative to your point of view." The rootless sentiments of today's college students are the springboard for Douglas V. Porpora's impassioned defense of the importance of moral foundations. Landscapes of the Soul is a cri de coeur from a self-identified left-wing "campus radical" who finds common cause with cultural conservatives like Allan Bloom because they share a belief that moral truths are real and independent of our varied perspectives. But Porpora thinks that the central problem is not skepticism, but rather a basic lack of interest in "cosmic meaning." The problem isn't that we don't believe in God; it's that we just don't care.

Porpora goes into the fabric of American culture, interviewing Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Buddhists, urbanites and rural folks, atheists and New Agers, and drawing from a variety of ages, races, and levels of education. He argues that no matter what your "point of view," the modern landscape of American morality is bleak, impoverished by the thin soil of a relativism that is as vacuous as it is pervasive. Porpora's remedy is a reorientation that is infused with spiritual meaning. He wants us to return to a way of being that asks incessantly: "Is there a human destiny we were meant to fulfill?" --Eric de Place