This work makes a special contribution to the effort to understand the crucial field of ethics, morality and moral education. Written in Venezuela, it reflects the special heritage of Latin America with its rich Amerindian, Spanish and Third World traditions.

It brings these to the world's deepest contemporary concern, namely, the need to develop ethics and moral vision in a manner appropriate to the great changes through which we are passing at this turn of the millennia. To the reductionist turn toward the programmatic, this work responds with the tradition of Don Quixote to reaffirm the importance of ideals and imagination, to the pragmatist and utilitarian it promises not only to make human life practical, but to take it beyond the mundane; to concentration upon wealth, production and enjoyment, it brings the Third World voice of the poor and the exploited; to models of moral education built on justice, it adds the newly appreciated and deeper realities of care and concern; above all to the inward concentration of a triumphant individualism, egoism and profit, it recalls the open Christian vision of community, solidarity and love.

It is, then:

- a work of interpretative socio-history,

- a search for the foundational meaning and dignity of the human person,

- a surprisingly positive appreciation of the values of the poor of this world,

- an essential contribution of a thusfar missing dimension in the debate over moral education focused thus far on justice, and

- a concrete restatement of the missing principle of love drawn from the long Christian tradition as key to the life of community today.

It approaches this task in three steps: first, an historical analysis of the cultures; second, a metaphysical and anthropological search into the nature and dignity of the person and their implications for moral theory; and third, an enrichment of the relatively recent developments of approaches to the work of moral education.

In all of this the key contribution of the work may be a new equilibrium which moves beyond mind to heart, beyond matter to spirit, beyond the individual to community, and beyond justice to love. In the process it expresses the rich cultures and traditions of the Spanish Catholic tradition and does so especially from the lived experience and concerns of the Southern hemisphere.

Part I studies the cultural history of the issue. Chapter I of L. Ugalde describes clearly the alternatives which we confront in our day. He reviews the rich cultural resources from the past and describes the gifts they bring: first, a strong classical awareness of transcendence; and second, a rich appreciation of the dignity of persons and communities. He points also to the systematic and technological organization of life and human development in terms of economic productivity and commerce.

In the light of this panorama he points out the challenge proper to our times, namely, (a) not to return to the past, but to humanize our contemporary technical culture; (b) to move from a heteronomous ethics, by way of an ethic of the autonomous person, to a theonomous culture; and (c) to reorder the modern matrix of logos-eros-thanatos to a future model of agape-logos-eros.

This daunting but hopeful challenge is followed by a series of papers which provide further detail on the components from the past, though often without Ugalde's challenge to develop a more adequate vision for the future. Thus, Chapter II of J. Vethencourt traces the move from ethics in terms of the gods to attention to human freedom in Greek philosophy and its interiorization in Christianity. This, however, is seen as having become too other-worldly, and hence as having left open the way for a modern hedonisin in which firm principles are substituted by the aesthetics of life-styles and tastes.

Luis Castro Leyva in Chapter III shifts the focus to the Renaissance and early modern times. He does so in terms of the crucial development in human self-understanding from that of servant of God and monarch to that of responsible citizen. In this he gives special attention to Rousseau's Emile as a key text for education in modern times. It implied a change in epistemology from belief and memory to exploration and discovery, and in ethics from obedience to the management of freedom. J. Sanchez in Chapter IV also contributes a description of the shift to a naturalist ethics and to its tendency to enclose itself in an egoistic ethics of self-fulfillment with little recognition of the transcendence of the human person.

Powerful descriptions of this problematic come in the papers of H. Johnson and J. O'Sullivan. In Chapter V, "The Nature and Role of Education in Peaceful Development," H. Johnson paints a bleak picture of the dehumanizing effect of much education carried out in terms of attempts to objectivize not only the process, but the subject of education. Chapter VI by J. O'Sullivan carries this analysis into a study of the broader community education effort of advertising with its sophisticated use of psychology to focus the human mind on objects of consumption. Menacingly, it does so through manipulation of the symbol system with which a culture lives and breathes as a human entity. Just as the industrial evolution chained the human person to the machine, the advertizing revolution through the media threatens to enslave the human spirit to the objects and terms of commerce.

This helps to understand Ugalde's option not to try to return, but to go forward in ways that would bring past cultural insight regarding dignity and transcendence into present forms of democratic life and to personal and social self-understanding. This is possible because our cultural heritages bear an awareness of the foundations for human life which have been discovered by experience through the ages. These are truly sacred in origin and dignity, but it is for us to unfold and extend the meaning of their content for new times.

Three volumes, especially, in the present series study this issue in more detail: Ethics at the Crossroads: Normative Ethics and Objective Reason (1996), ed. George F. McLean and Ethics at the Crossroads: Personalist Ethics and Human Subjectivity (1996), ed. by George F. McLean. A third volume on their implications for the increasingly technological character of present day life is: The Humanization of Technology and Chinese Culture, ed. by Tomonobu Imamichi, Wang Miaoyang and Liu Fangtong (Washington, D.C.: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1998).

Part II takes up this challenge both at the basic levels of the theoretical understanding of the person and at the practical levels at which life is lived, often in the most challenging circumstances of the poor. In Chapter VII A. Munera leads the way with a brilliant paper on the humanizing resources of the primitive Christian community. He sees these as being reified and objectivized through Greek philosophy in ways detrimental to their life-giving vision. Recent developments which have freed this latent power are the Second Vatican Council and liberation theology. Together, they have shifted the focus to the historical and existential process and to the fundamental realities of human consciousness and of freedom. In this what has been essential is the renewed recognition of the central position of life lived not only as freedom to choose objects, but as service to the community in the image of the cross. In this light, the essence of Christianity emerges not as a belief system regarding divine law, but as mutual concern which transforms the human person from a self-centered competitor to a creative member of his or her community on the local and world levels.

Chapter VIII by J. Ayesteran develops the contribution of liberation theology in shifting the horizon from abstract principles to the historical Jesus as living though time and as savior of all peoples in their concrete circumstances.

The subsequent papers develop this theme in more specific terms. Chapter IX by N. Barros follows the development of the thought of Karol Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II, on the human person. This Chapter also contributes a corrective to some previous chapters by showing the essential contribution of the classical Graeco-Christian philosophy of substance and supposit. It goes further, however, to unfold the contribution of John Paul's phenomenology to an appreciation of the essential role of action in being human and its implications for the notions of participation and hence of solidarity, which certainly has been the most concretely liberative notion of our times.

Chapter X by G. McLean attempts to mediate between those, on the one hand, who would see the cultural vision of values and virtues as a pattern of obedience and memory in tension with the exercise of freedom by the democratic citizen; and those, on the other hand, who would look simply to a naturalist, utilitarian response to one's environment. For McLean, the values of a tradition are learned in the exercise of human freedom through time, of which they represent the cumulative result. This is not a mere physical reaction to material conditions, but a creative aesthetic mode of realizing human dignity as the image of God in time. Practiced through the ages this develops the virtues of a people which they adapt in facing the present and perfect in passing on these capabilities in lifegiving forms to the following generation.

This is made concrete in the marvelous Chapter XI by A. Moreno which reflects his life with the poor of Caracas. He notes the combination of strong expectations of responsibility for one's action, even on the part of one inebriated, and its exercise in terms of service to one's neighbor when infirm, orphaned or in special distress. He finds there neither the patronizing accusation of a premoral state which dehumanizes the poor as incapable of moral life, nor a dismissal of the norms of social relations. This morality of the marginalized must be read not in terms of penance, but of the gift of life which is to be shared. Chapter XII by H. Rodriquez is a more negative reading of the situation of the family in term of a traditional normative and structural analysis. The future may depend on the way the messages of these two papers are combined in order to overcome present truly disastrous social dangers by new applications of the moral resources of the tradition found among the poor and marginalized.

Part III faces this challenge by means of moral education: what can the schools contribute by a new formation of the next generation which will take account of the present situation, but not entrap them therein? It is characteristic and significant that these chapters relate to the work of L. Kohlberg, which they enrich with the sense of love described in Part II and point ahead through the emerging role of moral imagination.

The excellent Chapter XIII of A. Puente turns directly to the work of Kohlberg which she reviews positively, but to which she addresses a number of important question regarding its seeming lack of a place for affectivity and role playing, as well as for the central importance of the social dimension of moral life developed above by A. Munera and N. Barros.

A major contribution of this entire volume is the introduction of the dimension of care and concern. This is initiated in the very sympathetic Chapter XIV of R. Zapata which develops the rich positive contribution of Kohlberg while citing its formalism and the importance of its omission of the dimensions of care, love and habit.

This absence is shown by M. Brabeck in her important Chapter XV to reflect the bias, pointed out by C. Gilligan, toward the "male" virtues of self-autonomy, independence, and rights in contrast to the more "female" virtues of relatedness, duty, care and compassion. These, in turn, point beyond the self to the group.

In sum this means broadening attention beyond, but not away from, justice and rights to the horizon of love, whose deep ontological roots were identified in the chapters of Part II. The superb concluding Chapter XVI by H. Johnson suggests that this is not merely an incremental addition, but calls for a new recognition and engagement of the full personality, of the older generation as well as youth, and of society as well as individuals. This points beyond techniques and technologies of education, beyond the social, psychological and philosophical sciences, to an enriched engagement in human (and divine) life. This calls for a new attention to the moral imagination and promises a restoration of the polis. These, indeed, will be the burdens of two forthcoming volumes in the present series.

Hence, the present volume is an essential development of the series on moral education, which volumes are listed below.* It contributes to the global effort to overcome corruption and reconstitute personal and public morality. It stresses the essential element of love without which concern for justice can become the basis of conflict rather than of peace. In this sense the volume reflects the hopes of John Paul II, namely, for a state in which violence cedes to peaceful transformation, and conflict to pardon and reconciliation; where power is made reasonable by persuasion, and justice finally is implemented through love.

* Philosophical Foundations for Moral Education and Character Development: Act and Agent, G. McLean and F. Ellrod, eds.;

Psychological Foundations for Moral Education and Character Development: An Integrated Theory of Moral Development, R. Knowles, ed.;

Character Development in Schools and Beyond, Kevin Ryan and Thomas Lickona, eds.;

Research on Culture and Values: Intersection of Universities, Churches and Nations, George F. McLean, ed.;

Values in Philippine Culture and Education: Philippine Philosophical Studies, I, Manuel B. Dy, Jr., ed.

All volumes are published in Washington by The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (details at the back of this volume).