A world without why / Raymond Geuss.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 237-256) and index.

Goals, origins, disciplines -- Vix intellegitur -- Marxism and the ethos of the twentieth century -- Must criticism be constructive? -- The loss of meaning on the left -- Authority: some fables -- A note on lying -- Politics and architecture -- The future of theological ethics -- Did Williams do ethics? -- The wisdom of Oedipus and the idea of a moral cosmos -- Who was the first philosopher? -- A world without why.

Many influential ethical views depend on the optimistic assumption that the human and natural world could be made to make sense to humanity. Geuss's essays challenge this assumption, exploring the genesis and historical development of this optimistic configuration in ethical thought and describing the ways in which it has shown itself to be unfounded and misguided. Discussions of Greco-Roman antiquity and of the philosophies of Socrates, Plato, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Adorno play a central role in many of these essays. Geuss also ranges over such topics as: the concepts of intelligibility, authority, democracy, and criticism; the role of lying in politics; architecture; the place of theology in ethics; tragedy and comedy; and the struggle between realism and our search for meaning. A World without Why raises fundamental questions about the viability not just of specific ethical concepts and theses, but of our most basic assumptions about what ethics could and must be. -- Adapted from dust jacket flaps.