Nine Modern Moralists

Eminent Princeton Philosopher Paul Ramsey looks at the lives and ideas of nine famous Moralists of the modern age.

The featured philosophers are — Paul Tillich, Karl Marx, H. Richard Niebuhr, Fyodor Dostoevski, Reinhold Niebuhr, Jacques Maritain, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emil Brunner and Edmond Cahn.

“The greatness of the men whose insight and reflections are the subject of the following chapters is obviously a sufficient justification for this volume. The reader who simply wants to learn what was felt and thought and believed by some of the outstanding minds of the immediate past and of the present can, it is hoped, do so by reading the chapters of this book as expository essays. Here he will find their thought anatomized; and, in relatively brief compass, it may be possible for him to become seriously engaged in thinking their thoughts after them. Certainly, no one can come to an understanding of the latest and best of contemporary ideas and ideals by going around these men; only by going through them can one gain a deeper understanding of himself and of our epoch.