Abstract
The brief which I was given for this chapter included the words: ‘a moral and spiritual platform’. The word ‘platform’ conjures up in my mind an oil rig, or to be more specific, a mobile, floating platform, operating in a gale in the middle of the North Sea. It is operational, pumping oil, receiving helicopters, and providing a floating home; it is reasonably stable, but the sea is turbulent, and it could drift, or even capsize. At least life feels like that at the moment for most of us, and we are reliably told that we are going to have to live with that sort of turbulence for the foreseeable future. A turbulent world and the uncertainties that come with it are the context of the deliberations of this book. Such turbulence is probably not the best context in which to look for the enhancement of the moral qualities of civic responsibility and generosity. To change the metaphor slightly: such a turbulent context would move us rather towards ‘battening down the hatches’ and riding the storm out, as best we can, everyone for themselves. And I do wonder whether in fact such an attitude underlies much of the individualism which now pervades our society.
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Notes and References
Report of the Commission on Social Justice, Social Justice: Strategies for National Renewal, Vintage 1994, p.295.
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 1807.
J. Boswell, Community and the Economy, The Theory of Public Cooperation, Routledge, 1990, p.32.
John Gray, The Moral Foundations of Market Institutions, IEA Health and Welfare Unit, 1992, p.35.
Dorothee Sölle, Christ The Representative, English Translation, SCM, 1967.
Samuel Beckett, Waiting For Godot, 1952.
J. MacDonald, A Historical and International Perspective: Occasional Paper 64 of the Royal College of Practitioners, Community Participation in Primary Care 1994.
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© 1997 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Hoare, R. (1997). A Platform — Moral and Spiritual Values. In: Askonas, P., Frowen, S.F. (eds) Welfare and Values. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25547-4_5
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