What is Good?: The Search for the Best Way to Live

Many important and difficult questions arise in the course of a human life, but few can compare with the most general question any individual can ask - how shall I live a good life? In his major new work Anthony Grayling examines the chief answers to this question, as proposed from classical antiquity to the present. He focuses on the two very different conceptions of what a good life should be: one is a broadly secular view rooted in attitudes about human nature and the human condition; the other is a broadly transcendental view which locates the source of moral value outside the human realm. In the modern world - the world shaped by the rise of science in the seventeenth century - these two views have come increasingly into conflict, and the constantly accumulating tension between them is one of the greatest problems faced by the twenty-first century. Anthony Grayling tackles this contemporary dilemma, placing it in its historical context and ultimately asserting a humanist ethics against the revival of transcendentalist views. What is Good? is a work of rare insight and clarity.