What Is Ethics For?

This is what Adela Cortina reminds us in this book. Indeed, the present day provides us with all too many examples of the consequences of a lack of ethics in the behavior of many people charged with political and social responsibility. And it’s important to remember that ethics “serves,” among other things, to lower the financial and emotional costs of our own actions, of the things that are in our hands and depend on us. And also to help us learn, among much else, that it is more prudent to cooperate than to look for the maximum individual benefit irrespective of anything else.

No society can function if its members do not maintain an ethical attitude. Nor can any country emerge from crisis if the unethical behaviors of its citizens and leaders go unpunished. This book reminds us that now, more than ever, we need ethics.