The Sovereignty of Good (Routledge Great Minds)

Man is not a combination of an impersonal rational thinker and a personal will.

The idea of a patient, loving regard, directed upon a person, a thing, a situation, presents the will not as unimpeded movement but as something very much more like ‘obedience’.

the central concept of morality is ‘the individual’ thought of as knowable by love,

is significant that the idea of goodness (and of virtue) has been largely superseded in Western moral philosophy by the idea of rightness, supported perhaps by some conception of sincerity. This is to some extent a natural outcome of the disappearance of a permanent background to human activity: a permanent background, whether provided by God, by R

But if we consider what the work of attention is like, how continuously it goes on, and how imperceptibly it builds up structures of value round about us, we shall not be surprised that at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over. This does not imply

Mental life is, and logically must be, a shadow of life in public.

Nothing counts as an act unless it is a ‘bringing about of a recognizable change in the world’.

that we are not free, certainly not. But it implies that the exercise of our freedom is a small piecemeal business which goes on all the time and not a grandiose leaping about unimpeded at important moments.

standard: the difficulties of understanding and imitating remain.