Ethics after Babel

Jeffrey Stout examines the many vocabularies people use to talk about right and wrong, and why those vocabularies so often clash. He traces the connections among today's moral philosophy, the ethics of religious traditions, and political thought, writing in a plain, persuasive style that avoids technical jargon. The book has won awards and has been well received in the fields it addresses.

This paperback edition adds a new postscript in which the author replies to two of the book's most prominent critics, the theologian Stanley Hauerwas and the philosopher Alan Donagan, who has since died. In it, Stout clarifies several of his central arguments and responds to their objections.

The postscript also offers new grounds for refusing to give up on democratic debate, even when the parties involved seem to share no common moral language.