To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility / One of the most respected religious thinkers of our time makes an impassioned plea for the return of religion to its true purpose—as a partnership with God in the work of ethical and moral living.
What are our duties to others, to society, and to humanity? How do we live a meaningful life in an age of global uncertainty and instability? In To Heal a Fractured World, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks offers answers to these questions by looking at the ethics of responsibility. In his signature plainspoken, accessible style, Rabbi Sacks shares with us traditional interpretations of the Bible, Jewish law, and theology, as well as the works of philosophers and ethicists from other cultures, to examine what constitutes morality and moral behavior. “We are here to make a difference,” he writes, “a day at a time, an act at a time, for as long as it takes to make the world a place of justice and compassion.” He argues that in today’s religious and political climate, it is more important than ever to return to the essential understanding that “it is by our deeds that we express our faith and make it real in the lives of others and the world.”
To Heal a Fractured World—inspirational and instructive, timely and timeless—will resonate with people of all faiths.
One of Judaism's most distinctive and challenging ideas is its ethics of responsibility. We have been given the gift of freedom and we in turn have to honour and enhance the freedom of others. However, more than in any previous generation, we have come to see the individual as the sole source of meaning. In To Heal a Fractured World Jonathan Sacks argues that this is a mistake for ethics are concerned with the life we live together and the goods we share only exist by virtue of being shared. Sacks's argument demonstrates a profound engagement with the human condition today. Drawing from a vast and diverse intellectual tradition Sacks speaks with as much authority about the Hebrew Bible as he does about Maimonides, Sigmund Freud, or Hannah Arendt.
