Albert William Levi

The High Road of Humanity is a cultural ethics. It is an exposition of the moral positions of the West, intended to accompany the intellectual positions of Western philosophy and society formulated in Levi's earlier Philosophy as Social Expression. In opposition to the nearly complete abstraction from actual moral life that is the common stance of the works in ethics in our time from positivism to applied ethics, Levi's aim is to take the process of moral thought back one step further from moral inquiry to its basis in the moral imagination. For Levi the moral life and moral discourse requires first of all an ideal that is shaped in the imagination, an image of the human. The seven ethical ages he discusses are the Greek aristocrat, Stoic sage, Christian saint, Renaissance prince, Enlightenment gentleman, the nineteenth-century merchant prince, and the professional man and women of today. He gathered the details of each historical figure or moral ideal and selected sculpture, paintings, and portraits to illustrate them. Levi's approach to moral philosophy is based on his lifelong study in the philosophy of culture. The foreword is by Donald Phillip Verene.

The Seven Ethical Ages of Western Man. Ed. by Donald Phillip Verene and Molly Black Verene

The High Road of Humanity

Ralph Alexander Smith

Ralph Smith

Recommending that art be taught as a humanity, this volume provides a philosophical rationale for the idea of discipline-based art education. Levi and Smith discuss topics ranging over both the public and private aspects of art, the disciplines of artistic creation, art history, art criticism, and aesthetics, and curriculum proposals featuring five phases of aesthetic learning. While there is no consensus on how the various components of aesthetic learning should be presented in order to accomplish the goals of discipline-based art education, the authors point out that progress toward those goals will require that those who design art education programs bring an understanding of the four disciplines to their work. The introductory volume of a five-volume series, this book will appeal to elementary and secondary art teachers, those who prepare teachers at the college level, and museum educators.

Albert William Levi

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