How we came to seek absolute good in religion and nature-and why that quest often leads us astray

People have long looked to nature and the divine as paths to the good. In this panoramic meditation on the harmonious life, Michael Mayerfeld Bell traces how these two paths came to be seen as separate from human ways, and how many of today's conflicts can be traced back thousands of years to this ancient divide.

Taking readers on a spellbinding journey through history and across the globe, Bell begins with the pagan view, which sees nature and the divine as entangled with the human-and not necessarily good. But the emergence of urban societies gave rise to new moral concerns about the political character of human life. Wealth and inequality grew, and urban people sought to justify their passions. In the face of such concerns, nature and the divine came to be partitioned from the human, and therefore seen to be good-but they also became absolute and divisive.

Bell charts the unfolding of this new moral imagination in the rise of Buddhism, Christianity, Daoism, Hinduism, Jainism, and many other traditions that emerged with bourgeois life. He follows developments in moral thought, from the religions of the ancient Sumerians, Greeks, and Hebrews to the science and environmentalism of today, along the way visiting with contemporary indigenous people in South Africa, Costa Rica, and the United States. City of the Good urges us to embrace the plurality of our traditions-from the pagan to the bourgeois-and to guard against absolutism and remain open to difference and its endless creativity.

About the Author
Michael Mayerfeld Bell is Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is also a faculty associate in religious studies, environmental studies, and agroecology. His many books include the award-winning Childerley: Nature and Morality in a Country Village and, Farming for Us All: Practical Agriculture and the Cultivation of Sustainability.

Reviews
"[City of the Good] proffers much information, insight, and wisdom." * Choice *
"There is much to like about [City of the Good]. It is written for a broad audience and takes on big questions, something more social scientists should attempt. The personal anecdotes create a certain intimacy and lightheartedness, while the historical disquisitions convey real urgency and seriousness. Bell did not spend all this time reading about the world's religious traditions just for fun. He was searching for answers to questions that matter to him, and to all of us."---Philip S. Gorski, Contemporary Sociology



Book Information
ISBN 9780691202914
Author Michael Mayerfield Bell
Format Paperback
Page Count 360
Imprint Princeton University Press
Publisher Princeton University Press