Morality and Imagination: Paradoxes of Progress

by Yi-Fu Tuan

The title Morality and Imagination needs classification, as moral philosophy, history of ideas, literary criticism, or even current affairs. Yes, the book has a bearing on all these fields. it draws ideas and examples from them, but it is in fact written by a geographer, which may seem strange until we remember what the discipline, in the broadest sense, is about how human beings have created homes or worlds out of nature, Geography arrives to describe and explain the visible material changes. Geography is also a humane study committed to interpret the meaning of human attachments and aspirations. I shall attempt in this book to explore the relationship between morality and imagination. Morality calls to mind set rules of behavior. Imagination has an appealing ring because it challenges such rules. This relationship is not completely opositional. One becomes more moral, society becomes more moral, with the help of imagination disciplined by the respect for the real.

209 pages, Hardcover

First published April 15, 1989

About the author

Fu Tuan (Traditional Chinese: 段義孚, born 5 December 1930) is a Chinese-U.S. geographer.
Tuan was born in 1930 in Tientsin, China. He was the son of a rich oligarch and was part of the top class in the Republic of China. Tuan attended University College, London, but graduated from the University of Oxford with a B.A. and M.A. in 1951 and 1955 respectively. From there he went to California to continue his geographic education. He received his Ph.D. in 1957 from the University of California, Berkeley.

Reviews

[Sandra]

Morality and Imaginaton is the 5th book of Tuan's I have read and I am weakened as usual by the gentle goodness as much as by the powerful intellect of this aging scholar. He offers us a continuum from what in today's world we can read as right vs. left, summarizing that good is ineffable, a powerful lure, a safe-guard against intolerance and moral stasis. Progress (toward good), he tells us, is endlessly possible.