The Virtues of the Family

     ...politicized debate. The family's detractors have viewed it as an arbitrary social arrangement which perpetuates injustice and legitimates violations of individual rights. Those who defend it, on the other hand, insist that it is the only possible source of human values and suggest that those outside it are somehow deficient or deviant. In this strident and polarized atmosphere, philosopher Jacob Joshua Ross offers a long-overdue assessment of the family's relation to morality, arguing that the family is not a rigid, static institution with inflexible codes of behavior, but rather a dynamic social structure from which human morality - and human nature - emerge. Ross first explores the foundations of ethical belief, maintaining that the traditional family is intimately linked to the evolution of human morality in societies throughout the world. While he accepts the relativity of moral codes, Ross defends 'true' or rational morality as the minimal and universal code on which all families depend - a code which