An Ethical Inquiry

pp. 576 A treatise on general moral philosophy involves necessarily a double limitation. On the one hand, it only considers the general outlines of moral reality without describing its content; it limits itself to provide the principles which will later permit that description. On the other hand, as philosophy it does not ground itself directly upon the affirmations of faith, even if in fact faith often directed reason along the path of its certitudes. Limited as it is, the rational exploration of moral reality nonetheless constitutes a major task in the project that would restore to today's man his full human dimension.

Joseph De Finance was born in at La Canourgue (Lozère) on January 30, 1902. In 1921 he entered the Society of jesus and was ordained priest ten years later. Docteuer-ès-Lettres (1943), he taught philosophy from 1938 on, first at the Maison d'études philosophiques at Vals near Le Puy and, from 1995 until 1980, at the Gregorian University in Rome.