Personal Commitments

Description

Revised edition of a groundbreaking text—a moral analysis of making and maintaining personal commitments.

Personal Commitments explores how human commitments, rooted in the story of God’s love, are acts of free choice and love. Margaret Farley reflects on the concrete experiences of people who strive to be faithful to what they have claimed to love: “My concern is to name something that I think is, after all, common to all of our lives—an experience, a reality, perhaps a problem, a challenge, something that is sometimes a source of joy, sometimes a cause of tragedy.”

Farley explores the nature and meaning of commitment as it is played out in our lives, addressing love, fidelity, a sense of obligation, and covenant. She also reflects on whether each and every commitment must be kept, and what options are available in changing commitments.

Praise for the first edition

“A brilliant study, in the literal sense that it brings needed light and clarity to a great deal of our everyday experience of sorting out, changing, reaffirming, attempting to prioritize, and wrestling with the constantly varying demands of our many freely chosen commitments.”—Anne E. Patrick

Margaret A. Farley, a Sister of Mercy, is professor emerita of ethics at Yale University and a past-president of the Catholic Theological Society of America. She is the author of several books, including Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics (Continuum, 2008).