Steppingstones Toward an Ethics for Fellow Existers

Essays 1944–1983

In releasing the text of this volume, originally set aside as a collec­ tion for possible posthumous publication, during my lifetime, I am acting in a sense as my own executor: I want to save my heirs and literary executors the decision whether these pieces should be print­ ed or reprinted in the present context, a decision which I wanted to postpone to the last possible moment. As to the reasons why I changed my mind I can refer to the Introduction. Here I merely want to make some acknowledgments, first to the copyright holders for the reprinted pieces and then to some personal friends who had an important influence on the premature birth of this brainchild. The copyright holders to whom I am indebted for·the permis­ sion to reprint here, in the original or in slightly amended form, the articles listed are, with their names in alphabetical order: Ablex Publishing Company: 'Putting Ourselves into the Place of Others' Atherton Press: 'Equality in Existentialism' and 'Human Dignity: A Challenge to Contemporary Philosophy' Friends Journal: 'Is There a Human Right to One's Native Soil?' Gordon Breach: 'Human Dignity: A Challenge to Contemporary Philosophy?' Humanities Press: 'Ethics for Fellows in the Fate of Existence' Journal of the History of Ideas: 'Accident of Birth: A Non-utili­ tarian Motif in Mill's Philosophy' Philosophical Review: 'A Defense of Human Equality' Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry: 'On the I-am­ me Experience in Childhood and Adolescence' The Monist: 'A Phenomenological Approach to the Ego'