Abstract

This book consists of three parts: a general theory of descriptive ethics, a general theory of ethical discourse, and an application of II to the ethical discourse of the Navaho Indians, based on the writer's own field studies. The work is careful, clear, thorough, and detailed, and the inclusion of field notes is helpful in understanding and evaluating Ladd's reconstructions. There are questions of detail where one might cavil, but the book is an important contribution to the relatively unexplored area where philosophy and the social sciences overlap. --A. R. A.