Morality -Substantial, Universal, Relational

From the book Tending the Heart of Virtue* by Vigen Guroian. 

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Thus, I am contending that what seems so self-evident to many of our contemporaries about the centrality of values to moral living might not be true, consistent with human nature, or take into account adequately the larger share of human reality over which we each personally have little or no choice or control. Rather, the best sources in the Western tradition have argued that morality is much more than, indeed qualitatively different from, the sum of the values than an essentially autonomous self chooses for itself. Classical, Jewish, and Christian sources, such as Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, or Augustine, John Chrysostom, Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas, and John Calvin, insist that morality is neither plural nor subjective. Instead, they maintain that human morality is substantial, universal, and relational in character, founded and rooted in a permanent Good, in a higher moral law, or in the being of God. From this standpoint, values and decisions whose claims of legitimacy extend no further than individual volition are as effervescent as the foam that floats on top of waves. They cannot be reliable guides to moral living. (p. 31-32)