This text on communicative ethics, first published in Denmark in 1985, represents an alternative to teleological and deontological ethics and brings Danish philosophers (such as Kierkegaard, Logstrup, Gadamer and Habermas) into the Anglo-American debate. A picture of interpersonal communication emerges via an analysis of conflicts in Doris Lessing's The Grass is Singing, and the author identifies a situation based on mutual interdependence and power relations that must be managed by exercising solidarity.

This book provides a new system of communicative ethics which present an alternative to teleological and deontological ethics. It brings philosophers such as Kierkegaard, Logstrup, Gadamer and Habermas into the Anglo-American debate.