Introduction: Transformative Encounters With Integrative Ethics. Papers from a 1997 A.I.S. session

Values are like the air we breath: they can go unrecognized even though they are critical to our lives. We do become aware of received values, however, when they fail to provide wise guidance. Those are the times that ethical crises can arise, bringing on the emotional, personal, and spiritual impact of transformative experience. Indeed, a change in outlook or viewpoint is normally expressed as a change in or reinterpretation of given values. That is the case whether values are understood as a set of structured ethical norms (follows that one should not do) or as an aesthetic response (I like), or anything on the continuum between these two extremes.