ABSTRACT
This chapter develops an understanding of an ethical core common to the wisdom traditions of the world’s major religions as well as non-theistic humanist philosophy. Marcuse and Marx asserted a radically materialist conception of the essence of socially active human beings: seen from the outside, we are the ensemble of our social relations; seen from the inside, we are sensuous living labor. Labor here is not to be reduced to any form of class circumstance. Sensuous living labor is the substrate of our being as humans. It is the foundation of our affective and intellectual capacities (and vulnerabilities), bio-ecologically developed within history. As a species we have endured because of our sensuous appreciation of our emergent powers: the power to subsist cooperatively, to create, communicate, and care communally within what Marx called a Gemeinwesen and that I call a commonwealth.
