Design for Living: Regard, Concern, Service, and Love

Written in 1954 but unpublished in his lifetime, Robert Friedmann’s Design for Living asks that pertinent existential question: how should we live? Drawing on literary, philosophical, and theological sources, Friedmann’s answer begins with a critique of utilitarian ethics and popular apathy, and proceeds through an existential preparation that ascends in confessional style to the question of the meaning of human life, culminating in a fourfold set of principles: regard, concern, service, and love. Along the way, Friedmann’s critical eye remains clearly fixed on his object of study--lived experience, and not abstract principles detached from day-to-day life--and he intentionally guides his reader step by step up the mountain of spiritual and ethical inquiry in a deliberate and serious attempt to educate the heart, mind, and soul. At once accessible and scholarly, while troubling our contemporary divide between religion and the secular, Design for Living presents a rare vision of human meaning and purpose that will appeal to scholarly and public readers alike.

Robert Friedmann (1891-1970) was a Mennonite historian known for his work in Mennonite Piety Through the Centuries (1949), Hutterite Studies (1961), and The Theology of Anabaptism (1973). He taught at Goshen College and Western Michigan University.



Maxwell Kennel is a doctoral student in religious studies at McMaster University.