This paper presents ideas of a new and as-yet-unpublished work defending new foundations for ethics rooted in a classical conception of philosophy as the search for wisdom. The goals of ancient wisdom were to understand what is worth believing about the nature of things (objective reality), and to understand what is worth striving for in the nature of things (objective value or worth). For many of the great ancient thinkers, such as Plato and Aristotle, these two goals converged. To understand what was true about the natural world and humans would also tell us what was good and valuable in the nature of things. Thus, theoretical and practical inquiry, fact and value, scientific explanation and purpose, merged in an overall quest for wisdom. The modern age, by contrast, is characterized by what Hegel called “sunderings” (Entzweiungen) of these and many other contrasts. There has been a tendency in the modern era to pry apart considerations of fact from value, theoretical inquiry from practical inquiry (about the good) and scientific explanation from purpose, with the consequence that the unified quest for wisdom of the ancient philosophers was threatened as well. The role of modern science in the creation of these sunderings is well known. But two other contributiing factors are the starting point for this paper: (1) a greater recognition of pluralism of conflicting cultures, forms of life and points of view about values, together with (2) an uncertainty about how to show definitively which of the competing views is the correct one. The diversity of cultures and ways of life suggest that views about good and evil, right and wrong, are formed from particular perspectives, limited by culture and history. The question then naturally arises of how, if at all, we can climb out of our historically and culturally limited points of view to find an objective standpoint above all competing points of view from which to judge what is universally right or wrong? The paper suggests an answer to this question: Ethical principles about right action and the good life can be seen to emerge from the philosophical quest for wisdom itself, as the ancient philosophers believed, but not exactly in the way they believed. The search for wisdom about what is objectively true and good involves a persistent striving to overcome narrowness of vision that comes from the inevitable limitations of finite perspectives or points of view. When applied to questions of value and the good life, this striving to overcome narrowness of vision, understood as a search for wisdom, has important implications for ethics, politics, values and our understanding of human rights.