The third volume in a trilogy by George Allan, The Patterns of the Present argues that organisms, persons, and cultures are all meaningful systems, and that the ontological conditions necessary for their sustained systemic unity provide a normative standard--ideals of virtue and responsibility--by which individuals can judge how best to live their lives and seek a common good. Allan, whose views are influenced by his distinctive interpretations of Plato, Kant, Whitehead, and Pragmatism, argues that values can be justified as objective conditions for belief and action without making an appeal to something beyond time and history.