(FORTUNE Magazine) – Having thought deeply about the issue for, oh, four seconds, we have no trouble sensing the broad appeal of socially responsible investing. Spiritual redemption and capital appreciation -- friends, that is a strong ticket. What we still cannot figure out is how Jesse Jackson's version of social responsibility gets to be the operative one every time the publishers unleash an epic like Ethical Investing, now available in paperback from Addison- Wesley, whose publicity department is naturally eager to remind you that an earlier trade edition had been primly posited by the Business Week reviewer to offer ''a better spiritual return without a financial loss.'' To be sure, authors Amy L. Domini and Peter D. Kinder do not mention Jesse and for good measure omit to cite Bella Abzug or George McGovern. And yet Ethical Investing is heavily tilted toward left-liberal versions of ethicality. The authors' examples repeatedly assume, for example, that it is unethical for U.S. corporations to be doing business in South Africa, but never get around to Chevron's operations in Marxist Angola. (Chevron gets its lumps only indirectly, in passages implying that oil company shareholders have less chance of going to heaven than do equity investors in ''alternative energy.'') It is evidently unethical for corporations to have employment programs failing to give preference to minorities. There also seems to be some kind of ethical problem about being in the defense business. The authors' views about what kind of business is kosher are generally assumed rather than argued systematically, so you never do find out what they would say to an idealist who wished to invest in a company giving jobs to the blacks who live in Soweto or helping to build the Stinger surface-to-air missile that Reagan reportedly wants to send the anti-Communist insurgents in Angola and Afghanistan. Down through the centuries, some powerful thinkers have disagreed about what's right, but only rarely does Ethical Investing leave you thinking ethical issues might be complex. Rare exception, in a passage about McDonald's: ''While its menu may be objectionable on nutritional grounds, it is hard to fault a company that pledges part-time summer employment to about 30,000 youths in its company-owned stores.'' Whether Immanuel Kant would have paid over $95 a share the authors do not say.