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44 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ethics, Short and Clear, August 3, 2001
Philosophy is important. "What is our place in the universe?" is not just a scientific question. What is the meaning of life, how can we be happy, do gods make a difference? All are good philosophical questions, not really to be left just to professional philosophers. It has taken centuries, but philosophers led us into the idea that humans have certain rights, something we take for granted now although we are not always good at ensuring every human gets the rights that are due. We can allow that human well-being is pretty much the gold standard in assessing values, and perhaps we take into account animal well-being, as well as the well-being of the Earth as a biological system. We think we can behave morally, but we have doubts that this can occur without gods of some sort. Gods or not, we sense that there is some larger meaning, and that selfishness just won't do, but selfishness seems to run a great deal of the world. It wouldn't be a bad thing if we could think about these ethical, philosophical issues with more clarity. And so professional philosopher Simon Blackburn has given us _Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics_ (Oxford University Press). He has distilled thousands of years of thinking on ethical issues by various philosophers into a slim book. It may not be a Guide for Living covering every situation, but it is an admirable introduction about how philosophers think about such matters, and where we ought to look for ethical answers. His book is witty and pithy, and demonstrates that thinking about big ideas can be fun. But we are largely on our own in this endeavor. Socrates, in Plato's _Euthyphro_, provided the classic challenge to the idea that ethics must have a religious foundation. Whatever gods there are that choose right and wrong for us cannot do so arbitrarily; they have to select such things correctly. Most gods have a system that demonstrates that we should act correctly because of fear of punishment if we don't, or desire for reward if we do. This distorts behavior into "a religious cost-benefit analysis." Kant said true virtue was living up to a rule out of respect for that rule, not on post-mortem consequences. It is up to us to make judgements on what rules are worth living up to. Blackburn takes us through the pitfalls of relativism, that there is no one truth but only the different truths of different communities and times. He discusses our current obsession with rights, and even includes as an appendix the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human rights. Death, birth, desire, and pleasure all have chapters in his work, all fitting essays within the larger whole. Hume (whom Blackburn seems mostly to follow) said that rational, scientific proof of the virtue of an action is not possible. Blackburn does not despair over what others have seen as this unsafe or uncomforting doctrine. We share some values, and we can judge actions as reasonable or not by referring to those shared values. Blackburn (again with Hume) argues that the ultimate standard for judging an action is its capacity to promote happiness. He unites this with the modern philosophical ideas of contracts between humans and the state, both caring about such things as liberty and safety, in a dialogue to find common points of view. Blackburn's view is optimistic. We have made progress with sensitivity to the environment, to sexual differences, and to toleration of cultural differences. "If we are careful, and mature, and imaginative, and fair, and nice, and lucky, the moral mirror in which we gaze at ourselves may not show us saints. But it need not show us monsters, either."
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18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good enough, December 2, 2002
"Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics" is just that, a slim volume about the philosophy of ethics and how philosophers think about this subject. It is an introduction for people who are brave (or fooligh) enough to dare to ask "Why be good?". Far to few people it seems have bothered to ask this question or assumed there is a patent answer without ever taking that answer out into the daylight to examine it. Thinking ethically isn't done in a vacuum, it is of a process. When faced with an ethical problem, how do you seek a solution? Do you try to maximize the good for the most people? Do you try to identify universal laws and then try to follow them? Do you seek the advice of authority figures or authoritative books? The text is split into three distance parts, the first addresses what Mr. Blackburn refers to "threats to ethics." These threats include relativism, skepticism, nihilism, challenges to free will, and altruism. Threats are largely those things which suggest that there is no real reason to be good at all; it's just something we as a people do. With each topic, he explains why they do not make ethics "impossible" after all. Mr. Blackburn explains how religion's declining influence does not harm ethical thinking, in fact he views this in a positive light in that without religion frees us to make independent choices, rather than to simply be automatons. Relativism is a more serious challenge, but when taken to its logical conclusion relativism refutes itself and removes the arguer from the conversation altogether. The second section discusses particular attitudes about ethical issues including birth, death, desire and the meaning of life, pleasure, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, freedom from the bad, freedom and paternalism, and rights and natural rights. This second section is the weakest and seems to be ill connected to the other two. This weakness is there despite the fact that the author is talking about such hot topics as abortion and euthanasia. The third section looks at the larger question of whether the idea of ethics rests on anything at all. This I believe is the topic that unsettles most people. The thinking goes that without a basis there is no reason for ethics. Mr. Blackburn shows this to not be the case. Mr. Blackburn believes people should actively engage in ethical dialogue in an effort to arrive at a common point of view for making ethical decisions. This of course means that there is no guarantee that such conversation will be successful, but at least there is a chance, and without such a dialogue, there is no chance at all. The book is demanding of its reader. It demands that one actually look at one's ethical system and see it for what it is.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gets Right to the Point, February 3, 2006
This review is from: Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics (Paperback)
Blackburn promises a short intro to ethics, and he delivers. This is perfect for someone who wants to get right to what different ethical concepts are without reading a book on each. Perfect for the person who wants to "see it all" in one slim book, then has the opportunity to investigate it more fully to his/her heart's content. Illustrations, particularly the one of the "Accidental Napalm Attack" in Vietnam, hit home with me, as I have small children.
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