Amazon.com Review
Convinced that "every aspect of everyday life is ethically charged" and that academic ethics are too often "remote from life as lived," several of the country's leading conservative Christian ethical scholars launched a five-volume series of books to address "The Ethics of Everyday Life." Volume two, The Eternal Pity: Reflections on Dying, is edited by Richard John Neuhaus (editor of First Things and author, most recently, of Death on a Friday Afternoon). The book is an eclectic selection of readings regarding all manner of approaches to death and experiences of grief. It contains 26 readings from literature, poetry, and philosophy. Authors range from Montaigne to Tolstoy to Flannery O'Connor, and the book includes religious texts spanning a range marked by the Quran and the Book of Common Prayer. Neuhaus himself has provided a wide-ranging introduction to the anthology as well as a personal story about the enlivening effects of his own close brush with death. The Eternal Pity is organized in three sections, "Thinking About Dying," "When We Die," and "When Others Die," but this book should probably not be read systematically. Just mine the text for something that calls out to you--the message that grief can only be assuaged by pleasure ("The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam"), or a simple expression of resignation to death's arrival ("Do Not Go Gentle"). --Michael Joseph Gross
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
From Library Journal
Most contemporary books on ethics deal with professional ethics or particularly thorny issues. The series of which this title is a part, "The Ethics of Everyday Life," will consider life issues most people face; this volume concerns death and dying. After a fairly lengthy introduction, in which Neuhaus (Inst. on Religion and Public Life; The Naked Public Square) movingly reflects on his own bout with cancer, the book offers 27 selections from various sources, ranging in date from ancient to modern times, each with a brief introduction. Some are religious, many are not; some are autobiographical reflections, others are poetry or fiction. On the whole they are well chosen. The book does not push one viewpoint but offers these selections for consideration. The result is a handbook for the dying--that is, every one of us. Recommended for public libraries.
-Augustine J. Curley, O.S.B., Newark Abbey, NJ
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
-Augustine J. Curley, O.S.B., Newark Abbey, NJ
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
