Customer Reviews

Ethics: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Shure, if you're already familiar with ethics you might find it's rather a glancy look into The Morale. But mind you: it's an introduction - meaning it's set up for people who are interested in ethics, but have no prior knowledge about this topic. To these people it gives them a fair look at ethics. If they're really interested Gensler gives them plenty references to go out and buy the sources.
I do agree though that it's kind of annoying that Gensler does not refrain from pushing the reader in a certain kind of ethical direction. Overall, I give it 4 stars out of 5.

This book is an easy-to-understand introduction to ethical reasoning. I say "ethical reasoning" rather than "ethical philosophy" because the author doesn't survey the great ethical philosophers or go book-by-book through the ethics canon. Instead, he outlines competing approaches to ethics (such as intuitionism and emotivism), and subjects them to critical analysis. He ends up defending a Kantian "Golden Rule" approach that enables us to reason consistently about ethical problems, even though it offers no conclusions about the ultimate source of ethics.

Although the book handles no issue in depth, it does zero in on most of the main issues in contemporary analytic ethics. It provides the reader with the basic tools for thinking rationally about ethical dilemmas. For beginners, that's more helpful than the exegesis of Great Books.

Gensler, prof . of philo. at John Carrol U., has written here a book that is both very clear, formal and yet appealing as each chapter begins with the thoughts of the same fictional character and then deals with them. Gensler refers also to some online exercises he has put on his site. What may be a limitation with the book is that it is mostly limited to the question "how do we know what to do?" (which is extensively covered by a survey all the theories). This is how I understand why Gensler rejected supernaturalism (divine command). If he had dealt with the reality of right and wrong, then he would probably have admitted that without a purposeful mind beyond the cosmos there would be no right/wrong, that it would not matter if all humans would disappear in awful sufferings, or whatever. In his synthesis (final) chapter, Gensler seems to advocate the golden rule, but the reader may be given the impression he advocates a kind of situation ethics , because of another issue that was again not really dealt with (conflict between duties, etc.).

For a more systematic (but dryer and more difficult) work, I would recommend Norman Geisler's Introduction to philosophy or his Ethics. Anyway I found Gensler's book excellent. A more fun and less formal intro. is Steve Wilkens' Beyond Bumper Sticker Ethics.

I had to use this book for an ethics course, and it made me want to cry, puke and rage (sometimes all at the same time).

The good thing with this book is:
1) it is short.

Now for the bad..
1) It fails to adhere to the minimal standards that one would expect in even an internet blog. It invokes "Nazi" and "Hitler" on 21 pages, (which is really impressive considering it is only 190 pages). Godwin would shake his head in disgust reading this book.
2) The writing, is what one would expect from a 13 year old internet blogger. Each section contains a speach from a character called Ima that makes silly anecdotes about the view they represent. Here's a quote to show how ridiculous it is "My name is Ima Utilitarian; but since my boyfriend also has the same first name, I usually go by the name 'Util.'" At the start of the book,it will make you roll your eyes... by the middle of the book it will make you want to puke ... by the end of the book you will rage whenever you see a new Ima appear (Did I mention it was a short book?).
3) The book reads like a bad salespitch. SPOILER: It is. The book is set up to promote Gensler's Golden-Rule Theory. He superficialy covers metaethical views, objects to them and then brings out his Golden Rule Theory, to which he adds on an interview style Q and A section, in which, he pitches himself questions and objections to his Golden Rule Theory, and tries to knock them out of the park.
4) "I once wrote a short article on the virtue of forgiveness". After selling you his views, Gensler feels the need to sell his accomplishments
5) The book ends with the Synthesis Chapter, in which Gensler sells his views on abortion. It trivializes the debate, as no genuine attempt is made to provide any balance (which is to be expected as Gensler is a champion of consistency).

Gensler's book is not an introduction to contemporary ethics (unlike the Metaphysics volume of this series, which is an introduction to contemporary metaphysics), but a contemporary introduction to ethics. Gensler treats six different metaethical views (cultural relativism, subjectivism, supernaturalism, intuitionism, emotivism, prescriptivism), and then goes on to propound his own (based on the Golden Rule). He treats consequentialism and deontologism as ways of realizing the Golden Rule. His final chapter examines abortion using the perspectives he detailed earlier in the book.

The book does what it sets out to do tolerably well. Unfortunately, the book does not set out to do very much. It sets out to explain only the most basic ethical views in only the most cursory fashion. He considers only one or two variations of each view, and only the most superficial objections. The chapters are short (12 chapters out of roughly 200 pages), the type is rather big, there is a summary at the end of each chapter (even though each chapter is simple and brief), and there are "study questions" at the end of each chapter (which are useless because they are too simple).

The book is obviously written for an uneducated audience: Gensler thought it necessary to define the word "impasse" for his readers. While he meant the book for undergraduates who had already had taken one or two philosophy courses, only the dumbest students would find this book very interesting. This simple and clear book is occasionally helpful in clearing up one small thing or another, but overall it is not worth the time of anyone who knows the first thing about philosophical ethics.

The simplicity of the book is misleading in important ways. Gensler does not consider the is/ought problem apart from mentioning it in explaining intuitionism. He mentions Aristotle and Kant only in passing. Skeptical views like Nietzsche's get no mention whatsoever. The book gives no adequate reasons for valuing consistency or rationality in ethics.

Perhaps the greatest flaw of the book is that the chapters that contain Gensler's own moral arguments (7-9, 12) are condensed from his already published works. Gensler's perspective throughout the book is intuitionist in the worst way: if a particular result is absurd to an intuitionist, he calls it absurd outright. Thus, the book might be better termed "An Introduction to Contemporary Intuitionist Ethics."

I can only see one use for this book: as a text for a class where the set exercises are to pick apart the extremely suspect logic of Genslers arguments. For example, Gensler's argument against racism (pp. 91-93) does not succeed. Since consistency does not straightforwardly relate to truth, it is possible for a racist to formulate an entirely consistent view, as follows. In Gensler's first part, the racist can merely equate inferiority with race. When Gensler proposes various thought experiments in order to show that the racist is inconsistent, the racist can merely point out that Gensler is keeping an underlying essence of race in his arguments, accept Gensler's conclusions and retain the view that the particular race is to be treated poorly. Gensler thus fails to accept his earlier consideration of consistency as distinct from proveability.

I found myself scratching my head in likewise fashion at many of Gensler's sweeping statements. An example: He states (p. 88), unqualified, that consistency "often points us toward the truth". This may be true, but in a work that purports to show exactly why considerations such as this are necessarily true, it fails dramatically to demonstrate anything more than a sophisticated circular argument.

Finally, while the summaries of various metaethical positions are indeed short and concise, I found they failed to illuminate. Gensler has managed to dumb down the complexity of many of the positions he examines to such an extent that what we are left with is not summary but parody. They certainly cannot be used to formulate anything more than a superficial case for Gensler's own position.

In conclusion, I'd recommend going to a good philosophical encyclopaedia for an overview of contemporary metaethics -- there you can find the level of detail you seek, while sparing yourself reading Gensler's own arguments.