Customer Reviews

How Good People Make Tough Choices: Resolving the Dilemmas of Ethical Living

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a nice, short book that anybody could read and get something useful out of. To help potential readers, I will clarify a little about the book. In many ways, it is not a book about decision making per se, but rather ethics and decision making. As such the title doesn't quite fit: perhaps it should be called how good people -should- make tough choices. Given that the emphasis of the book was somewhat different than expected, Kidder made a decent book out of the general topic of ethics. Not arcane in any way, chock full of examples and designed to be user-friendly. A great book for "lay persons" who are nonetheless quite familiar with decisions that have ethical implications and need to make them on a regular basis.

This book has provided me with a structure through which I can begin to think more openly about ethics. It has surprised me with a number of new ideas, most of which are relevant to all of us. I highly recommend this work to those who care about living a thoughtful life. Ethics this way is not stodgy and limiting, but expansive and exciting.

This books allows students of all ages to start the difficult job of ethical decision making. Starting with its "Right vs. Right" concept, it teaches various ways to think about ethical decision making. This would be a wonderful book for a middle school or high school ethics class as well as an adult discussion group. Could easily be adapted to a church setting.

For millenia, philosophers and others have tried to formulate ethical theories and moral systems on a rigorous basis, but they've always failed to secure even a moderate consensus. With this book, Rushworth Kidder jumps into the fray, but he likewise falls short, despite his apparent good intentions.

It seems to me that there are several fundamental problems which make this undertaking essentially impossible:

(1) Despite universalist claims to the contrary, values vary significantly among people and cultures (relativism), and any seemingly shared values are prone to frequent exceptions. Particular values have sometimes been asserted to be absolutely "true" on the basis of coming from a divine source (eg, most religions) or pure rationality (eg, Kant), but of course such claims aren't convincing to most people.

(2) Even if we could all agree on a universal set of values, circumstances in the real world prevent us from maximally satisfying all values simultaneously, so tradeoffs are usually inevitable. This means that the Kantian notion of rigidly adhering to particular values isn't possible, and consequences have to be considered (wouldn't you be willing to lie to a criminal in order to protect a loved one from being murdered?).

(3) Even if tradeoffs between values weren't required, the consequences of our choices are usually at least somewhat uncertain, so we can't be sure that a particular choice will satisfy particular values.

(4) Even if none of the above problems existed, given that resources are limited, we would still be left with the question of whose interest prevails in trying to achieve favorable outcomes. This is yet another value question which involves tradeoffs. The utilitarians (eg, Bentham and Mill) argued for maximizing the good of all, which is appropriate for public policy and legislation, but it's unrealistic to expect that individuals and groups won't give greater preference to their own interest (there are inspiring exceptions like Gandhi, but they're very rare). Hence the need for democratic push and pull among competing and collaborating interests.

These problems don't necessarily imply that ethical behavior doesn't exist, isn't possible, isn't necessary, or that anything goes. Instead, the implication is that ethical decisions need to be made on a case-by-case basis, accounting for the particularities of each situation. To deal with the complex plenum life presents to us, we need to involve appropriate stakeholders, attend to details, ponder carefully, and use our best judgment.

Among classical ideas, I'll grant that virtue is perhaps a useful guide in ethical decision making, since the ideal of virtue is rich enough to encompass principles, intentions, duty, honor, character, integrity, rights, consequences, tradeoffs, short-term vs. long-term, moderation, empathy, dignity, cultural context, etc., while still being amorphous enough to avoid being unrealistically prescriptive. And being systematic can also help, especially when the stakes are high. But a cookbook set of rules and guidelines, like that proposed by Kidder, will always be too simplistic to be usable in the real world.

Summing up, I give Kidder a 'B' for effort, but a 'D' for results, so I can't recommend this book in good (moral) conscience.

Kidder's book essentially boils down any tough choice down to basic conflicts, a struggle for competing "rights" or things we value. We value loyalty, for example, and we value honesty...what happens if I know my spouse is cheating on our taxes or from their company?

Thought provoking, easily read....strongly recommend.

I was assigned this book for an Leadership Ethics class that is part of my current MBA program. This was actually one of 5 books we were assigned on the topics of leadership and ethics and this was by far my favorite. I find that the ethical dillemmas presented by the author are clear and help drive home his point. This book is not about choosing between RIGHT and WRONG. This book is about how as a leader and manager you may be forced to choose between RIGHT and RIGHT what kidder is calling the ethical dillemma. Kidder provides some techniques to work through ethical dillemas and talks about how to categorize them. The information in this book has stuck with me during the past year. I can't even remember the other books we were asked to read. May be a bit simplistic for some, but I think this is good general purpose leadership and ethics reading for the masses.

Rushworth Kidder is a wonderful writer and thinker and has devoted 20+ years to promoting ethics and integrity. This book does a wonderful job presenting dilemmas, getting you to think about how you might handle them, and providing clear advice on how to evaluate such issues. That's all good. The problem is that it was written almost 15 years ago and it shows. While much of the information is timeless, many of the studies cited are from the early 90s. This would be fabulous if updated.

After reading a variety of books on ethics and ethical decision making, this one stood out for its clarity of thinking and superb examples. A book that makes you think about your life and how you choose when the choice is hardest of all: between right and right.

This is a super reference that provides readers with pragmatic guidance on making ethical choices when often a less moral short cut is available. Mr. Kidder uses specific examples deciding right from wrong in which most frequently neither is absolute and rarely are they the solo options or obvious which is actually right and wrong. In some cases, the dilemma in choosing what your values scream at you is right, but doing so places you in an uncomfortable position when not doing what your gut feels is right would be noticed by only one person. Loaded with specific examples of having to choose (for instance, the example of worried parents talking to their child's teacher about behavior when the child told the teacher a secret in confidence) makes this a winner. Even society and communities have difficult ethical choices between for instance the environment and energy or development and heritage as short term needs bump against long term goals. Sometimes the debate is personal and communal as is the case with abortion. How people look at the issues may change as for instance HIV when Magic Johnson told the world he had it and the economy influences decisions especially in recessions; still Mr. Kidder still feels strongly a person must eat or get their medicine while sticking to their personal values. Throughout Mr. Kidder makes this case to adhere to your personal values even when it hurts in the short run because you are being true to yourself, which in the long run will cause less pain to you. This is a strong guidebook due to the terrific pragmatic examples of making tough ethical choices.

Harriet Klausner

There are no books on the market that address morality that way that this book does. Not the Bible. Not my university textbook on ethics. None. It's one thing to talk about moral issues and take sides with them, but it is another thing entirely to talk about solid moral principles that can guide you in making moral decisions based on reason instead of blind faith. This is a book that does the talking.

If you want to find out what a religion or a moral philosophy is really made of, nothing will put it to a test more than a moral dilemma will, and this book is chock full of examples of real life moral dilemmas. Some of those moral dilemmas are things most people wouldn't even think of as moral dilemmas -- justice vs mercy for example. One dilemma I like (to paraphrase) was the one about the highway patrol officer who comes upon a truck wreck where the driver is irremovably pinned down in the cab and a fuel-fed fire is starting to blaze out-of-control. The driver asks the officer to kill him before he is fried alive. What would you do and how would it be a moral decision?

It is not a perfect book, for example, there was the issue of what is truth. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth is whatever people *believe* to be fact, whether or not what they believe in really is a fact or not. Truth is not a reliable yardstick by which to gauge morality by. That might seem like nitpicking with words, but the most common cause of distress of clients in counseling is confusing facts with truth. Knowing the difference between the two is important to making proper moral decisions, otherwise you might be basing your decision on an illusion.

It also didn't cover the issue of punishment. The topic of punishment often comes up in moral discussions as a deterrent from being immoral. If a person needs to be deterred by force from being immoral, does that deterred person become a moral person then, or are they a person only putting on an act of being moral, only to resort to immorality in private when nobody is looking and they can be the "real me"? So is there no other purpose of punishment, besides being a poor deterrent? Most philosophies of punishment I've heard have very immoral reasoning at their cores and therefore should be discussed in every discussion on moral or ethics. Therefore any religion or moral philosophy based on deterrent is an immoral religion or philosophy.