39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Black and White, thank goodness!, April 23, 2003
This review is from: Making Choices: Practical Wisdom for Everyday Moral Decisions (Paperback)
Peter Kreeft has written a great little book for all those who are tired of hearing 'it's not so black and white'. Kreeft does an excellent job of explaining, simply and clearly, that right and wrong are objective - regardless of whether or not it is easy or makes someone happy. Kreeft also clears up some moral misconceptions like 'if it doesn't hurt anyone else, then it's ok' and 'the end justifies the means'. Also included in this book is an excellent discussion, scientifically based, on why abortion is objectively wrong (such as the fact that science has always defined a fetus as another human life, science has never been able to come up with a concrete time limit on so-called viability, and that a fetus has a distinct human genetic code that is separate from it's mother's).
While in reading this book Kreeft does spend some time talking about God and his Christian faith, his arguments are philosophically and scientifically sound across the religious spectrum. Regardless of a reader's religion/athiesm, Kreeft's logic applies. While Kreeft argues that morality comes from God, he also demonstrates that one need not know that or believe in God to understand and use objective morals.
This book is highly recommended for all readers who need help with a good strategy for making choices. It would also make an excellent gift for the person in your life who constantly argues that their morality is relative.
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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Moral philosophy for everyday life, March 23, 2005
This review is from: Making Choices: Practical Wisdom for Everyday Moral Decisions (Paperback)
This is another of Peter Kreeft's typically illuminative books, on the largely-neglected topic of moral reasoning.
Kreeft spends the first part of the book simply establishing the basic truths that once upon a time were obvious, but not in the present day - that moral laws exist and are knowable by human reason; that they are "built into" the universe, and thus true whether we know them or not; that moral relativism is self-refuting; and that morality ultimately derives from God (in Dostoevsky's words, "If there is no God, then everything is permissible").
His discussion of the Greatest Good is also very sharp, especially in its discussion of ends and means.
Part Four, in which he engages topics of Sex, Abortion, and Truth in greater detail, is really the meat of the book, and where Kreeft most directly engages modern culture. His discussion of sex in terms of sacredness is wonderfully clear - understanding sex as sacred simultaneously avoids both errors of hedonism on the one hand, and repression on the other. "Christian morality is based on human nature, on the kind of thing we are, and the kind of thing sex is. It is not the changeable rules of a game we designed, but the unchangeable rules of the operating manual written by the Designer of our human nature."
Kreeft's bit on our society's confusion between sex and money is utterly incisive - we use sex as a mere means of exchange (of pleasure), but we erect all manner of legal protections around money, treating it as virtually sacred, even expecting it to reproduce and grow. Priceless.
Kreeft's aim here is not ethereal or theoretical - this is not pie-in-the-sky, "out there" moral philosophy. He means to give real people real tools for living real lives in the real world, and in this, he succeeds admirably
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
clarity is power, February 4, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Making Choices: Practical Wisdom for Everyday Moral Decisions (Paperback)
A very simply written and fun to read book. Like a good teacher, Kreeft has a knack for using just the right analogy to explain a thorny question. Vivid problems vividly pondered. While not an exhaustive philosophical treatise, it's a fine book for most of us common folk, presenting many problems you will face in your daily life.
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