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The Time of Our Lives: The Ethics of Common Sense

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Adler poses a theory of ethics for everyone. It is necessarily lacking in practical terms, as everyone is different, but it provides a theoretical foundation that is applicable to everyone. It provides a foundation for ethical theory--why ethics is important and what rights are needed to ensure we can succeed in our pursuit of the good life. Following the Aristotelian tradition, it lays out the importance of improving oneself and (in true common sense style) ranks improving oneself higher than pursuits for pure pleasure--which provide no lasting "good" after the pleasure has been experienced. To suggest, as another reviewer from MN has, that this means it is "bad" to go on a vacation, stems clearly from a failure to understand the book. (If you've read Ayn Rand and then read criticisms which say she is a hedonist who steps on others for her own pleasure, you have a good idea of the error made here.) And indeed, it takes nothing more than common sense to know that if someone goes to a bar everyday, his life won't--in the end--be as "good" as someone who devotes the time to improving himself. But this text requires the ability to apply its principles to each individual. It is as sound an ethical theory as anyone can possibly formulate, but again, for Joe Sixpack, the devil is in the details.

In a nutshell the theme of this book harkens back to Socrates: A life not examined is not worth living. This certainly has some merit among those people who have the intellect to do so. However, Adler thinks that every person should spend a great deal of time at intellectual pursuits, in intellectual self-improvement and finally at intellectual introspection. As such, he then attacks the more common pursuits: television, alcohol, the accumulation of material objects. It seems as though Adler has a harsh word for everyone except himself and his ivory tower peers (those peers who think the way he does, for he has no fondness for "beatniks, hippies, self-alienated refugees from reason or existentialist cop-outs".

Adler states that we are all victims of a society that stresses the importance of sensual pleasures and frivilous commodities and a society that does not clearly delineate the between the "frivilous and serious use of free time." I guess the average worker should be ashamed of his or herself for hitting the bars after work or using their hard earned paycheck to indulge in a Caribbean vacation.

Adler's philosophy of the "Good Life" is fine for eggheads (and the book is thought provoking if you take the time to work through it) but I cannot go along with the idea that it should be a blueprint for living the "Good Life" for all mankind.