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Jacob Needleman

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Why Can't We Be Good? Paperback – January 31, 2008

by Jacob Needleman (Author)

4.5 49 ratings

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The widely respected social philosopher embarks on his most gripping and broadly appealing work, asking the ultimate question of human nature: Why do we repeatedly violate our most deeply held values and beliefs?

After nearly forty years of weighing humanity's deepest dilemmas-working in settings ranging from university and high school classrooms to corporate offices and hospitals-bestselling author, philosopher, and religious scholar Jacob Needleman presents the most urgent, deeply felt, and widely accessible work of his career.

In Why Can't We Be Good? Needleman identifies the core problem that therapists and social philosophers fail to see. He depicts the individual human as a being who knows what is good, yet who remains mysteriously helpless to innerly adopt the ethical, moral, and religious ideas that are bequeathed to him.

Review

"As usual Jacob Needleman gets to the heart of the matter with eloquence and efficiency. Perhaps it would be better to say the dark heart of the matter, for we find ourselves beset with trials and tribulations of our own shameful making. How to get out? Here is the road map-with a beautiful speck of light at the end of a very difficult path. This is Needleman's best work." -Ken Burns "An immensely learned man who is unembarrassed by the big questions that many of his fellow philosophers prefer to dodge." -"Chicago Tribune" "This book doesn't offer quick fixes or shortcuts, but it does present a way for readers attempting to follow an ethical, spiritual path to recognize, understand, and assimilate their human limitations." -"New Age Retailer"

About the Author

The acclaimed author of The American Soul, Why Can’t We Be Good? and Money and the Meaning of Life, Jacob Needleman is Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University, and former Director of the Center for the Study of New Religions at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. He lives in Oakland, CA.

Print length

304 pages
Language

English
Publisher

TarcherPerigee
Publication date

January 31, 2008
Dimensions

6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1585426202
ISBN-13

978-1585426201
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ TarcherPerigee (January 31, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1585426202
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1585426201
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.5 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,608,664 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,487 in Consciousness & Thought Philosophy
- #5,988 in Philosophy of Ethics & Morality
- #10,960 in Christian Self Help

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4.5 49 ratings

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Jacob Needleman

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Jacob Needleman, the acclaimed author of The American Soul and Money and the Meaning of Life, is a professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University, and a former director of the Center for the Study of New Religions at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.

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Steven Maimes

The Metaphysics of Ethics as a Modern Philosophic Inquiry

Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2007

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This wonderful book is a western philosophical inquiry into ethics. Needleman examines Greek (Plato, Socrates), Roman (Marcus Aurelius) and Hebrew Judaic (Hillel, Torah) sources and then steps outside tradition to explain what is most important in examining ethics for man and woman today. Needleman pours out his soul presenting the deepest questions of man. His excitement and desire for us to understand is present throughout the book.

Not just simple ethics is discussed but the metaphysics of ethics and examples of moral mysticism, moral suffering and the ethics of thinking together. Needleman explains how thinking is an ethical act and the book includes classroom discussions and exercises, the ethical significance of thinking together and the ethics of attention. The quest for ethics involves intention, preparation, ideas, listening, struggling, silence and especially attention.

Needleman uses the Greek example of working together at thinking and focuses on helping us understand the ethical Talmudic wisdom of Hillel who said "what is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor." He explains that the essential work of man is to remember the Self and as we love ourselves, love God, love our neighbor - then we are capable and able to be good.

The book is not religious but rather a philosophical inquiry and for the most part steps out of tradition to discuss man's striving for morality and the ability to be good. There are some examples within the Judao-Christian tradition but only scant mention of the teachings of the East (especially Hinduism is missing).

Throughout the book Needleman enriches, embellishes, enhances, amplifies and articulates in beautiful philosophic prose. He adds exquisite dimensions to increase our contemplation and he simply reveals many secrets of the ages.

I was one of Jacob Needleman's many philosophy students at San Francisco State University (1968-71) and now almost 40 years later I still learn from this important American philosopher. I thank him for sharing again with us and for dedicating the book to his "students."

25 people found this helpful

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Jan Cheripko

A Must Read

Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2013

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Most of western culture is looking for an easy fix for the problems that beset us. Jacob Needleman, over the years, has been offering real solutions, but to access the answers requires personal evaluation that most people aren't interested in. Why Can't We Be Good? is another stunning example of Needleman's probing works. Don't pick up this book if your looking for self-help cliches. But if you're interested in genuine personal assessment, ideas that will challenge you to consider those supposed answers about good and evil that never quite gave you the satisfacition you longed for, then this the book you need to read.

4 people found this helpful

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Matthew Rapaport

One view of how we can be better than we are and why we are not. Not technical, comfortable writing style.

Reviewed in the United States on November 23, 2017

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In the interest of full disclosure, Jacob Needleman was a professor of mine at San Francisco State University where I did my philosophy MA in the late 1970s. I had a few classes from him and found we disagreed about almost everything. I will try not to get into all of that in this review, but some of it cannot, perhaps, be helped. I see the basis of our disagreements in 1979 are very much in evidence here in this book written in 2007.

In "Why Can't we be Good?" Dr. Needleman takes stock of the evil in the world, much of it obviously the result of human behavior both now and for thousands of years past. He certainly notes that humans do also behave in what passes for goodness in their daily lives. Many of us love our children and do our best to raise them lovingly and there are instances of human action, tens of millions every day all over the world that pass for civil and often "beyond the requirements" of civil behavior. So why he asks are we not doing even better? Why does the world appear steeped in evil?

His argument is that we are not better because we have lost sight of what "real goodness" means because we have forgotten our fundamental connection to the spirit forces (God transcendent, God embodied in "our self" [often blurring these ideas]). He admits that sometimes, in crisis, we act on a "higher, genuine, moral level" but most of the time, the best we can do is merely acting our of reasonably good habits we've acquired from our culture, and just as often (perhaps more) we act in downright evil ways. His central claim is that we cannot find (re-discover) this connection by our-self. To re-acquire our consciousness of the fundamental connection demands a teacher, a guide, which always takes the form of some already enlightened person who can both point us to the various holy-literature (be they Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, etc) traditions where the connection is revealed but also help us to understand and interpret what exactly the traditions are trying to tell us. Without this guidance, we are, Needleman tells us, ultimately helpless. Putting it bluntly, we must study what it means to be good and appropriate these teachings into our inner being to even begin approaching genuine moral action.

If this all sounds a bit new agey "I can't help the world without first helping myself" it is, but Needleman is more sophisticated than that. Besides a "teacher", the student seeker must sincerely want this for him or herself. We are not in the realm of magic incantations that make us over in one fell swoop. Of course even the new age teachings also note this. What Needleman adds is his recognition that no matter how lacking we are in genuine morality, we must nevertheless try, that is act, in the world of our daily existence. We must act to do the "best we can" as we travel about our daily lives interacting with others however weak and habitual those actions might be. We must practice, not only in our studies, but in life. Only by these things, sincerity, study, and action, can we re-awaken our consciousness of the connection between ourselves and that relationship to the cosmos that results in genuinely deep, and not superficial, moral behavior.

But while Needleman is correct about the need for action, I do not believe he grasps its overriding significance. Because we (most of us) do not know who we really are our "moral free will" is minimal to non-existent. We are hemmed about by habits and cultural acquisitions, social accretions that render us incapable of genuinely free moral choices (except possibly in times of crisis). For Needleman this applies as much to evil as good. He twice quotes Socrates declaring "No man does evil intentionally". All evil in the world (he says) stems from our disconnection (culturally induced) from the reality we are meant to know. Socrates (at least as quoted here) and Needleman fail to distinguish between error (the truly inevitable outcome of our limited perspective and cognitive abilities including all that we cannot know lying above our intellectual pay grade) and evil. The latter is precisely "error deliberately (that is freely) chosen"! It might be true that "no man does error intentionally", but evil is evil because it is intentional!

The same must be true of "the good". Certainly there is a continuum of moral choice from the trivial to the profound. But even our "good habits" were not always habits, we had to allow them to become habits at some time in our earlier life. The same holds for the accretions of our culture. Some of these are certainly harmful and others good. If, on balance, we have adopted (for ourselves) more good ones than bad, this too must be the result of genuinely moral choices all along the trajectory of our lives. The sincerity of the seeker, something Needleman notes is necessary for any sort of success, must already have been a freely made moral decision or it wouldn't be "sincere"!

A better choice for a title for this book might have been "Why Can't we be Better", but that's less dramatic and would put Needleman in the position of admitting that, provided we are sincere and we do the good that we are able to do now, we will grow incrementally better -- practice makes perfect. A guide, should you be lucky enough to find a real one, can be helpful, but cannot be necessary. My applause here goes to Needleman's emphasis on action, something he talks about more than either of the other two "necessities", the guide and the sincerity of the seeker. Forty years ago I don't remember this much recognition of the importance of acting, but then my memory certainly deceives me. In any case he has it here. Included in early chapters are some nice exercises people can actually do together that simulate "the ethical" in the "theater of the mind" as Needleman puts it. Easy to read, not technical. Will it help you along your "quest to be good"? Well it can't hurt!

7 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Beautiful, Life Changing Book

Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2017

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A careful meditation on all of humanity's deepest questions. Jacob Needleman is honest, gentle, and conscientious in a conversation with the reader that opens up entire worlds and gives great insight into human nature, why we struggle to be good, and how to begin to do the work to become capable of ethical action and inner love.

2 people found this helpful

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Jackie Townsend

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2018

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Mr. Needleman keeps you thinking as he writes, He reminds us of some of the values Americans once had.

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Michael B. Benzon

Needleman connects the dots.

Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2007

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This is Needlemans best book by far. It's dramatic as well as wise. And I hadn't realized how fine a writer he is. It engages the reader immediately, and that is it's message; get out of your head and into "the streets." The book is a warm and profound companion. Michael B. Daly City, Ca.

8 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Wiltonian

Insightful and Challenging

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 15, 2007

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I'd give this book more than 5 stars if only to differentiate it from others. I've always found Jacob Needleman an insightful and challenging writer. With this book he excels. It seems to me that it could only have been written by someone long steeped in the theory and practice of what is written about and that shows. I think (although I can't be sure) that he actually explains some "secrets" that aren't popularly accessible in print. Why can't I be sure? Mr Needleman builds up his exposition but in a disjointed way, perhaps on purpose. This means that a key point that he says he will come back to, isn't heralded as such when he does. It can be missed. I found the book engaging to read, sometimes painfully so. It deserves to be re-read. Only that way can you be once more truly moved by Mr N. Added to all of which, there is a charming photo of the author on the back of the book!

5 people found this helpful

John 29

Both challenging and interesting

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 12, 2018

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Another stimulating book from Jacob Neddleman. He writes in a manner and of matters that one rarely finds with other authors while addressing issues that are relevant to many. He highlights the benefit from studying the ancient philosophers, such as Plato, Socrates and Marcus Aurelius, so as to provide a grounding in order to be able to consider some of the fundamental issues of life, such as what is our purpose in life? At the end of the book he also provides a useful chapter on further reading.

Dan

The two personalities of a humsn being: good and evil/ spirit and fresh.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 13, 2019

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A well presented case.

P.H. Vandenbrandhof

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 18, 2017

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Received this good book in time. Thankyou, Ok.

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