TELLING RIGHT FROM WRONG

by Timothy J. Cooney ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 15, 1985

Recall the flap of last year when Random House withdrew this book (minus its present Afterword) on discovering the author had forged a recommending letter? There's an impressive irony in that, but it's all the excitement Cooney's treatise will cause. Some of his material is solid and thought-provoking, especially the psycho-linguistic analysis of how we use (and misuse) the words good/bad and right/wrong: in everyday life we speak in ""hybrids"" and ""false hybrids,"" the former being a shorthand way of talking about how we can reach shared desires, the latter dealing with opinion; dangerous confusion results from using the two interchangeably. Cooney defines morality as a guide to behavior that leads to the universally shared desire that ""everything got destroyed."" That's the Primary Code; the Secondary Code deals in matters of choice and opinion, and getting issues of the two confused is what leads to all the horrors committed in the name of morality. But it's hard to know how to take this book. With its pop/commercial title, its everyday style and folksy examples, Cooney seems to have written for a general audience. His major efforts, however, are spent disposing of disagreements he foresees coming from those steeped in ""professional philosophy,"" those who'd be less interested in what new light he might shed on morality than in finding the holes in his system. In the Afterword, Cooney explains the book's, and his own, history and discusses the forgery. In the end, there's no way around that stunning irony.

Pub Date: July 15, 1985

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Prometheus

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1985

Categories: NONFICTION