Thoughtful contemplations about thorny moral questions.
How to live virtuously and well.
In 2016, Notre Dame philosophy professors Sullivan and Blaschko began teaching a course called God and the Good Life, which became hugely popular among undergraduates. Their aim, they write, was to help students to live more intentionally and to take agency and responsibility for their choices. Drawing on the content and pedagogy of that course, the authors offer a warm, empathetic guide for examining the quality and meaning of one’s own life. They encourage readers to hone their ability to pose and answer strong questions—“the kinds of questions that uncover our deeper reasons for believing and doing what we do”; to pay loving attention to others’ stories; and to think about “how the episodes of your life fit together.” The first half of the book considers everyday philosophical challenges, “questions about money, work, family life, and political friction.” The second half focuses on existential matters such as faith, suffering, and death. Each chapter concludes with exercises designed to prompt self-awareness about the connection of one’s choices to one’s ethical and moral goals. Throughout, the authors contrast effective altruism with virtue ethics, two philosophical perspectives that lead to quite different ways of defining a morally good life. While effective altruists, such as philosopher Peter Singer, believe one should earn as much as possible in order to give away as much as possible, virtue ethicists believe that “ ‘care for the soul’ is the most important work any of us can do.” That work requires training and practice. The authors draw on thinkers from Plato to William James, St. Thomas Aquinas to Kierkegaard, Aristotle to Iris Murdoch as they present a wide range of responses to much-debated moral questions. The authors themselves share candid reflections on the evolution of their own thinking, including “philosophical apologies”—that is, defenses—of many hard decisions they’ve made.
Thoughtful contemplations about thorny moral questions.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-984880-30-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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