An ambitious, though specialized, treatise on how to improve moral understanding.
A debut work of psychology recommends a system to make readers more adept at solving moral dilemmas.
Morality is a deceptively basic concept. Often invoked but rarely defined, morality is something that becomes increasingly subjective, particularly when personal interest is involved. Toews offers a new procedure for teaching morality that he calls the Principled Thinking Model: “The Principled Thinking Model presented in this book does not guarantee right answers but serves as a way of thinking through different situations involving moral dilemmas.” By considering the duties, rights, and motives of individuals as well as the merits and justice of a given situation, Toews proposes not only an approach to conflict resolution, but also a method of teaching people to respect objective parameters during the process. Citing his own research as well as thought experiments and hypothetical scenarios, the author guides readers away from selfish instincts and toward a shared experience based on empathy. The author dramatizes his ideas through dialogues between two fictional teachers, Bill and Mae, who explore the Principled Thinking Model through the lenses of their students and the pupils’ parents. Toews writes in a dense, scholarly prose that makes frequent reference to the work of his predecessors in the field and the relevant terminology. The Bill and Mae dialogues offer a change in tone, but they are nevertheless somewhat wooden and didactic: “Now Bill is struggling...it will not be easy to answer Mae’s question. He tried, ‘Having a right means that it is not wrong for a person to pursue a specific interest; nor would it be wrong not to pursue it.’ ” The volume is a bit too dry and academic for a general readership. That said, Toews’ in-depth work delivers an insightful take on the way individuals approach morality, and the tests he recommends to shape moral understanding are specific and comprehensive. It’s hard to argue that society isn’t in need of better moral standards—standards built on empathy, not simply religious or cultural values. The Principled Thinking Model provides one possible way forward.
An ambitious, though specialized, treatise on how to improve moral understanding.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 208
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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