Whatever happened to the discipline of ethics? At a time when moral questions tend to be argued with more heat than light, Kidder offers practical guidelines for a coherent and mindful approach to ethical dilemmas. In the early morning hours of April 26, 1986, two electrical engineers, working at the control panel of Reactor Number Four at Chernobyl, overrode six separate alarm systems to see how long the turbine would free-wheel when the power was removed. For Kidder (Shared Values for a Troubled World, not reviewed), the ensuing catastrophe is a parable of why ethics matters. Founder of the Institute for Global Ethics, he deals not so much with the problem of choosing between right and wrong as with the daily dilemmas of choosing between right and right. Should I always tell all the truth? Should I divulge professional information that may help others but will certainly ruin an individual's life? Kidder spotlights the contemporary concern for ethical standards in corporations while guiding us through the thought of Aristotle, Kant, Bentham, and others. He posits four models for dilemmas of right vs. right: the clashes between truth and loyalty, individual and community, short-term and long-term goods, justice and mercy. He goes on to propose three principles he believes will enable us to resolve moral dilemmas: consideration of the likely consequences of our decision, knowledge of the laws of conduct, and adherence to the Golden Rule that we should do as we would be done to. Finally, Kidder lays out a practical scheme for approaching problematic situations and looks at complex modern questions such as computer hacking and ways of combatting AIDS. He offers no answers, instead giving readers a program for energetic self-reflection. A brilliant and practical synthesis that squarely faces all the issues and can be grasped by the thoughtful nonspecialist.
Pub Date: Jan. 24, 1995
ISBN: 0-688-13442-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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