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Book Reviews
Everyday Ethics: Inspired
Solutions to Real Life Dilemmas
by Joshua Halberstam
Nothing in here is revolutionary, but
there is more to life than being a warehouse of ever-new, ever-useless information.
As the epigram goes, we need to be reminded more than we are taught.
The best part of Everyday Ethics is a
chapter on erroneous clichés. Halberstam explains why "What goes around,
comes around," "Let your conscience be your guide, "All's fair
in love and war," "All religions teach the same basic truths,"
"natural is better," "There are two sides to every issue,"
"You are responsible your [unlucky] disease," and "Moral values
can't be taught," are all bad clichés. He tries the same with "Love
humanity," but he does not define love or clarify the matter. The word
love has lots of acceptable meanings in numerous situations. The people who say
love humanity probably do not mean love in any intimate sense. They probably mean
have affection or something similar for humanity. The author claims that since
there is no physical object called humanity that love humanity is a mistake,
but humans can have affection for anything we can think. Humans are habitual anthropomorphizers
and belief generators. We feel affection even for imaginary lands, life philosophies
and inanimate objects such as stuffed animals.
He also wonderfully explains why deep-downing,
happiness first and intelligence first are moral mistakes. Splendidly explaining
our choices of emotions, he reminds us to be careful in targeting, supporting
and evaluating emotions. The author deserves credit for writing in easy-to-read
prose.
This work emphasizes moral psychology,
yet the psychology here is not always incisive. We get "To forgive yourself too
easily is to destroy your self-esteem." Huh? Ditching guilt boosts
self-esteem rather destroys it. This book spends some time in the vacuous
self-help land of "be the right thing [emphasis in original]."
And morality "is primarily about moral sensitivity." Sorry, Hoss.
Morality is still primarily about doing right things and paying attention to consequences
and desert. Moral psychology is secondary. Emotions are not sufficient for
moral rightness. But overall this work is worth reading.
204p 1994 (H)
Book review by J.T. Fournier.