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A Practical Companion to Ethics

by Anthony Weston

Checking in at a mere 107 five by eight pages, this is the skimpiest introduction to ethics I have seen. It is steeped in pragmatism. On the plus side it has a wonderful emphasis on problem solving, problem prevention, problem selection, and various ways of coming up with more and better solutions.

It reframes the famous Heinz dilemma—should you steal from a druggist when you can not afford a life-saving drug—and suggests other alternatives: bartering, seeking charity, shaming the druggist with bad publicity, volunteering for a clinical trial or getting a loan.

Keep moving morally forward argue the pragmatists. We make mistakes. More mistakes will come in the future.

We can see problems as challenges or we can see them as curses. Weston suggests that we attack problems.

Keep brain storming better problems and solutions. Keep experimenting, even blundering. Avoid false dichotomies when exploring solutions. For example, buying a plane ticket is not merely a matter of buying from an airline or from a travel agent. Online sellers and courier services are among other alternatives.

Keep doing good. Learn from important events whether the results were good or bad. Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to prevent it from happening. For exmple, making sure your life is thrilling and valuable prevents the problem of drug addiction from arising. Avoid living so that you are merely reacting to problems. Choose a better class of problems, including problems that prevent problems.

Don't treat others merely as objects, Weston argues. Sympathize. Have compassion. He makes the superb point that we should relate to others as individuals. We should avoid seeing others as merely the quickest label we can attach. We should avoid confusing important everyday truths with trivial truths. Love, pain, thrills and caring are all important to life.

Weston writes theat we should tolerate uncertainty, especially when the alternatives are hasty conclusions. He suggests that our beliefs often become set like concrete and that we should take wild, active steps to change things, no matter how uncomfortable it may initially feel. We should know when to whole-heartedly commit and when to look elsewhere. Avoiding polarization is big in the Weston scheme, too big, in fact.

The strength of Practical Companion is not epistemic. Many of the arguments are sloppy. Weston finds flaws with the word wrong and finds the Golden Rule commendable. There is nothing wrong with the word wrong. There is something wrong with the Golden Rule. Others may not deserve or benefit from being treated the same way the way you should be treated. Weston’s work is much better than much of recent pragmatism though. Try reading a journal on pragmatism: Awful. Much of pragmatism has become a yogi philosophy. Intended for ethics teachers, this book is best suited for an introductory audience. Even youngsters might find some of the ideas here helpful. They would be better off reading this than didactic, juvenile fiction.

1997 (H)

— book review article by J.T. Fournier

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