Synopses & Reviews
What is your highest ideal? What code do you live by? We all know that these differ from person to person. Artists, scientists, social activists, farmers, executives, and athletes are guided by very different ideals. Nonetheless for hundreds of years philosophers have sought a single, overriding ideal that should guide everyone, always, everywhere, and after centuries of debate were no closer to an answer. In
How Should We Live?, John Kekes offers a refreshing alternative, one in which we eschew absolute ideals and instead consider our lives as they really are, day by day, subject to countless vicissitudes and unforeseen obstacles.
Kekes argues that ideal theories are abstractions from the realities of everyday life and its problems. The well-known arenas where absolute ideals conflictdramatic moral controversies about complex problems involved in abortion, euthanasia, plea bargaining, privacy, and other hotly debated topicsshould not be the primary concerns of moral thinking. Instead, he focuses on the simpler problems of ordinary lives in ordinary circumstances. In each chapter he presents the conflicts that a real persona schoolteacher, lawyer, father, or nurse, for exampleis likely to face. He then uses their situations to shed light on the mundane issues we all must deal with in everyday life, such as how we use our limited time, energy, or money; how we balance short- and long-term satisfactions; how we deal with conflicting loyalties; how we control our emotions; how we deal with people we dislike; and so on. Along the way he engages some of our most important theorists, including Donald Davidson, Thomas Nagel, Christine Korsgaard, Harry Frankfurt, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Bernard Williams, ultimately showing that no idealwhether autonomy, love, duty, happiness, or truthfulnesstrumps any other. No single ideal can always guide how we overcome the many different problems that stand in the way of living as we should. Rather than rejecting such ideals, How Should We Live? offers a way of balancing them by a practical and pluralistic approachrather than a theorythat helps us cope with our problems and come closer to what our lives should be.
Review
“Innumerable horrors, especially of the last century, can be traced to the frame of mind that is willing to sacrifice everything for an ideal. Kekes takes apart the claims that are made in favor of different ideals and demonstrates that ideals cannot tell us what to do, since it is theevaluation of our conflicting beliefs, emotions, and motives that matters—and appealing to a single, overriding ideal does little to aid in this evaluation. This is a work of sound, extensive, and thorough scholarship.”
Review
“A highly original, sober, and forcefully argued book that takes on the major question that confronts all of us. It offers realistic alternatives to both moral absolutism and moral relativism. Focused on the variety of inevitable conflicts human beings experience, Kekes suggests ways to cope with them without expecting to eliminate them altogether. Central to the book is a persuasive critique of ‘ideal theories, which claim that it is possible to lead a moral and meaningful life free of conflicts. This is an especially enlightening study for Americans inclined to believe that all conflicts can be resolved by people of goodwill and that all important human aspirations and values can be reconciled.”
Review
“Practical intelligence is contextual, flexible, attuned to myriad conflicting goods, and pluralistic in spirit. Nearly all contemporary theories about good lives formally acknowledge these complexities. In fact, as Kekes argues incisively, many famous theories still contain implausible and dangerous commitments to universal overriding ideals. He returns us to the richness of practical approaches to practical dilemmas. A provocative and wise book.”
Synopsis
Explore central questions in moral philosophy with HOW SHOULD WE LIVE? With a focus on the question of why or how we should be moral in a time plagued by relativism, this philosophy text covers the three most seminal ethical theories: utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue-based ethics. End of chapter discussion questions and bibliography assist you in contemplating the most central issues encountered in the text and in pursuing additional research.
Synopsis
Louis Pojman's new HOW SHOULD WE LIVE? is a concise and engaging text that offers a provocative discussion of the central questions and theories in moral philosophy. Crafted by one of contemporary philosophy's most gifted teachers, it begins with a poignant meditation on Golding's LORD OF THE FLIES, a starting point for an eye-opening examination of central metaethical concepts such as relativism, objectivism, egoism, and whether or not religion is a necessity for morality. From there Pojman presents with even-handed consideration and in a readily accessible style the three most seminal ethical theories: utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue-based ethics. The book's discussion culminates with a very timely exploration of the grounds for human rights in today's increasingly global society.
Synopsis
In his latest work, philosopher John Kekes delves into anthropological, historical, and literary material far beyond the usual confines of philosophical works in order to explore the serious and deep problems of our lives. These problems are serious because they prevent us from living as we think we should, and they are deep because they force us to choose between conflicting possibilities of life, each of which we have good reasons to value. Living as we think we should depends on finding reasonable ways of coping with these problems, making difficult choices, and resolving our conflicts. Central to each chapter is a comparison between our conventional approach to coping with one of the problems of life and a quite different approach followed by other people at other times, places, or in other cultures. These comparisons enable us to see that decision-making is an ideal only in our evaluative framework and that the possibilities of life are richer and more varied than we often recognize in our context. These comparisons enrich our lives, allow us to be less parochial, and to become more thoughtful about how we see the possibilities of life.
About the Author
Louis P. Pojman (1935-2005) was Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at the United States Military Academy and a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. He received an M.A. and Ph.D. from Union Theological Seminary/Columbia University. He was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Copenhagen and a Rockefeller Fellow at Hamburg University. He received his D.Phil. in Philosophy from Oxford University in 1997.His first position was at the University of Notre Dame, after which he taught at the University of Texas at Dallas. Later, at the University of Mississippi, he served for three years as Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion. In 1995, he became Professor of Philosophy at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He most recently was Visiting Professor at Brigham Young University in Utah and Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, Oxford University. Pojman won several research and teaching awards, including the Burlington Northern Award for Outstanding Teaching and Scholarship (1988) and the Outstanding Scholar/Teacher in the Humanities at the University of Mississippi (1994). He wrote in the areas of philosophy of religion, epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy and authored or edited more than 30 books and 100 articles. Pojman passed away in 2005.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
1 Introduction
The Problem and the Project
Conflicts
Real Lives
Ideal Theories
The Argument
2 Absolutist Morality
The School Teacher
Absolutist Morality
Commitments
Overriding Commitments?
A Dilemma
3 Individual Autonomy
The Lawyer
Autonomy
Misguided Theorizing
The Divided Self
Ambivalence and Understanding
4 Reflective Self-Evaluation
The Dutiful Man
Self-Evaluation
Real Lives and Ideal Theory
Contingency
Justification
5 Unconditional Love
The Father
Love
Problems
Sentimentalism
Love within Reason
6 Strong Evaluation
The Nurse
Strong Evaluation
Doubts
Capacity or Activity?
Fact or Ideal?
Loss
7 Narrative Unity
The Civil Servant
The Narrative Ideal
Criticism
Are Narratives Reliable?
The Ideal and the Real
8 Practical Reason
The Divided Woman
Practical Reason
Complexities
All Things Considered
What Reason Requires and Allows
9 Inescapable Reflection
The Dean
Reflection
Knowledge
Confidence
The Route Back
10 Necessary Truthfulness
The Betrayed Woman
Genealogy
Criticisms
Vindicatory Genealogies
Subversive Genealogies
The Very Idea of Genealogies
Truthfulness and the Practical Approach
11 Conclusion
The Practical Approach
The Error of Omission
Impracticality
Implausibility
Notes
Bibliography
Index