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Title: Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics by Simon Blackburn ISBN: 0-19-285377-5 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: April, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (8 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Bartender philosophy
Comment: No doubt Si Blackburn is a swell fellow to have a chat with at a Cambridge faculty tea -- if, that is, you hold all of the conventional, politically correct views expected of right-thinking university faculty. For example, early in "Being Good" (p.3), Blackburn declares that "Like America in the post-war McCarthy era, it [the Nazi regime] feared pollution from 'degenerates' outside or within." One need not be an admirer of the late Senator from Wisconsin to recognize that comparing Nazism to McCarthyism betrays an unbelievable moral obtuseness: for all of his many faults, Senator McCarthy, after all, did not murder anyone. Furthermore, the opening of the Soviet archives and release of the U.S. "Venona" intercepts have proven conclusively that there really were a number of Soviet agents who had infiltrated the U.S. government (see, e.g., Weinstein's and Vassiliev's "Haunted Wood," Klehr's and Haynes' "Venona," and Romerstein's and Breindel's "The Venona Secrets," all available on Amazon).
Later in the book (p. 103), Si announces that "the law does not protect...speech inciting racial and other hatreds..." Maybe not in merrie olde England, Si, but over here in the former colonies we have a First Amendment which does indeed protect even the right, say, of crazy neo-Nazis to present their views. This remark immediately precedes an incredibly muddled discussion of "natural rights," in which Blackburn admits (and demonstrates) a complete inability to make any coherent sense of the idea of natural rights at all. It isn't a difficult concept: you have a "natural right" to something if and only if you can naturally enjoy it absent involvement or interference from other human beings. Thus, you do not have a "natural right" to free medical care or food or housing, none of which you would possess naturally without the involvement of other human beings, but you do have a natural right not to be murdered, mugged, etc., since clearly you are free of such indignities absent involvement of other human beings. Whether "natural rights" are an adequate foundation for a political order is another question, but the concept itself is neither confusing nor difficult (for a modern exposition see Murray Rothbard's "The Ethics of Liberty").
Elsewhere, Blackburn dogmatically declares, "'Slippery slope' reasoning needs to be resisted...everywhere." "Slippery slope" reasoning is the sort of argument that claims that if we begin by depriving the Jews of basic civil rights and making them second-class citizens we risk sliding down a "slippery slope" to a point where we finally commit the atrocity of murdering millions of Jews: therefore, we must never start on the "slippery slope" in the first place. As this historical example indicates, contrary to Blackburn's blanket anathema, "slippery slope" arguments are sometimes very appropriate indeed.
But does any of this matter? Isn't an ethical theorist entitled to a few silly remarks if his overarching grand theory provides a framework for the ethical life?
The problem is that the central theme of Blackburn's book is that there is no such grand overarching framework. The best we can do, he argues, is muddle around, consider individual issues, and try to hammer out some sensible conclusion. This is what Si himself does in this book, and, as the previous examples demonstrate, he does it incredibly badly.
Blackburn sums up his perspective in his concluding section, "...we need recognition in the eyes of others...From within our self-understanding, we can admit that these standards are ours--just ours." In the end, ethics as Si presents it is just shoddy self-satisfaction and a sleazy bid for social recognition.
The Western philosophical tradition, going back to Aristotle, took a less flippant view. It held that by acknowledging the basic biological and metaphysical fact of man's nature as a rational animal we can understand that certain moral rules, values, and virtues enable humans living in communities to exercise their rational nature in pursuit of survival and happiness.
This was the starting point of ethics: what exactly are the appropriate rules, values, and virtues which show respect for rational beings? And, secondly, once we have discovered these rules, values, and virtues, what can and should induce people to adhere to these rules, pursue these values, and develop these virtues? Those questions posed the subject matter of ethics. Ethics was not a parlor game to enable over-paid, under-worked Cambridge dons to feel good about themselves; ethics was about the constraints imposed upon human life and human communities by the facts of human nature.
To be sure, "Being Good" is at least readable if vapid; whereas, most twentieth-century academic philosophers were both inane and unreadable.
But, in most respects, Blackburn's facile and silly little book is indeed representative of the disastrous industry of academic philosophical ethics which played its own small role in the tragedies of the twentieth century.
Don't waste your time and money -- you can get equally good insights on ethics faster and cheaper from the average bartender. If you want to begin grappling with the real issues of ethics, try Alan Donagan's "The Theory of Morality," Murray Rothbard's "The Ethics of Liberty," John Mackie's "Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong," Ayn Rand's "The Virtue of Selfishness," and Robert Wright's "The Moral Animal." Those five authors differ on a host of issues, but at least they understand that ethics is not just a self-congratulatory game of feeling good about yourself and your fellow faculty members.
Rating: 2
Summary: confused and defensive
Comment: Blackburn's "short introduction to ethics" is an easy-to-absorb read for the novice, allowing one to learn about the field without venturing into long, heavily-written academic treatises. However, its contents seem misguided: the three sections focus on "threats to ethics", ethical issues, and the basis of ethics, and while the second section is appealing, the first and third seem misplaced.
Beginning an introduction to ethics by discussing its detractors, as Blackburn does in his opening "threats to ethics" section, seems out-of-order and defensive. Moreover, the subject matter exacerbates Blackburn's prose - wandering, disorganized, and vaguely preachy even when it lacks content.
The book's second section focuses on the issues that laypeople might associate with ethics: birth, death, the idea of happiness and what it constitutes. However, Blackburn's discussions are dominated by definition and exposition(i.e. "why is death important to people? why are we afraid of it? what have greek/roman/medieval philosophers said about its importance?") and ignore the modern field of ethics entirely. There is a chapter devoted to the major schools of modern ethics, but it doesn't tie into the rest of the book (so we don't learn whether, for example, Kant thought killing another person could ever be permissible). This incompleteness leaves the reader with no idea of what modern ethicists might say about humanity's most important concerns.
The book's third and final section discusses a number of attempts - both ancient and modern - to construct a universal, indisputable framework for ethics. This section is interesting but seems to miss the point: surely it would be more enjoyable and profitable to a reader who already know the basics of the field. Like the rest of "Being Good", it seems written not for the interested but uninformed audience it claims, but rather for the knowledgeable and skeptical reader who understands ethics and argues against its merit.
Rating: 5
Summary: Good enough
Comment: "Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics" is just that, a slim volume about the philosophy of ethics and how philosophers think about this subject. It is an introduction for people who are brave (or fooligh) enough to dare to ask "Why be good?". Far to few people it seems have bothered to ask this question or assumed there is a patent answer without ever taking that answer out into the daylight to examine it.
Thinking ethically isn't done in a vacuum, it is of a process. When faced with an ethical problem, how do you seek a solution? Do you try to maximize the good for the most people? Do you try to identify universal laws and then try to follow them? Do you seek the advice of authority figures or authoritative books?
The text is split into three distance parts, the first addresses what Mr. Blackburn refers to "threats to ethics." These threats include relativism, skepticism, nihilism, challenges to free will, and altruism. Threats are largely those things which suggest that there is no real reason to be good at all; it's just something we as a people do. With each topic, he explains why they do not make ethics "impossible" after all. Mr. Blackburn explains how religion's declining influence does not harm ethical thinking, in fact he views this in a positive light in that without religion frees us to make independent choices, rather than to simply be automatons. Relativism is a more serious challenge, but when taken to its logical conclusion relativism refutes itself and removes the arguer from the conversation altogether.
The second section discusses particular attitudes about ethical issues including birth, death, desire and the meaning of life, pleasure, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, freedom from the bad, freedom and paternalism, and rights and natural rights. This second section is the weakest and seems to be ill connected to the other two. This weakness is there despite the fact that the author is talking about such hot topics as abortion and euthanasia.
The third section looks at the larger question of whether the idea of ethics rests on anything at all. This I believe is the topic that unsettles most people. The thinking goes that without a basis there is no reason for ethics. Mr. Blackburn shows this to not be the case. Mr. Blackburn believes people should actively engage in ethical dialogue in an effort to arrive at a common point of view for making ethical decisions. This of course means that there is no guarantee that such conversation will be successful, but at least there is a chance, and without such a dialogue, there is no chance at all.
The book is demanding of its reader. It demands that one actually look at one's ethical system and see it for what it is.
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Title: Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy by Simon Blackburn ISBN: 0192100246 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning by Simon Blackburn ISBN: 0199241392 Publisher: Clarendon Pr Pub. Date: January, 2001 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: Ethics for Everyone: How to Increase Your Moral Intelligence by Arthur Dobrin ISBN: 0471435953 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 15 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Prescription Medicide: The Goodness of Planned Death by Jack Kevorkian ISBN: 0879758724 Publisher: Prometheus Books Pub. Date: September, 1993 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church by Investigative Boston Globe ISBN: 0316776750 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 03 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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