Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The Time of Our Lives: The Ethics of Common Sense by Mortimer Jerome Adler, Deal W. Hudson ISBN: 0-8232-1670-5 Publisher: Fordham University Press Pub. Date: April, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Outstanding! An intelligent, readable theory of ethics
Comment: Adler poses a theory of ethics for everyone. It is necessarily lacking in practical terms, as everyone is different, but it provides a theoretical foundation that is applicable to everyone. It provides a foundation for ethical theory--why ethics is important and what rights are needed to ensure we can succeed in our pursuit of the good life. Following the Aristotelian tradition, it lays out the importance of improving oneself and (in true common sense style) ranks improving oneself higher than pursuits for pure pleasure--which provide no lasting "good" after the pleasure has been experienced. To suggest, as another reviewer from MN has, that this means it is "bad" to go on a vacation, stems clearly from a failure to understand the book. (If you've read Ayn Rand and then read criticisms which say she is a hedonist who steps on others for her own pleasure, you have a good idea of the error made here.) And indeed, it takes nothing more than common sense to know that if someone goes to a bar everyday, his life won't--in the end--be as "good" as someone who devotes the time to improving himself. But this text requires the ability to apply its principles to each individual. It is as sound an ethical theory as anyone can possibly formulate, but again, for Joe Sixpack, the devil is in the details.
Rating: 3
Summary: Interesting, but I don't buy the thesis
Comment: In a nutshell the theme of this book harkens back to Socrates: A life not examined is not worth living. This certainly has some merit among those people who have the intellect to do so. However, Adler thinks that every person should spend a great deal of time at intellectual pursuits, in intellectual self-improvement and finally at intellectual introspection. As such, he then attacks the more common pursuits: television, alcohol, the accumulation of material objects. It seems as though Adler has a harsh word for everyone except himself and his ivory tower peers (those peers who think the way he does, for he has no fondness for "beatniks, hippies, self-alienated refugees from reason or existentialist cop-outs".
Adler states that we are all victims of a society that stresses the importance of sensual pleasures and frivilous commodities and a society that does not clearly delineate the between the "frivilous and serious use of free time." I guess the average worker should be ashamed of his or herself for hitting the bars after work or using their hard earned paycheck to indulge in a Caribbean vacation.
Adler's philosophy of the "Good Life" is fine for eggheads (and the book is thought provoking if you take the time to work through it) but I cannot go along with the idea that it should be a blueprint for living the "Good Life" for all mankind.
 |
Title: How to Speak, How to Listen by Mortimer Jerome Adler ISBN: 0684846470 Publisher: MacMillan Publishing Company Pub. Date: 01 April, 1997 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
 |
Title: The Common Sense of Politics by Mortimer Jerome Adler, John Van Doren ISBN: 0823216675 Publisher: Fordham University Press Pub. Date: June, 1996 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
 |
Title: Some Questions About Language: A Theory of Human Discourse and Its Objects by Mortimer Jerome Adler ISBN: 0812691784 Publisher: Open Court Publishing Company Pub. Date: October, 1991 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
 |
Title: TRUTH IN RELIGION by Mortimer J. Adler ISBN: 0020641400 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 1992 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
 |
Title: The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes by Mortimer Jerome Adler, Deal Hudson ISBN: 0823215350 Publisher: Fordham University Press Pub. Date: September, 1993 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
