Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics Book

Being Good is not your typical ethics book: its sleek physical dimensions mirror Simon Blackburn's intelligent but unencumbered treatment of the main threats and origins of ethics. Blackburn addresses the fear that "ethical claims are a kind of sham" before sketching a roadmap of the history of ethics, its practical consequences, and ultimate foundations. All this is an ambitious task for such a diminutive volume. Simon Blackburn, a professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge, is one of the giants of contemporary moral theory and a trustworthy guide through its labyrinth. He prefers parsimony to complexity--helpful for readers with only a casual acquaintance with philosophy--and yet he manages to avoid trivialising his subject matter. Moreover, Being Good is wonderfully enlivened by illustrations by Paul Klee, William Blake, Eugene Delacroix, Francisco de Goya, and even Vietnam war photography and cartoons. Blackburn concludes on a promising note: "If we are careful, and mature, and imaginative, and fair, and nice, and lucky, the moral mirror in which we gaze at ourselves may not show us saints. But it need not show us monsters, either." --Eric de PlaceRead More

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  • Amazon

    This work confronts seven different objections to our self-image as moral, well-behaved creatures, and charts a course through the philosophical quicksands that often engulf us. In a godless world, has science unmasked us as creatures fated by our genes to be selfish and aggressive?

  • Foyles

    It is not only in our dark hours that scepticism, relativism, hypocrisy, and nihilism dog ethics. Whether it is a matter of giving to charity, or sticking to duty, or insisting on our rights, we can be confused, or be paralysed by the fear that our principles are groundless. Many are afraid that in a Godless world science has unmasked us as creatures fated by our genes to be selfish and tribalistic, or competitive and aggressive. Simon Blackburn, author of the best-selling Think, structures this short introduction around these and other threats to ethics. Confronting seven different objections to our self-image as moral, well-behaved creatures, he charts a course through the philosophical quicksands that often engulf us. Then, turning to problems of life and death, he shows how we should think about the meaning of life, and how we should mistrust the sound-bite sized absolutes that often dominate moral debates. Finally he offers a critical tour of the ways the philosophical tradition has tried to provide foundations for ethics, from Plato and Aristotle through to contemporary debates.

  • BookDepository

    Being Good : Paperback : Oxford University Press : 9780192853776 : 0192853775 : 17 Apr 2003 : This is a very short introduction to ethics. It divides into three parts: first, introducing and discussing reasons for skepticism about ethics; second introducing themes of birth, death, happiness, desire and freedom to show how deeply our lives are interwoven with ethics; third, introducing attempts to found ethics, due to Aristotle, Kant, and the contractarian tradition.

  • Blackwell

    Eminent philosopher Blackburn tackles the basics of ethics in this eloquent, engaging companion to his bestselling Think. 12 halftones. It is not only in our dark hours that scepticism, relativism, hypocrisy, and nihilism dog ethics.

  • 0192853775
  • 9780192853776
  • Simon Blackburn
  • 14 March 2002
  • Oxford Paperbacks
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 172
  • 2nd Revised edition
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