The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature

Rating:
Summary: moral life
Review: I use this book as a text book for my introduction to ethics course at a local community college. This book is not only great for a text but also very interesting to read. Some of the selections are difficult to understand and are difficult reading but over all it is a great book for those wishing to gain a broad base of knowledge on a variety of moral theories and issues.

Rating:
Summary: Uneven, Verbose, Biased
Review: Pojman teaches at the Military Academy at West Point, and is a known proponet of the death penalty; that's not why Om giving him a bad review. This might not even distress you, but getting ethics from west point seems to me like getting Gay and Lesbian studies from Brigham Young.

Authors like Nieziche, John Stuart Mill, and Ayn Rand will start off a chapter, only to be immediately refuted by someone like Phillip Hallie or Jean Bethke Elshtain who make anyone remotely relativist, egoist, utilitarian seem like some sort of heartless monster. These obscure types all seem to have failed comp. Granted, I'm no fan of Niziche or Rand, but the entire voice of the volume (not to mention the several essays Pojman writes himself) seems self-referential and absolutist. Pojman claims that "parents would abandon or abuse their children and spouses abandon each other whenever it was convenient...commitment, loyalty, fidelity all...are moral notions." (39); animals have no morality, and, yet, they protect their offspring.

Pojman seems to believe that on our own, we humans will not only sink down to the level of animals, but below the level of animals; not even Hobbes will believe that. The first work of literature is Lord of the Flies, and it seems to set the tone for the entire chapter. Literature like Sophie's choice and a narrow sliver from The Brother's Karamozov seems to lean toward the sensationalist rather than the insightful, while the philosophical essays, as always, reduce human nature down to its most absurd situations.

This volume is edited in such a way, that it presents an untrusting view of humanity, and an even less trusting view of society. In my opinion, there's too much urgency and not enough scholarship for this book to serve me well. My ethics professor says he thinks Pojman makes a good foil; at 68 bucks, that's one expensive foil.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: This is the best book available on the interrelationship between ethics and literature. Seeing the moral dimension of the works of Hawhorne, Hugo, Huxley, LeGuin and scores of others highlights the importance of morality in our lives and awakens the imagination to possibilities hitherto ignored. This is a wonderful book which every intlligent person should read.