Putting on Virtue
The Legacy of the Splendid Vices
By Jennifer A. Herdt
Review by Tom Grimwood on Tue, Nov 17th 2009. |  | No less than any other approach to ethics, Christian ethics is best discussed in terms of the tensions that it attempts to reconcile. Jennifer Herdt's book focuses on one of the fundamental tensions within the development of Christian morality: the status of "mimetic" virtue. If morality consists of possessing virtue, and virtue is habituated, how do distinguish between being moral, as opposed to merely "acting out" a moral position? Can we even become virtuous, indeed, "without first acting the part?" (p. 1)
Herdt's book is thus both a history of the formation of "true virtue" as a moral co
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Foundations of Forensic Mental Health Assessment
By Kirk Heilbrun, Thomas Grisso, Alan M. Goldstein
Review by Mirko Daniel Garasic on Tue, Nov 10th 2009. | Foundations of Forensic Mental Health Assessment (FMHA) is the first, introductory volume of a series of 20 books, to be published in next three years, focused on the best practice in forensic evaluation of topics such as criminal, civil and juvenile/family law.
This interesting work has the potential to be a very helpful tool. As Heilbrun, Grisso and Goldstein point out, this book could not have been written ten years ago for lack of information. In this respect, I think that any attempt to improve the general knowledge on a certain topic (or a group of topics as in this case) is praiseworth
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Normative Ethics
5 Questions
By Thomas Petersen and Jesper Ryberg (Editors)
Review by Patrick Giddy on Tue, Nov 10th 2009. |  | This book is an example of philosophical journalism, and -- to me surprisingly -- a good read. Eighteen professionals in the field of ethics are interviewed ("Five Questions" to do with their approach to the subject), each response reading rather like an article in the New Yorker. Which makes me think of its recent comic piece, "Attention, People of Earth!" (Sept 21, 2009), the aliens announcing very clearly that they mean no harm. Although it has to be admitted that there is a faction, thankfully not in power, that would like simply to annihilate the human species ("a significant majority of
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What Is Good and Why
The Ethics of Well-Being
By Richard Kraut
Review by Dan Turton on Tue, Nov 3rd 2009. | In this courageous book, Kraut continues the ancient tradition of analyzing theories and opinions about what is good for us; a task he sees as important because of its relevance for how we should live our lives. It might, at first glance, seem obvious what is good to us, but Kraut rightly notes that our common sense seems to lead us astray on this topic as often as it helps us. He also worries that some philosophers have based their theories of what is good for us on the failures of our common sense rather than the successes. Kraut correctly argues that only an understanding of what underpins
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Cruelty
Human Evil and the Human Brain
By Kathleen Taylor
Review by Wendy C. Hamblet, Ph.D., SAC (Dip.), on Tue, Oct 20th 2009. |  | Horrifying acts challenge our general sense of security and our unqualified trust in our fellow human beings. The explanations offered to clarify these horrors, no less than the events themselves, challenge the lofty philosophical descriptors traditionally assigned to our species: rational animals, social animals, thinking things. If we are inherently social, why the frequency of antisocial behaviors? If we are rational thinking beings, what twisted reasons motivate the rich inventory of our gratuitously harmful behaviors across the spectrum of human time?
Answers to the dilemma of gratuitous
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The Biology and Psychology of Moral Agency
By William A. Rottschaefer
Review by Marc Baer, Ph.D. on Tue, Oct 20th 2009. | The popularity of the subject of moral agency is not hard to explain. It raises questions that are central to understanding ourselves as moral beings: What is moral agency? How did we acquire our capacities to act as moral agents? How do we put these capacities to work? What makes for justified true moral beliefs, proper moral motivation, and successful moral action? In his recently re-issued 1998 book, The Biology and Psychology of Moral Agency, William Rottschaeffer offers an early attempt to bring current scientific findings to bear on these issues. He does so by taking up these questions f
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Normativity
By Judith Jarvis Thomson
Review by Lauren Tillinghast, Ph.D. on Tue, Oct 13th 2009. |  | Developed out of her 2003 Carus Lectures, Normativity presents Thomson's most recent thinking about what are, in her view, "the most important issues in metaethics." (ix) Among the issues Thomson takes up are several that are clearly central metaethical ones, such as how to analyze the concept of goodness, what the structure of evaluative judgment is, and how to understand judgments concerning what something ought to do, or be, or have, (The latter species Thomson calls "directive" rather than "evaluative.") Thomson also spends a significant portion of the book in discussion of issues that, th
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Deaf Identities in the Making
Local Lives, Transnational Connections
By Jan-Kare Breivik
Review by Laura Guidry-Grimes on Tue, Sep 29th 2009. | Deaf Identities in the Making is an intriguing travelogue that gives unique insight into the lives of ten Norwegians who are deaf or deafened. Jan-Kåre Breivik's book spans politics, disability issues, community formation, education, personal tragedy, personal triumph, and the role of language. On the one hand, the book's vastness is inevitable as a travelogue--interviewees were welcomed to discuss whatever matters to them as deaf/deafened people in a phonocentric world. On the other hand, the book's mere 206 pages seem inadequate for such an ambitious project. Deaf Identities is success
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