Ethical Wisdom
What Makes Us Good
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- €10.99
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- €10.99
Publisher Description
From the best-selling author of Sex Death Enlightenment: A True Story
What lies behind the decisions that shape our moral universe? Mark Matousek takes a fascinating journey inside what makes us good (or not)
Since the days of the first primitive tribes, we have tried to determine why one man is good and another evil. Mark Matousek arrives at the answer in Ethical Wisdom.
Contrary to what we've been taught in our reason-obsessed culture, emotions are the bedrock of ethical life; without them, human beings cannot be empathic, moral or good.
But how do we make the judgement call between self-interest and caring for others? What does being good really mean? Which parts of morality are biological, which ethical? When should instinct be trusted and when does it lead us into trouble? How can we know ourselves to be good amidst the hypocrisy, fears and sabotaging appetites that pervade our two-sided natures?
Drawing on the latest scientific research and interviews with social scientists, spiritual leaders, ex-cons, altruists and philosophers, Matousek examines morality from a scientific, sociological, and anthropological standpoint. Each chapter features a series of questions, readings, interviews, parables and anecdotes that zoom in on a particular niche of moral enquiry, making this book both utilitarian and fun.
Ethical Wisdom is an insightful and important book for readers crisscrossing their own murky moral terrain.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Matousek (Sex Death Enlightenment) makes a case for why human beings are inherently ethical creatures in a provocative book that suffers from uneven execution. Wired from birth with "mirror neurons" that function involuntarily, and cause us, for instance, to tear up when others cry: "Emotions, not reason," Matousek asserts, "are the bedrock of ethical life." Drawing on philosophy, neurological and psychiatric research, anthropology, pop psychology, and mysticism, he debunks the belief that organized religion is a necessary framework for an ethical sense, and demonstrates that moral behavior evolves out of a complex interaction between our built-in empathy for those we identify as like ourselves, and the way we respond (or don't respond) to the supposedly abstract suffering of those we deem as "other." In the hands of an Oliver Sacks, this braiding of the scientific, moral, and anecdotal could be revelatory; Matousek, however, repeatedly substitutes opinions and inferences for fact, sapping his argument's credibility and his reader's patience.