Catastrophe Ethics
How to Choose Well in a World of Tough Choices
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- 149,00 kr
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- 149,00 kr
Utgivarens beskrivning
How to live a morally decent life in the midst of today's constant, complex choices
In a world of often confusing and terrifying global problems, how should we make choices in our everyday lives? Does anything on the individual level really make a difference? In Catastrophe Ethics, Travis Rieder tackles the moral philosophy puzzles that bedevil us. He explores vital ethical concepts from history and today and offers new ways to think about the “right” thing to do when the challenges we face are larger and more complex than ever before.
Alongside a lively tour of traditional moral reasoning from thinkers like Plato, Mill, and Kant, Rieder posits new questions and exercises about the unique conundrums we now face, issues that can seem to transcend old-fashioned philosophical ideals. Should you drink water from a plastic bottle or not? Drive an electric car? When you learn about the horrors of factory farming, should you stop eating meat or other animal products? Do small commitments matter, or are we being manipulated into acting certain ways by corporations and media? These kinds of puzzles, Rieder explains, are everywhere now. And the tools most of us unthinkingly rely on to “do the right thing” are no longer enough. Principles like “do no harm” and “respect others” don’t provide guidance in cases where our individual actions don’t, by themselves, have any effect on others at all. We need new principles, with new justifications, in order to navigate this new world.
In the face of consequential and complex crises, Rieder shares exactly how we can live a morally decent life. It’s time to build our own catastrophe ethics.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rieder (In Pain), an associate research professor at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, investigates in this thought-provoking treatise how to live a "morally decent life" amid an accelerating climate crisis. Finding shortcomings with a variety of philosophical frameworks, including religion, nihilism, and Socratic reasoning, Rieder champions an "ethic of conscientiousness" that asks individuals to "live a better, more justifiable life" while giving them "latitude" in how they "participate in the global structures that benefit and harm." In the book's most stimulating section, Rieder applies that ethic to such moral quandaries as eating meat, driving gas-powered cars, and having children in a resource-starved world. (He lands somewhere in the middle on the latter question, acknowledging the ills of overpopulation while challenging "Schopenhauer-style" arguments that bringing a child into existence means inherently causing them harm.) Noting that today's "massive, structural problems" are unprecedented, Rieder wisely avoids settling on any one philosophical system, and instead models the value of "switch our moral cameras over into manual mode" to pick and choose elements from each. It's an excellent resource for the environmentally conscious weighing their life's choices.