An Ethical Life
A Practical Guide to Ethical Reasoning
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ITEM #
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7040
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ISBN:
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978-1-59982-074-3
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Size:
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5.375 x 8.25
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Type:
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paper
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Pages:
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254 pages
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Print:
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$25.95
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An Ethical Life is a highly readable, engaging, and eminently practical guide for anyone who wants to learn how to think more clearly, deeply, and consistently about ethics. If your students have ever struggled to explain what makes any given decision ethical, or how one should “decide” what is right, this book is for you.
Using a framework for discussion and deliberation called the Four-Way Method for Ethical Decision-Making, Richard Kyte shows students how it’s possible to work out complex ethical problems on their own. Grappling with ethical issues, and being able to articulate the reasoning behind decision-making, requires the development of native abilities only—no sophisticated theories necessary.
Other features of An Ethical Life:
• Biographies introduce influential philosophers in the history of ethics
• Activity boxes provide exercises for in-class activities or group exercises
• An appendix on method application includes case and issue examples
After finishing the book, readers will come away confident that ethical reasoning is a skill everyone is capable of learning and mastering, just like any other. Most important, students will discover that this skill can be practically employed to live life more fully, meaningfully, and well.
“Richard Kyte’s An Ethical Life: A Practical Guide to Ethical Reasoning is first-rate. It is wonderfully accessible, deeply informed, and genuinely constructive. The text’s integrating theme is that the influential and contending theories arising out of Mill’s utilitarianism, Kant’s categorical imperative, and an Aristotelian account of the virtues can converge—creatively—in one’s personal moral vision, in our shared problem-solving, and in fashioning good public policy. This creative convergence, Kyte emphasizes, depends on a healthy regard for the framework of facts that at every level are the context of moral inquiry.
A key to the text’s success is the wealth of examples Kyte explores. He shows a keen awareness of particular challenges in securing a sustainable ecological balance. He is on good terms with contemporary research in moral psychology. At the same time, he is at home with both the shining lights of American philosophy and the enduring wisdom of the Greek classics, and he does not hesitate to build bridges between the insights of philosophers and the wisdom of theologians.
I warmly recommend this fresh and engaging book to anyone looking for a balanced and student-friendly introductory text in ethics.”
-James G. Hanink, professor of philosophy
Loyola Marymount University
