Moral Courage - Hardcover

Kidder, Rushworth M

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060591544 ISBN 13: 9780060591540

Publisher: William Morrow, 2005

Synopsis

Why did a group of teenagers watch a friend die instead of putting their own reputations at risk? Why did a top White House official decide to come clean and accept a prison sentence during Watergate? Why did a finance executive turn down millions out of respect for her employer? Why are some willing to risk their futures to uphold principles? What gives us the strength to stand up for what we believe?

As these questions suggest, the topic of moral courage is front and center in today's culture. Enron, Arthur Andersen, the U.S. Olympic Committee, abusive priests, cheating students, domestic violence -- all these remind us that taking ethical stands should be a higher priority in our culture. Why, when people discern wrongdoing, are they sometimes unready, unable, or unwilling to act?

In a book rich with examples, Rushworth Kidder reveals that moral courage is the bridge between talking ethics and doing ethics. Defining it as a readiness to endure danger for the sake of principle, he explains that the courage to act is found at the intersection of three elements: action based on core values, awareness of the risks, and a willingness to endure necessary hardship. By exploring how moral courage spurs us to strive for core values, he demonstrates the benefits of ethical action to the individual and to society -- and the severe consequences that can result from remaining morally dormant.

Moral Courage puts indispensable concepts and tools into our hands, equipping us to respond to the increasingly complicated moral challenges we face at work, at home, and in our communities. It enables us to make clear, confident decisions by exploring some litmus-test questions:

• Is the benefit worth the risk?
• Am I motivated by my desire to uphold my beliefs or just to impose them on others?
• Will my actions create collateral damage among those with no stake in the outcome?

While physical courage may no longer be a necessary survival skill or an essential rite of passage out of childhood, few would dispute the growing need for moral courage as the true gauge of maturity. Treating this subject not as an esoteric branch of philosophy but as a practical necessity for modern life, Kidder deftly leads us to a clear understanding of what moral courage is, what it does, and how to get it.

About this title

About the Author:

Rushworth M. Kidder was a professor of English at Wichita State University for ten years before becoming an award-winning columnist and editor at the Christian Science Monitor. The author of ten books on subjects ranging from international ethics to the global future, he won the 1980 Explicator Literary Foundation Award for his book on the poetry of E.E. cummings. He and his wife, Elizabeth, live in Lincolnville, Maine.

From Publishers Weekly:

Defining moral courage as "the quality of mind and spirit that enables one to face up to ethical challenges firmly and confidently," Kidder, president of the Institute for Global Ethics, offers a treatise on the "courage to be moral" replete with examples and analysis. He offers a step-by-step guide, including checklists, on how to apply moral values to difficult situations, understand risks (more often career troubles and social ostracism than physical harm) and endure hardships brought on by moral courage itself. He explores how and why people can fail to be morally courageous, and ways that they can learn to behave better, offering anecdotes that range from an investment firm employee choosing to confess a potentially costly mistake to a married couple refusing to let unmarried guests sleep together, despite prevailing cultural norms. The book is weaker on the philosophical side. An extended distinction drawn between physical and moral courage ends up muddy and sometimes patronizing toward those whose courage entails only physical risk; it appears almost as if moral courage were a white-collar courage and physical courage a less exalted blue-collar sort. The analysis of how moral action and values interlock is never thoroughly convincing, since the former seems to cover almost anyone who claims to stand on principle (such as the boss who cut his workers' wages by $3 an hour), but there is enough thoughtfulness here for a substantive introduction to a worthwhile subject.
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About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0060591544
• ISBN 13: 9780060591540
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320