What Is Good?: The Search for the Best Way to Live - Hardcover

Grayling, A. C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297841327 ISBN 13: 9780297841326

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003

Synopsis

In his major new book A.C. Grayling examines the different ways to live a good life, as proposed from classical antiquity to the recent present. Grayling focuses on the two very different conceptions of what a good life should be: one is a broadly secular view rooted in attitudes about human nature and the human condition; the other is a broadly transcendental view which locates the source of moral value outside the human realm. In the modern world - the world shaped by the rise of science in the seventeenth century - these two views have come increasingly into conflict, and the constantly accumulating tension between them is one of the greatest problems faced by the twenty-first century. Using his renowned clarity of thought and philosophical rigour, AC Grayling has produced an invaluable guide through mankind's ethical struggle to live decently.

About this title

About the Author:

Anthony Grayling teaches philosophy at Birkbeck College, London and is a Fellow of St Anne's, Oxford. He reviews regularly in the Financial Times. He has a regular column in Prospect and the Guardian on Saturday.

Review:

How do we live a good life? Grayling is a professional philosopher, and his latest book - subtitled 'The Search for The Best Way To Live' - is an attempt to focus upon the big question with which philosophy has been perennially preoccupied. Addressing a 'general reader' without condescension, Grayling depicts an ongoing conflict between 'secular' and 'transcendental' attempts to define the good life. Between, that is, a tradition based upon enlightened humanism and those opposing traditions which tend to manifest themselves in organised religions. Grayling is hardly a neutral observer of the debate. He is, rather, a passionate humanist, alert to the contemporary dangers of a variety of fundamentalisms. He tends, at points, to oversimplify the opposition. But this is an admirably clear and engaging book, as well as a learned one.

About this edition

• Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0297841327
• ISBN 13: 9780297841326
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256