Splitting the Difference: Compromise and Integrity in Ethics and Politics - Softcover

Benjamin, Martin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0700604553 ISBN 13: 9780700604555

Publisher: University Press of Kansas, 1990

Synopsis

Politics is often characterized as the "art of compromise"—the implication being that compromise is desirable and that insight, imagination, discipline, and skill are all necessary for a satisfactory and successful compromise. Compromise in ethics, however, is quite another matter: there, it is usually regarded as a sign of weakness or lack of integrity. From Socrates and Sir Thomas More to Gandhi, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Martin Luther King, Jr., we revere these men and women not only for the nature of their convictions but also for their unwavering refusal to compromise.

Does this point to an important difference between politics and ethics? Martin Benjamin here explores, in the first book-length treatment, the surprisingly rich and complex notion of compromise and integrity in ethics and politics. With wide-ranging examples drawn from Tolstoy to Ralph Nader and from a variety of medical and bioethical cases Benjamin presents in a clear, straightforward fashion an examination of the interplay between compromise and integrity.

In the process, Benjamin tackles tough questions—the relationship between practical and theoretical ethics, what compromise means for ethical theory, how moral judgments affect compromise, and whether it is possible to compromise without being compromised. In the final chapter Benjamin explores the possibility of political compromise in a matter of great ethical significance—abortion.

About this title

About the Author

Martin Benjamin, coauthor of Ethical Issues at the Outset of Life (with William Weil) and Ethics in Nursing (with Joy Curtis), is professor of philosophy at Michigan State University. He has been an NEH fellow at the Hastings Center and is a member of the Legislative Task Force on Death and Dying of the Michigan House of Representatives and chair of the Ethics and Social Impact Committee of the Transplant Policy Center at the University of Michigan.

From the Back Cover

"Bold and exciting. . . .This is by far the best book dealing with compromise. It reads beautifully and opens up all sorts of important new approaches for the applied ethicist. . . . It will be well-received and much discussed."--Mike W. Martin, author of Self-Deception and Morality and coauthor of Ethics in Engineering

Edition details

• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0700604553
• ISBN 13: 9780700604555
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 108