Introducing Ethics - Softcover

Robinson, Dave

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1840465808 ISBN 13: 9781840465808

Publisher: Icon,Totem Books, 2004

Synopsis

Ethics has become the burning issue of current moral philosophical thought, raising the spectre of responsibility at a time when responsibility seems entirely replaced by uncertainty and relativism. What is the place of individual choice and consequence in a post-Holocaust world of continuing genocidal ethnic cleansing? Is 'identity' now a last-ditch cultural defence of ethic nationalisms and competing fundamentalisms? In a climate of instant information, free markets and possible ecological disaster, how do we define 'rights', self-interest and civic duties? What are the acceptable limits of scientific investigation and genetic engineering, the rights and wrongs of animal rights, euthanasia and civil disobedience? This book confronts these dilemmas, tracing the arguments of the great moral thinkers, including Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes and Kant, and brings us up to date with postmodern critics.

About this title

About the Author

Dave Robinson has taught philosophy for many years and is the author of numerous Introducing titles. Chris Garratt is the cartoonist behind the legendary Biff comic strip in the Guardian.

From Library Journal

This book series is part of an alarming trend in higher education?learning through amusement?and an even more alarming new genre?intellectual comic books trafficking as serious learning tools. It is to philosophy what the Classic Comic is to literature and the campaign ad to politics: Cliff Notes meet the sound bite. Short on text and long on large cartoons?emotivism gets 13 lines and four dialog balloons; the Theory of Forms seven lines and two balloons?the texts badly introduce individual thinkers or areas of thought. The sound bite is empty enough when presenting facts, but as a way to get across concepts, positions and arguments, it is self-defeating. These works necessarily emphasize what the thinker thinks, presented informationally, not why or how those conclusions were reached. Thus, even when the texts aren't superficial, the thinkers' claims are utterly obscure. The art work is high quality and witty, and the agenda clearly postmodern?Kant is read as a protodeconstructionist, the universalist enterprise of ethics gets mocked. Thus, their best audience is the opposite of the one intended: not the beginner but the advanced reader of philosophy who can appreciate the fun. At their best, these works belong in Father Guido Sarducci's "Five-Minute College," in which for each course he gives a slogan. At their worst, these books will change remembering a slogan to remembering a picture. Not recommended.?Lee Horvitz, Miami Univ., Middletown, Ohio
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Icon,Totem Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1840465808
• ISBN 13: 9781840465808
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176