Everyday Ethics: Inspired Solutions to Real-Life Dilemmas

By Joshua Halberstam

Book Overview

"The perfect handbook for understanding what constitutes moral relations with friends, enemies, and one's own self." - Booklist In an age when most of us spend more time thinking about what movie we'll see than about how we want to lead our lives, nothing could be more timely and helpful than Everyday Ethics . In this refreshingly original book, Joshua Halberstam shows us how to develop a moral imagination-and have fun while doing it. Halberstam demolishes the cliches of both religion and psychotherapy and entices us into looking at the small actions that make up the big picture of our character and values. Should we really refrain from making judgments? Should we let our conscience be our guide even if it urges us not to pay our taxes? Halberstam has something intriguing to say about these and many other issues. Witty and entertaining, Everyday Ethics is the moral equivalent of an aerobic dance session, as exhilarating as it is instructive.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140165584
• ISBN13: 9780140165586
• Release Date: April 1994
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.1" x 7.8"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Excellent source for advice

To be brief: the book is an excellent (and right to the point) source for advice on issues where we usually find ourselves dealing with the "moral dilemma". It helps open the eyes; or for those with eyes open already, it helps keep the vision from getting blurry.

Everyone should read this book.

A witty, exciting presentation of the basic structure of ethical philosophy. Easy to read but thought-provoking. If everyone read this book and understood it, the world would be a much nicer place, but that is only an idealistic cliche.

Can't find my old copy--so it is time to buy a new one!

Simply a must have for anybody over the age of 15. I cannot remember the names of a lot of my college courses, but I do remember Issues of Morality in American Society. Why? Because this book was the only required reading in the course. Most of the class members ate it up--and you should too!

A snapshot into the fuzzy world of self-dialogue

What do we say when we talk to ourselves? What is the self-dialogue we engage in to rationalize our behavior, our thoughts, our moral choices? Should we feel guilty about our destructive thoughts? Halberstam takes these questions, and many others and articulates them in this delightful, pithy book. Of _course_ the moral advice are cliches. The book's value, like any effective work on morality, is not in being inventive about new angles to pursue ethics; rather, it makes the jaded eye look back to the things that are most quintessential to the human experience (and thus, the most easily ignored). Articulating the process by which we process our thoughts, our justifications, and our moral judgements is not an easy business, and Halberstam executes that task with humor, compassion and thoughtfulness. A terrific gift book.