135 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Ethics for Everyone , livre ebook

Turner Publishing Company - Arthur Dobrin

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

135 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Ethics for Everyone

Is it always wrong to lie? Is it always right to try to help another person? Are you bound to keep every promise you make? In Ethics for Everyone: How to Increase Your Moral Intelligence, you'll find out how well you make moral choices and learn how to increase your ability to understand and analyze ethical dilemmas. This sensible, practical guide provides thoughtful-and sometimes surprising-answers to tough real-world questions. You'll sort through dozens of tricky ethical issues with the help of:
* Twenty-one dramatic true stories showing real-life ethics in action- and you are asked to make ethical choices
* A personal ethics quiz to determine your own ethical potential
* Harm and benefits assessments of various courses of action
* Expert opinions from spiritual leaders, counselors, attorneys, psychologists, and other experts
Introduction.

PART ONE: ETHICS MATTERS.

1 Everyday Ethics.

2 The Basics.

3 A Little Theory.

4 Ethical Judgments.

5 Finding a Way to Decide.

PART TWO: YOUR MORAL INTELLIGENCE.

6 Improving Your Moral IQ.

PART THREE: ETHICS WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS: BEING ETHICAL TO THOSE CLOSEST TO ME.

7 Should I Always Keep a Confidence?

8 Should I Stop Someone from Hurting Himself?

9 What Does Personal Loyalty Require of Me?

10 Is It Right for Me to Use Someone to Make My Point?

11 Is Life Always Worth Living?

12 Do I Reveal a Secret If I Think It Helps?

13 Is It Moral for Me to Help Someone Commit Suicide?

14 Does My Child Have the Right to Privacy?

15 Should I Compete against Friends?

16 What Do I Owe an Elderly Parent?

17 How Do I Know What Is Fair?

PART FOUR: ETHICS IN THE WORLD.

18 How Long Must I Keep a Promise?

19 Can the Ends Justify the Means I Use?

20 Is It Ever Right for Me to Discriminate?

21 Is It Moral for Me to Take Advantage of a Technicality?

22 Should My Personal Values Stay at Home?

23 What Should I Do with Money I Find?

24 Should I Be Free to Choose All My Associations?

25 Does It Matter What I Buy?

26 Do I Confront People about Their Habitsor What They Wear?

27 How Responsible Should I Be?

Afterword.

Selected Bibliography.

The Interviewees.

Index.

Sujets

Philosophie

Éthique et morale

Moral Philosophy

Philosophie et théologie

Philosophy

Ethics

Ethique et morale

Informations

Publié par	Turner Publishing Company
Date de parution	21 avril 2008
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780470318232
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0798€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Ethics for Everyone

How to Increase Your Moral Intelligence
A RTHUR D OBRIN

John Wiley Sons, Inc.
Copyright 2002 by Arthur Dobrin. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., New York
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 750-4744.
Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley Sons, Inc., 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158-0012, (212) 850-6011, fax (212) 850-6008, e-mail: PERMREQ@WILEY.COM.
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dobrin, Arthur, date.
Ethics for everyone : how to increase your moral intelligence / Arthur Dobrin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-471-43 595-3(pbk.)
1. Moral development. I. Title.
BF723.M54 D625 2002
155.2 5-dc21 2001046857
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
This discussion is not about any chance question, but about the way one should live.
P LATO , The Republic
Contents

Introduction
P ART O NE Ethics Matters
1 Everyday Ethics
2 The Basics
3 A Little Theory
4 Ethical Judgments
5 Finding a Way to Decide
P ART T WO Your Moral Intelligence
6 Improving Your Moral IQ
P ART T HREE Ethics with Family and Friends: Being Ethical to Those Closest to Me
7 Should I Always Keep a Confidence?
8 Should I Stop Someone from Hurting Himself?
9 What Does Personal Loyalty Require of Me?
10 Is It Right for Me to Use Someone to Make My Point?
11 Is Life Always Worth Living?
12 Do I Reveal a Secret If I Think It Helps?
13 Is It Moral for Me to Help Someone Commit Suicide?
14 Does My Child Have the Right to Privacy?
15 Should I Compete against Friends?
16 What Do I Owe an Elderly Parent?
17 How Do I Know What Is Fair?
P ART F OUR Ethics in the World
18 How Long Must I Keep a Promise?
19 Can the Ends Justify the Means I Use?
20 Is It Ever Right for Me to Discriminate?
21 Is It Moral for Me to Take Advantage of a Technicality?
22 Should My Personal Values Stay at Home?
23 What Should I Do with Money I Find?
24 Should I Be Free to Choose All My Associations?
25 Does It Matter What I Buy?
26 Do I Confront People about Their Habits or What They Wear?
27 How Responsible Should I Be?
Afterword
Selected Bibliography
The Interviewees
Index
Introduction
How to Use This Book
This book is designed to help you improve your moral IQ in much the same way that a law student learns to become a lawyer. First there is a little theory about the nature of morality, next there is a quiz to provide you with a picture of how you think about ethical problems, and finally there are case studies of ethical problems.
Take the time to read Part One , Ethics Matters. While you don t need to be a philosopher to make sound moral judgments, it does help to understand something about the ethics itself.
Next, take the ethical quiz in Part Two . Here you will find four moral problems. Read the instructions, then answer the questions. Keep a copy of your responses.
Then read the twenty-one case studies in Parts Three and Four. Each vignette is followed by a series of questions. Think about them carefully. Jot down your answers before reading my and another expert s comments. After you ve read our responses to the problem, see how your answers compare with what you ve read.
Finally, go back to the quiz in Part Two . Without referring to your previous responses, answer the questions to the four stories once more. Now look at your two sets of answers. Did you change your mind about anything? If you did, what was different? Why do you think your answers differed?
This kind of reflection, self-questioning, and comparison will help sharpen your ability to detect ethical issues and help improve your moral IQ by making you more sensitive to moral matters.
P ART O NE

Ethics Matters
1

Everyday Ethics
Talking Ethics
One day, Irma made a call from a public phone booth. When she put down the receiver, quarters poured out of the coin return. Irma related this little drama to me one evening, then asked, What should I do with the money? She was serious. She really wanted to know. Keeping the money bothered her, she said, but she wasn t convinced that returning it was right, either. So Irma and I spent some time talking about it. The more we conversed, the deeper we went into the moral issues that were revealed. While the amount of money was small, the ethical issues that it raised were significant.
As the leader of the Ethical Humanist Society for more than thirty years, I have had people like Irma seek me out to talk about their moral quandaries. For many years I ve led a discussion group called Everyday Ethics, where people come to discuss ethical problems they face. Some of the problems are as small as Irma s, but others have been as significant as what to do about a relative who needs living assistance but refuses all help.
Most of the problems we talk about have to do with telling the truth, loyalty, and fairness, and they often involve matters of money, work, relatives, and friends. They present conflicts of values and interests. We seldom start our discussions agreeing about what the right thing to do is, and it isn t unusual for us to end in disagreement. Somewhere along the line, though, each of us has gained a better insight into the nature of morality. The dialogue has served its purpose.
I think about these practical, common ethical issues on a daily basis. This is what I do for a living. I am involved with people who want to live an ethical life. They are concerned with how to live responsibly. They want to know what it means to be moral and how to go about achieving this. They are troubled by the conflicts they sometimes experience between personal happiness and social responsibility; they often have difficulties weighing the options for action when no course seems right. There is fuzziness about personal likes and dislikes and some objective measure by which to decide whether something is ethical. There is uncertainty about the relationship between practical outcomes and principled positions. So people seek me out. They want to know what I think. They want me to help them to think more clearly. They want to check out their own feelings, to see if they are leading them down a moral path.
Members in the Ethical Movement have looked to me for moral guidance. They re not looking to talk to a philosopher in the academic sense. I m not a technical ethicist. They seek me out the way someone with spiritual questions goes to a clergyman, not a theologian. They want someone who helps in a practical way, not in an academic fashion.
Living with Ethics
I have lived trying to puzzle out what it means to live a good life in the real world. I ve spent most of my life working with ordinary people who are trying to cope as best they can in a world that rarely stresses ethics. Success is often a higher value; ambition is frequently more valued than caring is. And caring for oneself seems to be far more important than caring for the community. This isn t to say that success, ambition, and self-care aren t important. They are. But for us to live a good life, we must place them in a larger ethical setting. I ve learned this over and over again from experience. The people who are happiest are mainly those who have learned how to balance their ethical values with other values.
In addition to my activities in the Ethical Movement, I am a professor of humanities at Hofstra University. There I teach literature, religious ethics, and the psychology of morality. This provides me with the opportunity to pursue ethical knowledge on a more theoretical level. I keep up with the latest studies. I keep abreast of the experiments and surveys that look at the way children grow up to be ethical adults. But even here, ethical problems arise. What do I do with a student who needs to get at least a C in my class because he would otherwise lose his scholarship but who doesn t deserve the grade? Do I keep strictly to my absence policy when a student really has been sick? In a seminar where everyone is required to contribute, how do I treat a student who is silent because she is afraid to speak up in public?
For a number of years I have been involved with bioethical questions. I was a member of the Human Subjects Review Board at a major teaching hospital for several years. This group made such decisions as whether a doctor could perform a needed procedure or offer an experimental drug. We looked to make sure that the patient understood what was being proposed and had not been unduly pressured to give his consent. We also had to weigh benefits against risks. Twice we rejected proposals because we thought that the means the researcher wanted to use weren t justified, even though the possible benefits for patients were great.
I am now a member of the Ethics Committee at Winthrop University Hospital, a teaching hospital in Mineola, New York. This group helps set policies for the hospital involving matters of life and death. One major discussion we had was about whether requests for permi