Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this book from St Augustine Press via EdelweissPlus, free of charge, for review purposes on this blog. No compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it, all opinions are my own
Appropriately enough maybe, we're ending our New Year New You series,
with some really great books!
This is another book that can work for YOU and for your kids, especially if you homeschool!
Synopsis:
This is not a typical ethics textbook.
Most ethics textbooks are anthologies of articles by contemporary philosophers, or a whole book by one contemporary philosopher, about ethical puzzles to be solved by logical analysis. This is good mental exercise but it will not change your life, and you will not remember it ten years from now. You will not remember a hundred bright little ideas, you will remember only a few Big Ideas, the ones that changed your life. This book is about 52 of them..
And it is by 32 great philosophers. They are all dead. (Philosophers die, but philosophy does not; it buries all its undertakers.) Living philosophers who write ethics textbooks are usually very bright, but they do not include any name we know will live for centuries. Why apprentice yourself to second rate scribblers like me when you can apprentice yourself to the greatest minds in history? Why not learn from Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche? Why prefer little minds to big ones?
They disagree with each other, to be sure, but all of them will help you, not least those who contradict you and challenge you, and stretch you by forcing you to reply to them, and fight with them. I am appalled by the fact that 90% of the best philosophy students at the best universities, which say they cultivate "diversity," have exactly the same politically correct opinions, whether of the Left or the Right.
When you were a child your mother probably reminded you before you went out not to forget something like your lunch box or your umbrella. Ethics today is usually treated that way: as an afterthought: check with an ethicist before doing the really important things like business or law or medicine or diplomacy. But ethics is not a P.S. to life. It is about the most fundamental things in life: values, good and evil. Socrates said that a good person does not worry much about little things like whether he lives or dies, but only about big things like whether he is a good person or a bad one.
Review:
Ethics was a required class back when I went to college. Course I went to a long standing Jesuit school that loved to make sure we could argue about ANYTHING, so a class in Ethics seemed normal to their course outline. What I didn't realize was just how much the class would be USED by all of us students! Kreeft moans of the deciveness in universities today and it is true that true FREE critical thinking seems to have been taken away and placed with sheepdom. We argues with our professors, sometimes well, sometimes in error, but they allowed us to do so. Validity, well spoken arguments HAD THEIR PLACE. There were times when using the lessons from our ethics class helped us to change not only our professor's thinking, but that of the college itself.
This book reminds me of that class- we also did more of a 'greatest hit' look at philosophy and morals, and Kreeft does a great job in bringing real life examples into play, so even if the philosopher is ancient, you can see how the ideal they taught, can still be used today in your own life-personal and working. For those wanting a great elective for high schoolers that are being homeschooled, this is the book to get them THINKING, BEFORE they start college, so that they can be the next generation to stand up and defend themselves well. But be forewarned, there might be a few family debates emerge over rules and restrictions, LOL. This is a valuable resource and an excellent book for giving as well!
About the Author:
Peter Kreeft is a Catholic apologist, professor of philosophy at Boston College and The King's College, and author of over 45 books including Fundamentals of the Faith , Everything you Ever Wanted to Know about Heaven , and Back to Virtue . Some consider him the best Catholic philosopher currently residing in the United States. His ideas draw heavily from religious and philosophical tradition, especially Thomas Aquinas, Socrates, G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis. Kreeft has writings on Socratic logic, the sea, Jesus Christ, the Summa Theologica, angels, Blaise Pascal, and Heaven, as well as his work on the Problem of Evil, for which he was interviewed by Lee Strobel in his bestseller, The Case for Faith
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