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A review by pascalibrary
Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics by Simon Blackburn
3.0
3.25/5 - Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics is good, but only for a beginner in this sphere. Even then, it has serious flaws. The depth is lacking, the focus is uneven, but it gave me enough great information to be a worth the time.
Simon Blackburn's other book, Think, was so good that I thought I had to buy this one. Recently, I had been struggling with the problems of moral nihilism and relativism, so I desperately wanted to see what philosophy had to answer that with. It turns out, not much. This isn't a flaw in and of itself. If philosophy can't deal with them, then I can hardly knock Blackburn for being unable to answer my concerns.
The book is divided into three sections. The first one is given to challenges to ethical systems, like the ones I mentioned above. Some of these explanations are great, and Blackburn was able to dismantle these views. Others, like skepticism, relativism, and nihilism went almost completely unaddressed throughout the book, or ended up being acknowledged in some form. His summaries were decent, but he occasionally went into long-winded rants that were both boring and mostly unrelated.
The second part is dedicated to areas where moral debates come into play, such as life, death, pleasure, and rights. This section was full of discussions that were reminiscent of Platonic dialogues. They gave answers and challenges in turn, and generally didn't offer a resolution. In fact, this entire book could be seen as being like that. Regardless, this section is where Blackburn most often strays into lengthy and barely tangential discussions on society, which is why I said the focus is lacking. He also discusses Utilitarianism in this section, which is weird considering that the next section is dedicated to systems of ethics. This middle third was the worst part of the book, and seriously slowed down my progress.
The third part is easily the most interesting. Here, he goes over various philosophical proposals of ethical foundations, like Aristotle's virtue ethics, Kant's Categorical Imperative, and Rawls's Justice as Fairness principle. These were fascinating to read about, but this is the shortest section of the book by far. Its insane that he gives so little time to the most important section. He also dismisses Rawls's theory with very little justification. I thought the Justice as Fairness and Original Position theory were novel and fascinating, but he kneecaps it here. As mentioned above, he discusses Utilitarianism in the second section rather than here, which I think is dumb.
Being Good is an odd book. I'm not taking points off because of its failure to live up to my expectations. I'm taking off points because of its failure to even live up to its premise. Its an introduction, sure, but the introductory material is partially buried underneath Blackburn's own prejudices and pointless rambling, along with the terrible structuring and pointless inclusions. I don't regret reading this book at all, and if you like philosophy, you'd probably do well to read it, but I can't deny how flawed this text is.
Simon Blackburn's other book, Think, was so good that I thought I had to buy this one. Recently, I had been struggling with the problems of moral nihilism and relativism, so I desperately wanted to see what philosophy had to answer that with. It turns out, not much. This isn't a flaw in and of itself. If philosophy can't deal with them, then I can hardly knock Blackburn for being unable to answer my concerns.
The book is divided into three sections. The first one is given to challenges to ethical systems, like the ones I mentioned above. Some of these explanations are great, and Blackburn was able to dismantle these views. Others, like skepticism, relativism, and nihilism went almost completely unaddressed throughout the book, or ended up being acknowledged in some form. His summaries were decent, but he occasionally went into long-winded rants that were both boring and mostly unrelated.
The second part is dedicated to areas where moral debates come into play, such as life, death, pleasure, and rights. This section was full of discussions that were reminiscent of Platonic dialogues. They gave answers and challenges in turn, and generally didn't offer a resolution. In fact, this entire book could be seen as being like that. Regardless, this section is where Blackburn most often strays into lengthy and barely tangential discussions on society, which is why I said the focus is lacking. He also discusses Utilitarianism in this section, which is weird considering that the next section is dedicated to systems of ethics. This middle third was the worst part of the book, and seriously slowed down my progress.
The third part is easily the most interesting. Here, he goes over various philosophical proposals of ethical foundations, like Aristotle's virtue ethics, Kant's Categorical Imperative, and Rawls's Justice as Fairness principle. These were fascinating to read about, but this is the shortest section of the book by far. Its insane that he gives so little time to the most important section. He also dismisses Rawls's theory with very little justification. I thought the Justice as Fairness and Original Position theory were novel and fascinating, but he kneecaps it here. As mentioned above, he discusses Utilitarianism in the second section rather than here, which I think is dumb.
Being Good is an odd book. I'm not taking points off because of its failure to live up to my expectations. I'm taking off points because of its failure to even live up to its premise. Its an introduction, sure, but the introductory material is partially buried underneath Blackburn's own prejudices and pointless rambling, along with the terrible structuring and pointless inclusions. I don't regret reading this book at all, and if you like philosophy, you'd probably do well to read it, but I can't deny how flawed this text is.