The Good Life: The Moral Individual in an Antimoral World
Jun 2012 · Bloomsbury Publishing USA
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2 reviews
Ebook
320
Pages
About this ebook
The Good Life is a deeply reasoned but entertaining polemic about how the notion of morality has been co-opted by the political right, as the culture increasingly embraces the shallow charms of celebrity, gives a pass when it comes to failings in the realm of marital fidelity, and lives comfortably with the notion that we are all driven, more or less, by greed and the desire for power over others. Mendelson, who is for gay rights, sexual equality, labor unions, and the strong regulation of business and finance, is decidedly conservative when it comes to personal morality. She believes that while the right manages to effectively portray its opponents as socialist slackers, it claims a moral superiority it doesn't at all exhibit, lacking, as she says, moral compassion, one of the essential moral virtues. Provocative, inspiring, and deeply grounded, The Good Life shows that while the moral life is a hard road, the more of us who recognize that it is out there to be attempted, the better our culture will be.
The Good Life is a deeply reasoned but entertaining polemic about how the notion of morality has been co-opted by the political right, as the culture increasingly embraces the shallow charms of celebrity, gives a pass when it comes to failings in the realm of marital fidelity, and lives comfortab...
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2 reviews
About the author
Cheryl Mendelson is the author of the bestselling Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House (Scribner, 1999), which succeeded in updating the nineteenth-century home "manuals" for the twenty-first century. Mendelson, who received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester and her J.D. from Harvard Law School, has practiced law in New York City and teaches philosophy at Barnard College. She grew up in Appalachian Pennsylvania, the oldest girl in a farming family, so hers was the life of preparing breakfast for farmhands when she was nine, and learning the home "arts" from her grandmothers. With these powerful roots she also learned about marriage and morality and went on to pursue their study; in fact those two subjects are where she has set her sights for this next stage of her writing life. Her next book proposes to be the most entertaining, useful, and thorough book ever written on the subject of marriage, to be published by Bloomsbury in 2013.
Cheryl Mendelson is the author of the bestselling Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House (Scribner, 1999), which succeeded in updating the nineteenth-century home "manuals" for the twenty-first century. Mendelson, who received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester ...
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