In this guide to ethics, controversial even before its publication, Mary Warnock debates issues such as abortion, euthanasia, Down's Syndrome, education and genetic engineering, aiming to explain how to distinguish right from wrong. Drawing on examples from her personal and political life, she illustrates difficult cases to make her point and clarify where she stands in a thought-provoking way.
Primero que todo, ésta no es una guía en el sentido que uno tendería a esperar. Acá no hay recetas ni mandamientos ni consejos para el lector casual. En ese sentido, Mary Warnock (una real autoridad en el tema y si no me cree parta con google como referencia) lo que propone más bien es una profunda reflexión en torno a qué deberíamos entender por ética, tanto desde un punto de vista individual como político. Disfruté particularmente la aguda crítica que hace en el último capítulo a intelectuales posmodernos como Foucault y Derrida (entre otros), cuya particular visión del mundo parece ser incompatible (de acuerdo a Warnock) con el desarrollo de una ética universal. A lo que apunta la autora en definitiva es a ser, como hubiera dicho Aristóteles, buenos especímenes de la humanidad. Buenos, desde una postura ética, desde la elección consciente de hacer el bien, sea lo que sea que eso signifique para cada uno.
One of an odd pairing of books my daughter picked off a remainder table somewhere--the other was on infidelity!!! I got more out the beginning of this book, where the author discussed some hypothetical cases, than the rest. On the whole, though, I was disappointed. I think I was expecting a discussion of what kind of ethical considerations one needed to bring to life--so to speak, what the hard choices were and how one goes about making them. Instead, the author spends page after page discussing what words like "right" mean, and page after page arguing philosophical theories and trying to prove or disprove them. Why waste time discussing determinism in a book like this? It doesn't really matter if it is true: in order to live well, one must act as though it isn't. Furthermore, the author's own biases come through clearly, yet she never really discusses her reasoning, leaving one with the nasty feeling that if you disagree with her, she'd say you were clearly in the wrong. On the whole, this book is really about the theory of what "ethics" means, rather than a guide to ethics as the title proclaims.
Útil para personas que diseñan políticas o redactan leyes, sirve para entender la diferencia entre la moral publica y privada, cuales de nuestras creencias o reglas por las que guiamos nuestra vida podemos asumir que rigen a los demás y cuales no. El libro no da ninguna respuesta a estas preguntas, pero te plantea con ejemplos las disyuntivas que se presentan para poder pensar por nosotros mismos la respuesta. Me gusto que muchas veces tuve que detener la lectura para pensar un rato acerca de lo que estaba leyendo y no muchos libros logran eso.
I picked this up because I’d really enjoyed Warnock’s Ethics Since 1900. This one, though, reads more like it was written by the “Ethics” columnist for a newspaper than by a philosopher.