What is Good?

by A.C. Grayling

Book Overview

A.C. Grayling examines the different ways to live a good life, as proposed from classical antiquity to the recent present. Grayling focuses on the two very different conceptions of what a good life... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0753817551
• Release Date: February 2004
• Publisher: Phoenix
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 0.9" x 5.0"

Customer Reviews

Goodness as an Enlightenment Value

A. C. Grayling is a philosopher in the Anglo-American philosophical style, but recently, he has taken to writing about "life" issues with the vigor and rigor than the analytic method requires, but eliminating the Ivory Towers so that only philosophical initiates can approach the "wisdom of everyday life." This book addresses how humans were once good toward each other before the religious trinity of Judeo-Christo-Islam infected the axiological order with divine commandments largely incoherent, if not inhumane. In this well-designed book, Grayling appeals to the THREE Enlightenments: (1) the Greco-Roman (2) Renaissance, and (3) 18th century, which he continues to believe expresses the very best of the humanist response to religious dogma and absurd doctrines. He admits that Greek ethics is not for everyone -- even Aristotle admitted as much -- but we have more recent naturalistically moral writers, such as Hucheson, Hume, and Smith, that provide us with reason, experience, and empirical foundations to make prudent decisions -- without consulting a Bible, the Oracle at Delphi, or an Imam at Mecca. For readers made timid by philosophy, Grayling makes commonsense of natural wisdom as accessible as fruit in an orchard. All one has to do in choose which course of action, based on what values one esteems, and what facts we are certain. The rest is rather clearcut and straight forward, and the joys of a humanistic goodness may again one day reign supreme -- before we all kill each other in their god's name.