[US] Jacques Thillo, Keith C. Lassman: Ethics and Life (9th Edition)

[US] Jacques Thirou, Keith Klusmann: Ethics and Life (9th Edition), translated by Cheng Lixian, Liu Jian, et al., reviewed by Zhou Fucheng, World Book Publishing Company, August 2008, 58 yuan

Not recommended.

Although I only flipped through it for about half an hour before putting it aside. But I can confirm that this book is not to my taste.

First let’s look at the promotional slip attached to the cover (what is the technical term for this thing?):

“On February 2, 2006, the very day the revised manuscript of the ninth edition of this book was completed, Professor Jacques Thirou suddenly passed away, leaving the world this labor-of-love work that touches life.” “More systematic than the Meditations, more modern than The Theory of Moral Sentiments.” “The ethics master who lived to be over a hundred, Professor Zhou Fucheng of Peking University, personally reviewed it and warmly recommends it.”

Judging from the way this is being sold, it seems the publishers had no small ambition, determined to make this book into both a classic textbook and a popular hit. But to my mind, this ambition seems somewhat impetuous, and has not given the book the most appropriate positioning.

This is a proper ethics textbook, with its highlights being its attention to applied ethics and the rich case materials available for classroom discussion. If handled well, it would still be decent as a teaching aid or reference book for ethics or applied ethics. But all in all, it simply is not to my taste. It is not only far inferior to the recent Invitation to Ethics that I read, but also not as good as Tilly’s Introduction to Ethics, Lin Huowang’s Introduction to Ethics, and other Chinese-language books currently on the market—though of course the latter two deal only with the theoretical part of ethics.

The title of this Ethics and Life book, if translated literally, should be “Ethics: Theory and Practice.” In fact, the second edition of this book was already translated into Chinese under that title as early as 1985. The new title, “Ethics and Life,” is of course also chosen with market promotion in mind.

But in principle, this revised title is questionable and does not match the original meaning. First, the original title speaks of “theory and practice in ethics”; here, theory and practice are each part of the whole of ethics, and theory and practice are unified within ethics. But when it becomes “ethics and life,” it seems to draw a new opposition, as though “ethics” had returned to referring only to “theory.”

The word “life” is of course not the same as “practice.” When we say “life,” we generally default to thinking of our most immediate everyday life. For example, when one says “physics and life” as a topic, one is generally not referring to how-called “laboratory life” is this or that, but to the relationship between physical science and everyday life. Yet when we say “the theory and practice of physics,” we may not necessarily be dragging everyday life into it; “practice” here is more likely to refer to practice in the laboratory and professional settings.

As far as the content of this book is concerned, the original title “Ethics: Theory and Practice” is clearly more appropriate. In fact, and regrettably, although this book involves quite a lot of practical ethical issues and real cases, that does not mean these perspectives are close to everyday life.

Euthanasia, abortion, sexual ethics, business ethics, media ethics, medical ethics, environmental ethics… these applications of ethics are very “practical,” yet rather than being concerns of everyday life, they are still professional issues in various specific fields. In all the cases and discussions, the manner of writing is always like this: “I think…, Tom was wrong in such and such a way, John was justified in such and such a way, Mary needs to bear what kind of responsibility…” Clearly, the role the author plays is always that of a detached arbiter, judging the rights and wrongs of various real-world matters with some kind of expert attitude as an ethicist. But as an “ordinary person,” I can very well say: let those ethicists handle all these analyses; what do they have to do with me? Even if my everyday life may also contain all kinds of ethical issues, even if my life can be taken by ethicists as a case for analysis, what on earth does that have to do with my own life? It is like anthropology, sociology, psychology, and so on, all of which can take other people’s everyday lives as objects of analysis and study—but what do these studies mean for my life itself?

At the top of the cover, in glaring red bold type, two questions are printed—“Why should I be moral? What is the good life?” I bet these two sentences must have been added on the editor’s or publisher’s own initiative (in order to attract attention), because this book precisely does not attempt to answer these two questions. It does not focus on these two most basic and simple questions. What it is concerned with is: as an expert who has received professional training in ethics, how can one objectively and systematically (from a detached standpoint) judge the ethical dilemmas or disagreements encountered in reality.

In fact, in the main text the author explicitly rejects the question “Why should I be moral?” The author writes: “…The final question that this chapter must also discuss is: ‘Why are people moral?’ Another way of asking this question is: does morality have a clear basis or foundation? …Let me make it clear from the outset that my question is not ‘Why should I or anyone be moral?’ As K. Nielsen says in his excellent essay ‘Why Should I Be Moral?,’ these are two different questions. The latter is difficult to answer with clear, certain evidence or logic, whereas the former is not.” (p. 25)

In any case, the desire of the person who added these two questions to the cover is worthy of praise, and I also hope that an introductory ethics book can start from these two questions (for example, the previously recommended Invitation to Ethics does this very well), whereas this book’s line of thought disappointed me from the very beginning.

So why does the author avoid the question “Why should I be moral?”—the one people care about more (and of course the reason these two questions were placed on the cover to catch the eye is that people are more likely to be interested in them)—and only discuss the question “Why are people moral?”? This orientation precisely reveals the presumptuousness of the entire mainstream approach in modern ethics.

I have always said that modern ethics is the most typical expression of so-called “modernity” or “technological rationality,” and this book displays that to the full. Its most striking feature is that “ethics” is taught as an entire practical technique; the word “practice” in the title is not an advertisement of closeness to life, but an advertisement of precision, practicality, and operability. It is not like those excellent introductory philosophy books that emphasize inspiring questions and guiding thought rather than giving answers; this book, by contrast, unceremoniously gives definite answers to every disagreement and every case—the author wants to show how his ethics can effectively solve problems.

Technical rationality is no longer rationality in the sense of freedom, but rather treats rationality as just one branch within technique, with the standards of technique overriding rationality itself. Thus we see, for example, that whether a question is worth discussing does not depend on the question itself, but on whether spending time discussing it is more efficient—questions that can “be answered with clear, certain evidence or logic” will be given priority.

In the age of technical rationality, “efficiency” becomes the highest “reason” that overwhelms everything else. For instance, when the author, thinking that he has answered with “clear, certain evidence or logic” the question “Why should people be moral?”, the basis he relies on is, in the final analysis, nothing but “efficiency.” The author says: “In general, people seem to need friendship, love, happiness, freedom, peace, creativity, and stability in their lives… With not much examination, one can discover that in order to satisfy these needs, the moral principles people must establish and follow should be able to encourage them to cooperate with one another and keep them free from fear… The most appropriate answer that can generally be given to the question ‘Why should people be moral?’ is: adhere to moral principles so that people may live as peacefully, happily, creatively, and meaningfully as possible.”

I really cannot see how much clear, certain evidence there is in this argument from “seem to need… with not much examination… people must…,” nor can I see what logical connection there is between “seem” and “must.” But even if all these arguments were, as the author wishes, as clear and certain as that, the argument has from the very beginning evaded the topic.

Let’s look again at the second question on the cover—“What is the good life?” This is the question people care about, and many people try to find an answer to it through ethics (for example, that gentleman who added these two questions to the cover). Yet the author’s ethics never discusses this question at all; instead, it treats “the good life” as a given goal. What is “happiness,” what is “meaning,” what is “freedom”… these things that traditional ethics pursued so anxiously suddenly, for no apparent reason, became ready-made givens in modern ethics. Ethics no longer asks about the good life; it transforms itself into a means for ensuring the realization of the good life. But what, after all, is the good life? When was this question settled once and for all?

No longer asking about motives, and no longer investigating ends, modern people see only means and tools—A is good because A is a means to realize B; B is good because B is a tool for achieving C; C is good because without C there is no D… But what is it that we are ultimately pursuing? Technical rationality never considers this question, because this is an ultimate question, metaphysics, something that will never have an answer, a pseudo-question…

But at least in such a chain of justifications there must always be some order of precedence. Now ethics has been placed beneath “happiness” and “the good”: ethics is there to serve as a guarantee of happiness. In this way, the meaning of “happiness” can no longer be asked within ethics. So who is to answer what happiness really is? And one still needs to find something clear and certain?—material possessions? wealth? money?

I do not want to criticize this book any further. In fact, even as a typical work steeped in technical rationality and modern ethics, it is not among the better written ones. Its survey and introduction of the various schools of ethics is neither concise nor deep; many explanations are questionable. I am not too familiar with the others, but at least the part on Kant I truly could not bear to read. Although I have seen many articles that distort and one-sidedly interpret Kant, this one is not only one-sided but also interpreted in a completely uninteresting way.

After introducing the various schools, the author proposes his own so-called “humanistic ethics.” Of course, all the demands placed on this theory are tied to practical efficiency; even the demand for internal consistency, which the author calls “logical coherence,” is also explained as a way of effectively providing us with guidance for action. As for the system the author displays, I really cannot praise it—heaps of commonplaces lacking internal connection, plus a “dialectic” of “should… but also…” I felt as though I were once again seeing that sort of seemingly plausible yet empty style of writing I had previously encountered only among Chinese authors.

At the end of each chapter there are some “critical thinking” questions or case discussions. But these questions are neither meant to encourage you to criticize the author, nor to inspire self-reflection; rather, they all ask you to render judgment on some other person or some other event. I was reminded of the sentence on the cover of Invitation to Ethics—“The sole purpose of ethics is to strive to improve oneself, not to go on and on denouncing others.”

October 1, 2008

Latest Comments

• Gao Gao

  2008-10-08 16:29:08 Anonymous 123.113.27.162

  Awesome!!! Very good

• Gao Gao

  2008-10-08 16:33:42 Anonymous 123.113.27.162 

  I glanced at it in a bookstore and felt nauseated and walked away. Just looking at the cover one can tell the publisher’s purpose—sorry to Professor Jacques Thirou in the netherworld.
  This was originally a serious academic work, but now it is being hyped up in this way, making the content and the title completely mismatched…
  The sorrow of the publishing industry…

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.