HOW SHOULD WE LIVE?: A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO EVERYDAY MORALITY

Book ID/图书代码： 13560014B74237

English Summary/英文概要： What is your highest ideal? What code do you live by? We all know that these differ from person to person. Artists, scientists, social activists, farmers, executives, and athletes are guided by very different ideals. Nonetheless for hundreds of years philosophers have sought a single, overriding ideal that should guide everyone, always, everywhere, and after centuries of debate we’re no closer to an answer. In How Should We Live?, John Kekes offers a refreshing alternative, one in which we eschew absolute ideals and instead consider our lives as they really are, day by day, subject to countless vicissitudes and unforeseen obstacles.

Kekes argues that ideal theories are abstractions from the realities of everyday life and its problems. The well-known arenas where absolute ideals conflict—dramatic moral controversies about complex problems involved in abortion, euthanasia, plea bargaining, privacy, and other hotly debated topics—should not be the primary concerns of moral thinking. Instead, he focuses on the simpler problems of ordinary lives in ordinary circumstances. In each chapter he presents the conflicts that a real person—a schoolteacher, lawyer, father, or nurse, for example—is likely to face. He then uses their situations to shed light on the mundane issues we all must deal with in everyday life, such as how we use our limited time, energy, or money; how we balance short- and long-term satisfactions; how we deal with conflicting loyalties; how we control our emotions; how we deal with people we dislike; and so on. Along the way he engages some of our most important theorists, including Donald Davidson, Thomas Nagel, Christine Korsgaard, Harry Frankfurt, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Bernard Williams, ultimately showing that no ideal—whether autonomy, love, duty, happiness, or truthfulness—trumps any other. No single ideal can always guide how we overcome the many different problems that stand in the way of living as we should. Rather than rejecting such ideals, How Should We Live? offers a way of balancing them by a practical and pluralistic approach—rather than a theory—that helps us cope with our problems and come closer to what our lives should be.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 你最大的梦想是什么？你的为人原则是什么？我们都知道，世界上没有两片相同的叶子。艺术家，科学家，社会活动家，农民，管理人员，和运动员之间的理想大相径庭。然而，数百年来哲学家一直在寻求一个单一永恒的理想，而这个理想不论何时何地都能够指引芸芸众生。然而经过几个世纪的争论我们也还是无法得到答案。我们该怎样生活？John Kekes提出一个新观点，避免绝对理想，在历经世间百态中中得为人之道。

Kekes认为理想理论这一抽象概念来源于对日常生活中遇到的现实和所产生问题的所思所想。绝对理想的冲突即对于复杂问题的巨大道德争议，例如堕胎，安乐死，庭外和解，个人隐私以及其它一些激烈的社会舆论问题—不应是道德层面需要关注的主要问题。相反，他更关注一般情况下普通人生活中的简单问题。在每一章中，他提到，像教师，律师，父亲，或护士这样的真实的社会群体都可能身处矛盾之中。通过对这些人所处情况的分析Kekes揭示了解决日常生活所必须处理的世俗问题的核心，例如如何利用有限的时间，精力，和金钱；如何平衡短期和长期的需求；如何处理信仰与现实间的矛盾；如何控制情绪；如何与不喜欢的人打交道等等。从Kekes对最重要的几位理论家如Donald Davidson, Thomas Nagel, Christine Korsgaard, Harry Frankfurt, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, 和Bernard Williams的学说研究最终得出，绝对理想不成立—是否自主，友爱，负责，幸福，真诚才是关键。没有一个单一的理想可以永远指导我们如何解决那些形形色色的问题。因为解决问题从自身生活方式的角度出发，涉及方方面面。“我们应该怎样生活？”告诉我们要用既实用又多元化的方法来维持平衡。它不是一个理论，而是可以帮助我们处理问题，领悟生命的真谛。(LNL)

Awards/获奖情况：恐惧无尽，特别是在上个世纪，这是愿意为理想牺牲一切的思维框架。Kekes在研究支持不同理想论报告后得出理想并不能告诉我们要做什么，因为它只是在我们冲突信仰，情感和动机影响下的体现，一味地坚持理想单一永恒论不能有任何建树。这是一部有深度和广度的佳作。”（Ann Hartle，埃默里大学）

“Innumerable horrors, especially of the last century, can be traced to the frame of mind that is willing to sacrifice everything for an ideal. Kekes takes apart the claims that are made in favor of different ideals and demonstrates that ideals cannot tell us what to do, since it is theevaluation of our conflicting beliefs, emotions, and motives that matters—and appealing to a single, overriding ideal does little to aid in this evaluation. This is a work of sound, extensive, and thorough scholarship.”(Ann Hartle, Emory University)

About the Author/作者介绍： John Kekes是在奥尔巴尼大学和纽约州立大学名誉哲学教授，联合学院研究教授。已出版多部著作，最近的两部书是《人的本能，享乐：生活方式的道德意义》和《生命扩展：职场道德》。

John Kekes is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University at Albany, State University of New York and research professor at Union College. He is the author of many books, most recently The Human Condition, Enjoyment: The Moral Significance of Styles of Life, and The Enlargement of Life: Moral Imagination at Work.

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