How Should We Live?: A Practical Approach to Everyday Morality

by John Kekes

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.

Genres: Philosophy

250 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

John Kekes is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University at Albany, SUNY, and Research Professor at Union College, Schenectady, New York. He is a noted conservative thinker, with interests mostly in ethics and political philosophy.

Reviews

[Derek DeMars · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not precisely what I expected, but nonetheless a well-argued book with a clear and persuasive thesis. Despite having the word "practical" in the subtitle, this is a heady work of philosophical argumentation. In it, Kekes systematically dismantles the notion that we can or should identify one single, absolute moral principle to guide every ethical decision we make. Neither duty, nor autonomy, nor a sense of narrative unity, nor even love (what is it, anyway?) can serve as an absolute and universal ideal on its own.

Instead, Kekes argues, we all intuitively rely on an array of various ideals and principles to navigate the inevitable ambiguities and complexities of each situation we find ourselves in. Rather than try to live by one overarching principle, then, we need to approach decisions practically and contextually. It is an inescapable fact that none of our decisions will perfectly match an ideal, transcend our limited knowledge, or remove all conflict. As Kekes rightly asserts, "Ideal theorists write as if evil were not a permanent presence in human life. They make theories about the good and say next to nothing about evil... We are neither essentially good, nor essentially evil, but essentially ambivalent. That is the profound truth that we, theists, agnostics, and atheists alike, can learn from the religious notion of original sin." All we can (and therefore, all we should) do is try our best to cope with our moral conflicts on a case-by-case basis.

Essentially a blend of practical realism and situational ethics, Kekes' perspective is both convincing and refreshing. The writing, however, is repetitious and focused primarily on argumentation. It's not overly technical, but since there is not much space devoted specifically to fleshing out concrete ways to apply Kekes' practical approach, it's hard to recommend this to general readers. But it will definitely interest those seriously interested in philosophy and ethics.

[Michael Tresnowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice survey of a wide variety of "ideal theorists" though Kekes often fails to prevent the best version of his opponents argument, and his own "practical approach" is ultimately underdeveloped.