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Right Thing to Do: Basic Readings in Moral Philosophy
This collection of readings in moral theory and moral issues from major Western philosophers is the ideal companion reader for James Rachels' text "The Elements of Moral Philosophy". The anthology explores further the theories and issues introduced in that volume, in their original and classic formulations. The collection can stand on its own as the text for a course in moral philosophy, or it can be used to supplement any introductory text.
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First published January 1, 1989
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About the author
James Rachels
53 books34 followersJames Rachels, the distinguished American moral philosopher, was born in Columbus, Georgia, and graduated from nearby Mercer University in 1962. He received his Ph.D. in 1967 from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, studying under Professors W. D. Falk and E. M. Adams. He taught at the University of Richmond, New York University, the University of Miami, Duke University, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he spent the last twenty-six years of his career. 1971 saw the publication of his groundbreaking anthology Moral Problems, which helped ignite the movement from teaching metaethics in American colleges to teaching concrete practical issues. Moral Problems sold 100,000 copies over three editions. In 1975, Rachels wrote "Active and Passive Euthanasia," arguing that the distinction so important in the law between killing and letting die has no rational basis. Originally appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine, this essay has been reprinted 300 times and is a staple of undergraduate education. The End of Life (1986) broadened and deepened these ideas. Created from Animals (1990) argued that a Darwinian world-view has widespread philosophical implications, including drastic implications for our treatment of nonhuman animals. Can Ethics Provide Answers? (1997) was Rachels' first collection of papers; The Legacy of Socrates (2007) was his second. Rachels' textbook, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, is currently the best-selling book in philosophy. Shortly before being diagnosed with cancer, Rachels finished Problems from Philosophy, an introduction to his subject, published posthumously.
Over his career, Rachels wrote 6 books and 86 essays, edited 7 books and gave about 275 professional lectures. His work has been translated into Dutch, Korean, Norwegian, Italian, Japanese, Indonesian, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and Serbo-Croatian. He is widely admired as a stylist; his essays and books are remarkably free of jargon and clutter. A major theme in his work is that reason can resolve difficult moral issues. He has argued for moral vegetarianism and animal rights, for affirmative action (including quotas), for the humanitarian use of euthanasia, and for the idea that parents owe as much moral consideration to other people's children as to their own.
Over his career, Rachels wrote 6 books and 86 essays, edited 7 books and gave about 275 professional lectures. His work has been translated into Dutch, Korean, Norwegian, Italian, Japanese, Indonesian, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and Serbo-Croatian. He is widely admired as a stylist; his essays and books are remarkably free of jargon and clutter. A major theme in his work is that reason can resolve difficult moral issues. He has argued for moral vegetarianism and animal rights, for affirmative action (including quotas), for the humanitarian use of euthanasia, and for the idea that parents owe as much moral consideration to other people's children as to their own.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
January 17, 2021
This book is intended as a companion text to James Rachels’ book The Elements of Moral Philosophy. Even though I read that book a few years ago and therefore missed out on what must have been an enlightening experience of reading the two together, I still got a lot out of this book, because the two clearly can stand alone as substantial surveys and introductions to moral philosophy.
The Right Thing to Do is a high quality summary of morally sound thinking and living, both as a survey of contemporary moral issues and the constituents of sound argument, and as a collection of some very significant essays, excerpts, and letters on ethics and moral philosophy.
There are 36 of these essays and excerpts, by philosophers and scholars as diverse as Peter Singer, Martin Luther King Jr, Immanuel Kant, Aristotle, Bertrand Russell, John Stuart Mill, Robert Nozick, Don Marquis, David Luban, Alastair Norcross, John Rawls, Mylan Engel Jr., Judith Jarvis Thomson, Friedrich Nietzsche, of course James Rachels, and dozens of others, representing a pretty thorough sampling of some of the most important topics in the subject, like abortion, animal rights, sex, war, terrorism and torture, drugs, race, the death penalty, euthanasia, and some theoretical topics, like virtue, justice, and the subjectivity of values. It should be noted that despite these few theoretical essays, most of the content here focuses on applied or practical ethics, not pontification about useless academic problems, but important applications with real and direct and immediate effects.
All in all, this collection is a thoughtful and thought provoking assortment of mostly sophisticated work that challenges intuitions, argues for consistent and reasoned principles and applications, presents strong arguments for rational ideas on morality and ethics, many providing good examples and thought experiments to allow readers to more carefully follow the reasoning laid out, and does a lot to clear up messy thinking on topics that, without a little discipline and focus, can become muddled and incoherent even for those trying to take them seriously.
Not all the essays are great, thought. Rachels is trying to offer competing views on some topics, like abortion, animal rights, the death penalty, and euthanasia. This should be commended. And for the most part these competing views fill out the space well. Even when reading some of these essays that I disagreed with on the bottom line, I found most to be remarkably clear minded in many ways, with numerous good points and good thinking.
Some stood out as rather poor, however, like “Do Animals Have Rights?” by Tibor Machan, which is supposed to be a contrary argument to the excellent essays by Peter Singer and Alastair Norcross on animal rights. This essay is surprisingly bad in its logic and its assumptions, attempting to argue that animals should have no right to life because they are not capable of making some of the same choices humans make, or living the same kinds of lives humans live. The argument becomes, since animals are not human, they should not have any right to life. The poorness of this line of reasoning need not be danced around: it is a faulty argument that assumes human exceptionalism at its core, ignores many of the most fundamental elements that make moral philosophy, well, philosophically valid for study, and posits animal slavery and death as a necessity without supporting arguments other than “animal death and slavery are useful to us, therefore they are good and necessary.” The kinds of conclusions one can arrive at with this very same logic would justify just about any atrocity one can imagine.
Good philosophers explore where their assumptions come from and what sorts of other conclusions can be drawn by these assumptions. This philosopher abstained from doing this throughout his entire essay. It also didn’t help that the essay relied on flawed arguments that Peter Singer had already dismantled decades earlier. The author didn’t know his subject. I suspect this was the best essay from this position one could hope to find.
That one aside, and Nietzsche’s useless but entertaining inclusion aside, almost every other essay was worthwhile, thoughtful, deeply rational and clear and well argued, and provided serious philosophical value, while some were just exceedingly excellent, robust, virtually invincible, and enlightening, like Singer’s three essays, MLK’s, Luban’s, Norcross’, and most of the writings on drugs, sex, and war.
The essays casting scrutiny on marriage and monogamy were smart and brought forth some excellent and rarely discussed points of consideration, the essays on drug use and rape and racism and abortion likewise had a plethora of competing insights and critical arguments that could serve as fuel for very interesting conversations, even if none of your friends or acquaintances are literate, patient, or thoughtful enough to have those conversations.
The value in moral philosophy is the same as the rest of philosophy: not telling you what to think, but helping one learn how to think consistently, principled, logically, supported by strong argument and a deep understanding of the relevant information, about a wide variety of topics that are generally more complex and nuanced than our ordinary conversations make room for. I found many essays refreshingly bold and analytical, showcasing some top notch thinking on tricky issues.
Each essay has an introduction written by James Rachels or his son and fellow philosopher, Stuart Rachels. The only thing missing, in my opinion, is some additional reflection on the essays, some analysis of the argument and ideas. However, much of this sort of thing was included in James Rachels’ book The Elements of Moral Philosophy.
This book is definitely an important text for those interested in better understanding ethics and moral philosophy, in how to think about these subjects, and in how to implement these things meaningfully in one’s time on this planet.
The Right Thing to Do is a high quality summary of morally sound thinking and living, both as a survey of contemporary moral issues and the constituents of sound argument, and as a collection of some very significant essays, excerpts, and letters on ethics and moral philosophy.
There are 36 of these essays and excerpts, by philosophers and scholars as diverse as Peter Singer, Martin Luther King Jr, Immanuel Kant, Aristotle, Bertrand Russell, John Stuart Mill, Robert Nozick, Don Marquis, David Luban, Alastair Norcross, John Rawls, Mylan Engel Jr., Judith Jarvis Thomson, Friedrich Nietzsche, of course James Rachels, and dozens of others, representing a pretty thorough sampling of some of the most important topics in the subject, like abortion, animal rights, sex, war, terrorism and torture, drugs, race, the death penalty, euthanasia, and some theoretical topics, like virtue, justice, and the subjectivity of values. It should be noted that despite these few theoretical essays, most of the content here focuses on applied or practical ethics, not pontification about useless academic problems, but important applications with real and direct and immediate effects.
All in all, this collection is a thoughtful and thought provoking assortment of mostly sophisticated work that challenges intuitions, argues for consistent and reasoned principles and applications, presents strong arguments for rational ideas on morality and ethics, many providing good examples and thought experiments to allow readers to more carefully follow the reasoning laid out, and does a lot to clear up messy thinking on topics that, without a little discipline and focus, can become muddled and incoherent even for those trying to take them seriously.
Not all the essays are great, thought. Rachels is trying to offer competing views on some topics, like abortion, animal rights, the death penalty, and euthanasia. This should be commended. And for the most part these competing views fill out the space well. Even when reading some of these essays that I disagreed with on the bottom line, I found most to be remarkably clear minded in many ways, with numerous good points and good thinking.
Some stood out as rather poor, however, like “Do Animals Have Rights?” by Tibor Machan, which is supposed to be a contrary argument to the excellent essays by Peter Singer and Alastair Norcross on animal rights. This essay is surprisingly bad in its logic and its assumptions, attempting to argue that animals should have no right to life because they are not capable of making some of the same choices humans make, or living the same kinds of lives humans live. The argument becomes, since animals are not human, they should not have any right to life. The poorness of this line of reasoning need not be danced around: it is a faulty argument that assumes human exceptionalism at its core, ignores many of the most fundamental elements that make moral philosophy, well, philosophically valid for study, and posits animal slavery and death as a necessity without supporting arguments other than “animal death and slavery are useful to us, therefore they are good and necessary.” The kinds of conclusions one can arrive at with this very same logic would justify just about any atrocity one can imagine.
Good philosophers explore where their assumptions come from and what sorts of other conclusions can be drawn by these assumptions. This philosopher abstained from doing this throughout his entire essay. It also didn’t help that the essay relied on flawed arguments that Peter Singer had already dismantled decades earlier. The author didn’t know his subject. I suspect this was the best essay from this position one could hope to find.
That one aside, and Nietzsche’s useless but entertaining inclusion aside, almost every other essay was worthwhile, thoughtful, deeply rational and clear and well argued, and provided serious philosophical value, while some were just exceedingly excellent, robust, virtually invincible, and enlightening, like Singer’s three essays, MLK’s, Luban’s, Norcross’, and most of the writings on drugs, sex, and war.
The essays casting scrutiny on marriage and monogamy were smart and brought forth some excellent and rarely discussed points of consideration, the essays on drug use and rape and racism and abortion likewise had a plethora of competing insights and critical arguments that could serve as fuel for very interesting conversations, even if none of your friends or acquaintances are literate, patient, or thoughtful enough to have those conversations.
The value in moral philosophy is the same as the rest of philosophy: not telling you what to think, but helping one learn how to think consistently, principled, logically, supported by strong argument and a deep understanding of the relevant information, about a wide variety of topics that are generally more complex and nuanced than our ordinary conversations make room for. I found many essays refreshingly bold and analytical, showcasing some top notch thinking on tricky issues.
Each essay has an introduction written by James Rachels or his son and fellow philosopher, Stuart Rachels. The only thing missing, in my opinion, is some additional reflection on the essays, some analysis of the argument and ideas. However, much of this sort of thing was included in James Rachels’ book The Elements of Moral Philosophy.
This book is definitely an important text for those interested in better understanding ethics and moral philosophy, in how to think about these subjects, and in how to implement these things meaningfully in one’s time on this planet.
May 21, 2008
I have used this book and its companion volume for my intro to ethics courses. I would recommend the texts for instructors who want to make use of case-studies in applied ethics. However, I have to supplement the text insofar as primary source material is overlooked. Stuart Rachels has a pretty good suggested syllabus on his website.
Pros: good for applied ethics, intuitive presentation, appropriate for 100-level courses,
Cons: lack of primary source material, no meta-ethics, poor presentations of egoism and virtue ethics
Pros: good for applied ethics, intuitive presentation, appropriate for 100-level courses,
Cons: lack of primary source material, no meta-ethics, poor presentations of egoism and virtue ethics
July 15, 2014
မာတင္လူသာကင္း ကြယ္လြန္ၿပီး ႏွစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာအၾကာ ဒန္နီယယ္အဲဗက္စ္ ငွက္ေပ်ာသီးေကာက္စားရတုန္း၊ မာ့က္စ္တို႔ ဒီဗူးဘြားတို႔ ကြယ္လြန္ၿပီး ႏွစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာအၾကာ သန္းၾကြယ္သူေဌးေတြ ေဘာလံုးကန္တဲ့ပြဲနဲ႔ တုိက္ဆိုင္ေနလို႔ ေက်ာင္းသူေလးေတြ အစုလိုက္အျပံဳလိုက္ ျပန္ေပးဆြဲခံရတဲ့ကိစၥကို လူေတြေမ့ေနၿပီး တိမ္ျမဳပ္ေနရတုန္း၊ ပစၥည္းဥစၥာပိုင္ဆိုင္ခြင့္ဟာ အေျခခံလူ႔အခြင့္အေရးပါလို႔ အားလံုးလက္ခံထားၾကၿပီး လူလတ္တန္းစားေတြ ဘယ္လိုမွအိပ္မမက္ႏိုင္တဲ့ ေစ်းေတြကို "အေကာင္းဆံုးေစ်းေတြကိုေတြ႕ရမယ့္ အိမ္ျခံေျမလမ္းညႊန္"ဆိုၿပီး Facebook News feed ထိပ္ဆံုးမွာ ခပ္တည္တည္ ခပ္ေျပာင္ေျပာင္ ေၾကာ္ျငာေနရဲတုန္း၊ (ျမင္းကေစ်းႀကီးလို႔) သိုးေတြကတဆင့္ ေျမြဆိပ္ေျဖေဆးထုတ္ႏိုင္လုိက္တဲ့ ဆရာ၀န္ေလးေတြ တီဗီထဲမွာ ဂုဏ္ယူ၀င့္ၾကြားတဲ့ အျပံဳးေတြနဲ႔ပါေနတုန္း ရာစုႏွစ္မွာ၊ သူမ်ားေတြဆီမွာ အမ်ဳိးသမီးေတြ မဲေပးခြင့္ရၿပီး ႏွစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာအၾကာ အမ်ဳိးသားေရာ အမ်ဳိးသမီးေရာ မဲေပးစရာ ပါတီေတာင္ မရွိတဲ့ ေသာက္တလြဲႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ႀကီးမွာ ေနၿပီး ၾကက္၀က္အခြင့္အေရးတို႔ Animal right တို႔လို အေၾကာင္းေျပာရတာက ေျမြေပါက္ရာတျခားေသးပန္းရာတျခားလိုေတာ့ ျဖစ္ေနတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ က်င့္၀တ္ပိုင္းဒႆနအျမင္အရၾကည့္ရင္ က်င့္၀တ္စံမညီတာက မညီတာပဲ။ လုပ္ေတြ႕က်င့္သံုးဖို႔အတြက္ ဦးစားေပးကိစၥ မျဖစ္ႏိုင္ေသးတာက တစ္ပိုင္းပဲ။ ျဖစ္ႏိုင္ရင္ေတာ့ အိမ္နားကျဖတ္ျဖတ္သြားတဲ့ သားသတ္ရံုပို႔မယ္ ၀က္ေတြကို ပါးစပ္ထဲ အ၀တ္ဆို႔ထားေစခ်င္တယ္၊ ၀က္သားဟင္းႀကိဳက္တဲ့ကိစၥက ဒႆနိကေဗဒအေပၚ အမွီအခိုကင္းလြတ္တယ္။ ေျမြကိုက္ခံရလို႔ ေဆးရံုးေျပးၿပီး ဘရိုခိုလီက ထုတ္တဲ့ အဆိပ္ေျဖေဆးမွ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ကထိုးမွာလို႔ က်င့္၀တ္နဲ႔ညီညြတ္တဲ့မာနအေကာင္းစားႀကီးလည္း မထားရဲဘူး။ ဒီေတာ့လည္း တိရစၦာန္ေတြဟာ သူတို႔ကိုယ္သူတို႔ ျပန္သတိျပဳမိတဲ့ သိစိတ္မ်ဳိးမရွိလို႔ သူတို႔အေပၚသက္ေရာက္တဲ့ တာ၀န္ယူမႈလည္းမရွိဘူးဆိုတဲ့ အီမန္ႏြယ္ကန္႔ႀကီးရဲ႕စကားကို ဇြတ္မွိတ္ကိုးကားရေတာ့မွာပဲ။ XP
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လူသတၱ၀ါအမ်ားစု၊ အထူးသျဖင့္ ၿမိဳ႕ျပလို စက္မႈဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးၿပီး လူ႔အဖြဲ႕အစည္းေတြမွာ ေနထိုင္တဲ့သူေတြအတြက္ တျခား "သတၱ၀ါမ်ဳိးစိတ္" ေတြနဲ႔ ေတြ႕ဆံုဖို႔အတြက္ တိုက္ရိုက္အက်ဆံုးနည္းလမ္းတစ္ခုကေတာ့ ထမင္းစားခ်ိန္ေတြမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ သတၱ၀ါေတြကို စားၾကတယ္။ ဒါဟာ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ရဲ႕ (အာသာေျဖဖို႔) ပန္းတိုင္အတြက္ သူတို႔ကို နည္းလမ္းတစ္ခုသက္သက္အျဖစ္ အသံုးခ်လိုက္တာပါပဲ။ ဟင္းလ်ာတစ္မ်ဳိးအျဖစ္ အသံုးေတာ္ခံၿပီး ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ရဲ႕ လွ်ာအရသာကို ျဖည့္ဆည္းေပးရမယ့္ အဆင့္နိမ့္သတၱ၀ါမ်ဳိးစိတ္မ်ားအျဖစ္၊ သူတို႔ရဲ႕ ဘ၀နဲ႔ ေကာင္းမြန္စြာေနထိုင္ႏိုင္ခြင့္ကို အဆင့္ခ်လိုက္တာပါပဲ။ ဒီေနရာမွာ လွ်ာအရသာလို႔ တမင္သံုးလိုက္တာက ဒါဟာ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ရဲ႕ အာသာဆႏၵကို ေျပေစရံုသက္သက္ကိစၥျဖစ္ေနလို႔ပါ။ ကိုယ္ခႏၶာရဲ႕ လိုအပ္တဲ့အာဟာရကို ျဖည့္ဆည္းေပးဖို႔ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္နဲ႔ စားသံုးရတာပါလို႔ ဆင္ေျခေပးလို႔မွ မျဖစ္ႏိုင္ပဲ၊ ပဲနဲ႔ အျခား အသားဓာတ္ၾကြယ္၀တဲ့ ဟင္းသီးဟင္းရြက္ေတြနဲ႔ သတၱ၀ါေတြရဲ႕ အသားကရတဲ့ အသားဓာတ္ကို အစားထိုးႏိုင္တယ္ဆိုတာ အားလံုးသိၾကၿပီးသားပဲ။
ကုိယ့္အာသာအတြက္ အျခားသတၱ၀ါမ်ဳိးစိတ္ေတြကို အသံုးခ်ဖို႔ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔လူသားေတြ အျမဲအသင့္အေနထားရွိေနတယ္ဆိုရာမွာလည္း သတ္ျဖတ္တဲ့ လုပ္ရပ္ခ်ည္းသက္သက္ပဲေတာ့ မဟုတ္ဘူး။ အသတ္မခံရခင္ အသက္ရွင္ေနစဥ္မွာ သူတို႔ နာက်င္ခံစားရတာေတြက ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ရဲ႕ မႏုႆ၀ါဒကို ပိုၿပီးေတာ့ေတာင္ ရွင္းရွင္လင္းလင္း ညႊန္းႏုိင္ပါေသးတယ္။ လူေတြ၀ယ္စားႏိုင္တဲ့ ထမင္းစားပြဲေပၚက အသားဟင္းတစ္ခြက္ရဖို႔အတြက္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ လူ႔အဖြဲ႕အစည္းဟာ သတၱ၀ါေတြကို သူတို႔နဲ႔ မအပ္စပ္တဲ့ ၾကပ္ၾကပ္ညွက္ညွက္ ေနရာေတြမွာ မေသခပ္စပ္ၾကား တစ္သက္တာ��ံုး ေနထိုင္ေစၿပီး အသားထုတ္လုပ္ေရး လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ကို ကုန္က်စရိတ္သက္သာေအာင္ လုပ္ၾကတယ္။ တစ္ေကာင္ႏွစ္ေကာင္ဘ၀ကေန အသားတံုးတစ္တံုးႏွစ္တံုး အျဖစ္ ေျပာင္းလဲစရာ စက္ပစၥည္းေတြလို႔ပဲ သတၱ၀ါေတြကို သေဘာထားၾကတယ္။ အဲဒီလုပ္ငန္းစဥ္မွာလည္း အသားတံုးမ်ားမ်ားရဖို႔အတြက္ သင့္ေတာ္တဲ့ မည္သည့္နည္းလမ္းကိုမဆို အလြတ္မေပးဘဲ သံုးစြဲၾကတယ္။ ဒီ (တိရစၦာန္အခြင့္အေရး) ကိစၥမွာ ၾသဇာရွိတဲ့ လူတစ္ေယာက္ ေျပာဖူးသလိုပဲ "အက်ဳိးအျမတ္ရႏိုင္မႈ ခ်ဳပ္ၿငိမ္းသြားမွပဲ ရက္စက္မႈဆိုတာကို အသိအမွတ္ျပဳႏိုင္လိမ့္မယ္" တဲ့။ ဒီေတာ့လည္း လက္မႏွစ္ဆယ္နဲ႔ ဆယ့္ရွစ္လက္မအက်ယ္သာရွိတဲ့ ႏ်ဴးေယာ့ခ္တိုင္းသတင္းစာ တစ္ျခမ္းစာ၊ ေလွာင္အိမ္ေလးေတြထဲမွာ ၾကက္မေလးငါးေကာင္ေလာက္ စုျပံဳေနၾကရတယ္။ ၾကမ္းျပင္က်ေတာ့လည္း ၀ါယာႀကိဳးနဲ႔ ဇကာကြက္ယက္ထားတာ၊ ဒါမွ သန္႔ရွင္းေရးလုပ္ရတဲ့ စားရိတ္သက္သာမွာ။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ၀ါယာႀကိဳးဆိုတာက ၾကက္ေတြရဲ႕ ေျခေထာက္နဲ႔ မသင့္ေလ်ာ္ဘူး။ ၿပီးေတာ့ ၾကမ္းခင္းက ေရျပင္ညီမဟုတ္ဘဲ၊ ကုန္းေလ်ာေလး လုပ္ထားတယ္၊ ဒါမွ ဥဥတဲ့အခါ အလိုလို လိမ့္က်လာၿပီး အလြယ္တကူ ေကာက္ယူႏိုင္ေအာင္လို႔ပဲ။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ကုန္းေလ်ာၾကမ္းခင္းေၾကာင့္ ၾကက္မေတြဟာ သက္ေတာင့္သက္သာ အနားမယူႏိုင္ဘူး။ ဒီလို ပတ္၀န္းက်င္အေနအထားေတြၾကားမွာ သတၱ၀ါေတြရဲ႕ ဗီဇစိတ္ဟာ ကၽြမ္းထိုးေမွာက္ခံုျဖစ္ေအာင္ ေႏွာင့္ယွက္ခံရတယ္၊ အေတာင္ပံေတြကို ျဖန္႔လို႔မရဘူး၊ လြတ္လြတ္လပ္လပ္ လမ္းေလွ်ာက္လို႔မရဘူး၊ ဖုတ္ထဲလူးၿပီး ေရခ်ဳိးလို႔မရဘူး၊ အစာယက္လို႔မရဘူး၊ အသိုက္ေဆာက္လို႔ မရဘူး။ ဒီၾကက္မႀကီးေတြအေနနဲ႔ အဲဒီလို ဘာသာဘာ၀အေျခအေနေတြကို လံုး၀မသိရွိခဲ့ဖူးေပမဲ့၊ အဲဒီဗီဇသဘာ၀လုပ္ရပ္ေတြကို ျပဳလုပ္ဖို႔ အခ်ည္းအႏွီးႀကိဳးစားေလ့ရွိတာကို ေလ့လာသူေတြက သတိျပဳမိၾကတယ္။ အဲဒီလို ဘာသာဘာ၀အျပဳအမူေတြကို ျပဳလုပ္ႏိုင္စြမ္း ကင္းမဲ့တဲ့အတြက္ စိတ္ပ်က္ေဒါသထြက္ၿပီး လယ္သမားေတြ "ကေတာ္" (#ေလွာင္အိမ္ထဲမွာ တစ္သက္လံုးေနသြားရတဲ့ ၾကက္ေတြ စိတ္က်ေရာဂါေၾကာင့္ ျပဳလုပ္တတ္တဲ့အသံ၊ ျမန္မာလို ကေတာ္တာနဲ႔ေတာ့နီးစပ္မယ္ထင္တယ္၊ တျခားစကားလံုးလည္း စဥ္းစားမရေတာ့ဘူး၊ ဗ်စ္ေတာက္ဗ်စ္ေတာက္လုပ္ေနတာမ်ဳိးျဖစ္မယ္) တယ္လို႔ေခၚတဲ့ အသံေတြ ျပဳလုပ္တတ္လာၿပီး တစ္ေကာင္နဲ႔တစ္ေကာင္ ေသတဲ့အထိ ထိုးဆိတ္တတ္ၾကတယ္။ ဒါကိုကာကြယ္ဖို႔အတြက္ကေတာ့ ၾကက္ကေလးေတြကို ငယ္ငယ္ကတည္းက
ႏႈတ္သီးျဖတ္ပစ္လိုက္တယ္တဲ့။
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လူသတၱ၀ါအမ်ားစု၊ အထူးသျဖင့္ ၿမိဳ႕ျပလို စက္မႈဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးၿပီး လူ႔အဖြဲ႕အစည္းေတြမွာ ေနထိုင္တဲ့သူေတြအတြက္ တျခား "သတၱ၀ါမ်ဳိးစိတ္" ေတြနဲ႔ ေတြ႕ဆံုဖို႔အတြက္ တိုက္ရိုက္အက်ဆံုးနည္းလမ္းတစ္ခုကေတာ့ ထမင္းစားခ်ိန္ေတြမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ သတၱ၀ါေတြကို စားၾကတယ္။ ဒါဟာ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ရဲ႕ (အာသာေျဖဖို႔) ပန္းတိုင္အတြက္ သူတို႔ကို နည္းလမ္းတစ္ခုသက္သက္အျဖစ္ အသံုးခ်လိုက္တာပါပဲ။ ဟင္းလ်ာတစ္မ်ဳိးအျဖစ္ အသံုးေတာ္ခံၿပီး ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ရဲ႕ လွ်ာအရသာကို ျဖည့္ဆည္းေပးရမယ့္ အဆင့္နိမ့္သတၱ၀ါမ်ဳိးစိတ္မ်ားအျဖစ္၊ သူတို႔ရဲ႕ ဘ၀နဲ႔ ေကာင္းမြန္စြာေနထိုင္ႏိုင္ခြင့္ကို အဆင့္ခ်လိုက္တာပါပဲ။ ဒီေနရာမွာ လွ်ာအရသာလို႔ တမင္သံုးလိုက္တာက ဒါဟာ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ရဲ႕ အာသာဆႏၵကို ေျပေစရံုသက္သက္ကိစၥျဖစ္ေနလို႔ပါ။ ကိုယ္ခႏၶာရဲ႕ လိုအပ္တဲ့အာဟာရကို ျဖည့္ဆည္းေပးဖို႔ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္နဲ႔ စားသံုးရတာပါလို႔ ဆင္ေျခေပးလို႔မွ မျဖစ္ႏိုင္ပဲ၊ ပဲနဲ႔ အျခား အသားဓာတ္ၾကြယ္၀တဲ့ ဟင္းသီးဟင္းရြက္ေတြနဲ႔ သတၱ၀ါေတြရဲ႕ အသားကရတဲ့ အသားဓာတ္ကို အစားထိုးႏိုင္တယ္ဆိုတာ အားလံုးသိၾကၿပီးသားပဲ။
ကုိယ့္အာသာအတြက္ အျခားသတၱ၀ါမ်ဳိးစိတ္ေတြကို အသံုးခ်ဖို႔ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔လူသားေတြ အျမဲအသင့္အေနထားရွိေနတယ္ဆိုရာမွာလည္း သတ္ျဖတ္တဲ့ လုပ္ရပ္ခ်ည္းသက္သက္ပဲေတာ့ မဟုတ္ဘူး။ အသတ္မခံရခင္ အသက္ရွင္ေနစဥ္မွာ သူတို႔ နာက်င္ခံစားရတာေတြက ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ရဲ႕ မႏုႆ၀ါဒကို ပိုၿပီးေတာ့ေတာင္ ရွင္းရွင္လင္းလင္း ညႊန္းႏုိင္ပါေသးတယ္။ လူေတြ၀ယ္စားႏိုင္တဲ့ ထမင္းစားပြဲေပၚက အသားဟင္းတစ္ခြက္ရဖို႔အတြက္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ လူ႔အဖြဲ႕အစည္းဟာ သတၱ၀ါေတြကို သူတို႔နဲ႔ မအပ္စပ္တဲ့ ၾကပ္ၾကပ္ညွက္ညွက္ ေနရာေတြမွာ မေသခပ္စပ္ၾကား တစ္သက္တာ��ံုး ေနထိုင္ေစၿပီး အသားထုတ္လုပ္ေရး လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ကို ကုန္က်စရိတ္သက္သာေအာင္ လုပ္ၾကတယ္။ တစ္ေကာင္ႏွစ္ေကာင္ဘ၀ကေန အသားတံုးတစ္တံုးႏွစ္တံုး အျဖစ္ ေျပာင္းလဲစရာ စက္ပစၥည္းေတြလို႔ပဲ သတၱ၀ါေတြကို သေဘာထားၾကတယ္။ အဲဒီလုပ္ငန္းစဥ္မွာလည္း အသားတံုးမ်ားမ်ားရဖို႔အတြက္ သင့္ေတာ္တဲ့ မည္သည့္နည္းလမ္းကိုမဆို အလြတ္မေပးဘဲ သံုးစြဲၾကတယ္။ ဒီ (တိရစၦာန္အခြင့္အေရး) ကိစၥမွာ ၾသဇာရွိတဲ့ လူတစ္ေယာက္ ေျပာဖူးသလိုပဲ "အက်ဳိးအျမတ္ရႏိုင္မႈ ခ်ဳပ္ၿငိမ္းသြားမွပဲ ရက္စက္မႈဆိုတာကို အသိအမွတ္ျပဳႏိုင္လိမ့္မယ္" တဲ့။ ဒီေတာ့လည္း လက္မႏွစ္ဆယ္နဲ႔ ဆယ့္ရွစ္လက္မအက်ယ္သာရွိတဲ့ ႏ်ဴးေယာ့ခ္တိုင္းသတင္းစာ တစ္ျခမ္းစာ၊ ေလွာင္အိမ္ေလးေတြထဲမွာ ၾကက္မေလးငါးေကာင္ေလာက္ စုျပံဳေနၾကရတယ္။ ၾကမ္းျပင္က်ေတာ့လည္း ၀ါယာႀကိဳးနဲ႔ ဇကာကြက္ယက္ထားတာ၊ ဒါမွ သန္႔ရွင္းေရးလုပ္ရတဲ့ စားရိတ္သက္သာမွာ။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ၀ါယာႀကိဳးဆိုတာက ၾကက္ေတြရဲ႕ ေျခေထာက္နဲ႔ မသင့္ေလ်ာ္ဘူး။ ၿပီးေတာ့ ၾကမ္းခင္းက ေရျပင္ညီမဟုတ္ဘဲ၊ ကုန္းေလ်ာေလး လုပ္ထားတယ္၊ ဒါမွ ဥဥတဲ့အခါ အလိုလို လိမ့္က်လာၿပီး အလြယ္တကူ ေကာက္ယူႏိုင္ေအာင္လို႔ပဲ။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ကုန္းေလ်ာၾကမ္းခင္းေၾကာင့္ ၾကက္မေတြဟာ သက္ေတာင့္သက္သာ အနားမယူႏိုင္ဘူး။ ဒီလို ပတ္၀န္းက်င္အေနအထားေတြၾကားမွာ သတၱ၀ါေတြရဲ႕ ဗီဇစိတ္ဟာ ကၽြမ္းထိုးေမွာက္ခံုျဖစ္ေအာင္ ေႏွာင့္ယွက္ခံရတယ္၊ အေတာင္ပံေတြကို ျဖန္႔လို႔မရဘူး၊ လြတ္လြတ္လပ္လပ္ လမ္းေလွ်ာက္လို႔မရဘူး၊ ဖုတ္ထဲလူးၿပီး ေရခ်ဳိးလို႔မရဘူး၊ အစာယက္လို႔မရဘူး၊ အသိုက္ေဆာက္လို႔ မရဘူး။ ဒီၾကက္မႀကီးေတြအေနနဲ႔ အဲဒီလို ဘာသာဘာ၀အေျခအေနေတြကို လံုး၀မသိရွိခဲ့ဖူးေပမဲ့၊ အဲဒီဗီဇသဘာ၀လုပ္ရပ္ေတြကို ျပဳလုပ္ဖို႔ အခ်ည္းအႏွီးႀကိဳးစားေလ့ရွိတာကို ေလ့လာသူေတြက သတိျပဳမိၾကတယ္။ အဲဒီလို ဘာသာဘာ၀အျပဳအမူေတြကို ျပဳလုပ္ႏိုင္စြမ္း ကင္းမဲ့တဲ့အတြက္ စိတ္ပ်က္ေဒါသထြက္ၿပီး လယ္သမားေတြ "ကေတာ္" (#ေလွာင္အိမ္ထဲမွာ တစ္သက္လံုးေနသြားရတဲ့ ၾကက္ေတြ စိတ္က်ေရာဂါေၾကာင့္ ျပဳလုပ္တတ္တဲ့အသံ၊ ျမန္မာလို ကေတာ္တာနဲ႔ေတာ့နီးစပ္မယ္ထင္တယ္၊ တျခားစကားလံုးလည္း စဥ္းစားမရေတာ့ဘူး၊ ဗ်စ္ေတာက္ဗ်စ္ေတာက္လုပ္ေနတာမ်ဳိးျဖစ္မယ္) တယ္လို႔ေခၚတဲ့ အသံေတြ ျပဳလုပ္တတ္လာၿပီး တစ္ေကာင္နဲ႔တစ္ေကာင္ ေသတဲ့အထိ ထိုးဆိတ္တတ္ၾကတယ္။ ဒါကိုကာကြယ္ဖို႔အတြက္ကေတာ့ ၾကက္ကေလးေတြကို ငယ္ငယ္ကတည္းက
ႏႈတ္သီးျဖတ္ပစ္လိုက္တယ္တဲ့။
June 27, 2007
In designing a syllabus for an undergraduate Intro to Ethics seminar, I needed a book that would collect together some seminal works in normative ethics. The challenge is to find a volume which includes readings from the most important thinkers, does so in an accessible way, and includes enough of the original texts to give some context for the ideas being put forward. Oh, and if the book doesn't cost students a fortune, that is great, too. Rachels' anthology fit the bill perfectly.
August 7, 2017
Yeah, I was not a fan.
All of the readings are taken out of context with very poor background information. Everything felt like it was delivered through a very biased, filtered view; it was very clear where Rachels stood from the very beginning. His portrayals of egoism seemed anything but fair. Two stars because it explores a variety of views, but nothing more.
All of the readings are taken out of context with very poor background information. Everything felt like it was delivered through a very biased, filtered view; it was very clear where Rachels stood from the very beginning. His portrayals of egoism seemed anything but fair. Two stars because it explores a variety of views, but nothing more.
December 13, 2017
I thought James Rachels was biased about the varying subjects, which made it a difficult read for my ethics class. I have a very different view on most of the subjects that were covered. Also, this book was paired with Elements of Moral Philosophy. I would recommend it only to those who favor Utilitarianism.
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December 31, 2024didn’t read all of the chapters but they were lowkey interesting. i’m not going to do more than my professor assigned though
March 8, 2025
Writings that are succinct, transparent, and readily debatable; gives liberal arts education a good name!
February 28, 2020
the essays in the second part of the book were very fun to read because i found myself being torn on topics i’ve had a clear stance on my whole life. neat!
July 3, 2014
Great selection of essays and articles on applied and meta- ethics. While the articles are largely cohesive they would be better understood with a little more narration and reflection at the end of the chapters. the introductory chapter, while being informative feels insufficient.
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September 14, 2009The Right Thing To Do: Basic Readings in Moral Philosophy by James Rachels (2002)
August 27, 2010
This review refers to the 2010 (5th) edition. Appropriate read for the beginner who has at least some experience with philosophical debate.
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January 27, 2017170 R5713 2015
October 27, 2007
dense and full of jargon but important
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews