Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed: Educating for the Virtues in the Age of Truthiness and Twitter

by Howard Gardner

From ancient times, philosophers, theologians, and artists have attempted to describe and categorize the defining virtues of civilization. In , renowned education authority Howard Gardner explores the meaning of the title's three virtues in an age when vast technological advancement and relativistic attitudes toward human nature have deeply shaken our moral worldview. His incisive examination reveals that although these concepts are changing faster than ever before, they are -- and will remain, with our stewardship -- cornerstones of our society. Designed to appeal to a wide readership, is an approachable primer on the foundations of ethics in the modern age.

Genres: Education, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Psychology, Spirituality, Personal Development, Childrens

256 pages, Hardcover

First published October 18, 2010

About the author

Howard Gardner is the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He also holds positions as Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and Senior Director of Harvard Project Zero. Among numerous honors, Gardner received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1981. He has received honorary degrees from 26 colleges and universities, including institutions in Bulgaria, Chile, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, and South Korea. In 2005 and again in 2008, he was selected by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines as one of the 100 most influential public intellectuals in the world. The author of 25 books translated into 28 languages, and several hundred articles, Gardner is best known in educational circles for his theory of multiple intelligences, a critique of the notion that there exists but a single human intelligence that can be adequately assessed by standard psychometric instruments.

During the past two decades, Gardner and colleagues at Project Zero have been involved in the design of performance-based assessments; education for understanding; the use of multiple intelligences to achieve more personalized curriculum, instruction, and pedagogy; and the quality of interdisciplinary efforts in education. Since the middle 1990s, in collaboration with psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and William Damon, Gardner has directed the GoodWork Project-- a study of work that is excellent, engaging, and ethical. More recently, with long time Project Zero colleagues Lynn Barendsen and Wendy Fischman, he has conducted reflection sessions designed to enhance the understanding and incidence of good work among young people. With Carrie James and other colleagues at Project Zero, he is also investigating the nature of trust in contemporary society and ethical dimensions entailed in the use of the new digital media. Among new research undertakings are a study of effective collaboration among non-profit institutions in education and a study of conceptions of quality, nationally and internationally, in the contemporary era. In 2008 he delivered a set of three lectures at New York's Museum of Modern Art on the topic "The True, The Beautiful, and The Good: econsiderations in a post-modern, digital era."

from http://www.howardgardner.com/bio/bio....

Reviews

[John Martindale · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was fascinating for the most part, I love that he takes seriously the post modern critique of truth, beauty and goodness and then wrestles with it. This is to me a very interesting subject. But still I think he fails in the end.

To me it seems post-modernism is the child of philosophical naturalism. When newer generations took what they're taught to its logical conclusions, the results were so horrific, that many intellectuals found they needed to take a stand against, well... taking things to its logical conclusion. Yet these same people refuse to acknowledge that it was their cherished presuppositions that gave birth to what they now oppose. Instead of revaluation the foundations, they convinced themselves and others that their philosophical naturalism doesn't lead to nihilism, which is kind of like arguing 2 + 2 does not = 4.

If the strictly naturalistic version of Darwinism and cultural evolution is the foundation, I still question whether any meaningful structure of truth, beauty and morality can be built, well, that is not illusionary. I think the logical end of our having a purely materialistic origin, is existentialism. But most naturalist can't swallow the obvious implications of their presuppositions (and understandably so!), so they merely don't speak of it and successful delude themselves into thinking there is significant meaning, foundations for moral duty and objective truth (at least in science). I think they beg the question though, as did this author, who inspired this poem:

You deny the foundations while living in the house
The structure is simply to good to live without
It holds the killers and the bandits at bay
And keeps out the wind and the driving rain
 
You trample the ancient suppositions
Appropriately they're under your feet
They have no place in scientific realism
Such articles of faith are simply naive
 
The homeless philosophers on the other hand
They blew up the foundation and the building tumbled down
Now they squat in shanties, haunted and abandon
While trying to conceive how to construct a castle upon mere oxygen

One can give evolutionary and cultural explanations to fortify and strengthen our current 21st Century sense of right and wrong, yet I am afraid Stalin could have done the same thing. And if it was the communist that won, instead of us, their version would be the “objective” morality taught in schools, justified by Darwinian psychology. Why is it objectively wrong to murder another person? Is it merely that "by pure chance" we evolved to be social animals; with the ability to feel empathy. And because by lucky accident we are now empathic, it now seems advantageous for some social groups not to kill one another? Is this a teleological grounding for why it is ALWAYS wrong to murder another human being? For most secularist it seems to be sufficient. But what about all the others things we inherited from evolution, that are according to our estimation less noble? To kill, rape, enslave, dominate and a list of other “evils” can be shown prevalent in the animal kingdom. Large brain primates are incredible cruel, and some are social as well. Why is it wrong for other social animals to rape and kill, but for human animals its not? If monkeys evolve more empathy, will they suddenly be morally bound to behave in a certain way to other monkeys?

Evolution simple explains what IS, it doesn't give value judgments. WE GIVE the value judgments. Sure today we talk about the Widening Circle. Since we evolved to treat those in our inner circle with more respect, then as we start seeing those on the other side of the world, as our brothers, our empathy will carry to them. Great, maybe it will, maybe it is, but by WHOSE standard, are we to say empathy to others, is morally better then killing them? There is no objective standard, but might makes right and the majority carries sway, but this is always changing.

My point is we may have inherited a load of things, that all had some part in the four F's: feeding, fleeing, fighting and Effing. But still we don't have a true foundation for calling one thing GOOD and another EVIL. The secularist foundation points to evolution which driving force is survival, not the pursuit of truth, beauty and the good. Gardner isn't as obsessed with the evolutionary explanation for everything like many other authors, but still its his foundation.

Truth, beauty and Goodness simply are realities, to deny them will result in chaos. Leaders of today MUST affirm these things, for pragmatic purposes if nothing else. But people like Gardner hold contradictory beliefs, they can't be consistent with their presuppositions. Better Gardner, or the far more extreme; Harris and Dawkins have part in teaching children, then some post-modernist. Hopefully they will delude people into embracing absolutes and objectivity. This can help hold society together. But the problem is the weeds of relativism will ALWAYS keep rising up, as long as the naturalistic dirt is there. These weeds will be pernicious, strangling to all the is good and pose a constant problem. Today the intellectuals have to keep pulling these weeds, but they continue to grow, they continue to threaten society. Oh that they would understand that their dirt is to blame and rethink the presuppositions.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some thirty years ago Howard Gardner came up with the theory of multiple intelligences, as opposed to simple IQ, a theory for which we should all be grateful. I think he started out with seven or eight kinds of intelligence, and I'm told by a psychologist friend that it is now up to twelve. In any case, I was interested in reading his analysis of these three virtues. I don't disagree with any of his conclusions--I share his skepticism of either science or economics as a source of explanation for Everything. Like him I'm suspicious of evolutionary psychology and profoundly doubtful about post-modernism. But maybe because I agree with him, I got very little insight from the book. And, unfortunately, he writes like a psychologist. Examples: he uses "impact" as a verb (shocking!), and he never says "whether" without adding the redundant "or not". And he can write sentences like this: "We are all in uncharted territory: an amalgam of disciplines, judiciously titrated, is more likely to be illuminating than bets placed on any single scholarly lens." OK, I agree with what I think this means. But block that metaphor. Please.

[David Withun · Rating 4 out of 5]

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[Graham Powell · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this book since I, myself, have a critical view of postmodernism and firmly believe in the existence of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. However it is clear very early on that Gardner belongs to a different age and is out of touch with the conditions that allowed the postmodern critique to flourish.

Gardner references Wikileaks directly and says that the average citizen won't understand it without proper context given by professional journalists. I suppose it's up to the priests of academia like Howard Gardner to determine for us mere plebeians that Julian Assuage of Wikileaks isn't a "real" or "proper" journalist, and that those at CNN or MSNBC or The New York Times or whoever happens to align with Gardner's political persuasion are the real journalists. Gardner fears that the proliferation of thousands of internet bloggers posting their view of the truth will make the task of finding the truth harder. In my view, I would rather have millions of people online posting their views and having the truth be in there among them, than rely on a professional class of journalists where you can be sure you will never find the truth.

Gardner seems to hold The New York Times (The Paper of Record) in particularly high esteem. This must be as a result of their extraordinary service to their readership, so let's take a look at one of the most important stories of our generation. Were there weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? The New York Times assured us that, Yes, there were. This led the USA and their allies into a decades long war, ending the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and wasting trillions of dollars. One would think such a colossal, devastating, catastrophic error might shake one's faith in the structure of an institution, especially considering the consequences of that error have resulted in US troops to be deployed in Iraq, TO THIS VERY DAY almost 20 years later. Yet Gardner is satisfied with the equivalent of an "oops" and assurance that they will do better in future, and refuses to probe any deeper into the problems inherent in the very incentive structure of modern "journalism". This brings me to my main problem with Gardner, namely, his rejection of postmodernism based on a defense of the status quo without having the slightest self awareness that the very status quo he wishes to perpetuate was the fertile soil that necessarily brought forth postmodernism.

This book is steeped in a mindset of returning to the status quo. In one section Gardner talks about how his students (university students) have no moral compass and it's up to the adults to reflect on why they haven't done a good enough job of countering the postmodern view which has now taken hold. Here is evidence that he doesn't view these young adults as adults at all, and we see that Gardner still views the younger generation, not as intelligent agents reacting to a system which no longer affords them the opportunities it did their parents and grandparents, but as rubes being taken in by an ideology that wasn't sufficiently argued against by their parents and grandparents. In my opinion, the reason postmodernism has been so effective is that the old ideology of Neo-liberalism is manifestly failing the younger generations. This is evidenced by graphs of income and wealth at certain ages which shows Millennials in particular (who have had to endure 2008's crash just when most were entering the housing market) are basically flatlining at a same age when previous generations were seeing their income and wealth skyrocket. There are also many other metrics which show this trend, from a declining life expectancy, declining education levels, and more; the system itself is no longer making each generation's lives better than the previous, it's making them worse.

Gardner's Neo-liberalism states that each worker should strive to do his work the best way possible, and that it is supremely moral to stay late (even unpaid!) in order to complete that work. At the same time, he has nothing to say about executives at several major auto manufactures who ran their companies into bankruptcy, were deemed "too large to fail", got bailed out by the tax payer, only to have luxurious bonuses given to those very executives who ran the companies into the ground. Let me state my point as clearly as possible; no amount of "good work" from the factory workers could possibly counter such rank corruption of the system where by those in charge can fail in the worst way possible, and yet they come out on top regardless. The consequences always fall to the average citizen (factory worker when that auto plant is moved to a country where labor is cheaper, or the housing crash when a huge amount of first time home buyers lost everything). Those individual people who are "too big to fail" end up being "too big to feel any consequences". Under these circumstances, if you are starting at the bottom, why try at all when the entire body of your hard work is subject to being annihilated by the selfish caprice of those who control the structures you are working under?

Gardner believes that the new digital media platforms cause it to be harder for people to trust one another because trust requires the exchange of verifiable truth. Also he believes that people can say or do things online and be separated from the consequences entirely. He doesn't seem to give credibility to the idea that people will only really tell you the truth when they are wearing a mask. I think this concept is why anonymity on the internet is an important thing. Often the truth is offensive or politically incorrect, so people are only willing to say it when they are separated from the consequences. The alternative, especially with the rise of "cancel culture", is to risk one's employment, social circle, or potentially even one's ability to access certain businesses.

The last straw for me was when Gardner laid out his reasons for moving from a position of valuing the freedom of the press as an ultimate value to believing the press should self-censor. He states that the Islamic rioting and ultimate assassination of Charlie Hebdo staff after the magazine published a cartoon featuring the prophet Mohammad were as a result of the magazine being in error by intentionally being inflammatory and, the situation taken as a whole, the magazine should censor themselves of doing that in the future. This is a revolting display of moral cowardice by Gardner, to so quickly fold when such an important value is being challenged, to say that the terrorists who ultimately killed innocent people charged only with blasphemy really did have a point and the magazine should have amended their behavior is horrifying. Perhaps those whose behavior needs to be corrected are those who resort to violence, destruction, and chaos over what another person decides to do with a pen and paper. We have seen the kind of conditions which result from totalitarian theocracies who impose heresy and blasphemy laws, and to capitulate to those who would bring about that state of affairs is nothing short of evil.

In conclusion, although I actually share Gardner's criticisms of postmodernism and his holding Truth, Beauty, and Goodness as central values, the worldview he is rooted in seems to me to be so out of step with reality as to be actively hindering the pursuit of those three values. The postmodernist threat should spark a better examination of why certain structures, political, social, and even belief structures are failing so many people. Unfortunately, this book did not represent a positive advancement in this direction, instead choosing to bizarrely praise the extremely controversial George Soros as one of the most admirable people Gardner could think of. At every turn, it seems, Gardner is infatuated with the very elements that are hastening the decline of society which he is bemoaning.

[Sherry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like it. I liked Gardner sharing his own personal advocacy and quest to look at, reframe if needed, and keep these three virtues. Given our post-post modern times and the digital age we are awash in, looking at how both of these push our definitions and our acting out these virtues makes for an interesting ponder--especially if you engage as actively, personally and thoughtfully as he does in this book. His sense of today more than ever having multiple truths, his understanding that beauty is perhaps more personal than ever and his caring that we keep our human-kind person to person goodness in tact and then look at the ethical base/the goodness of each of the world's professional bases , from science to health to engineering to teaching and come up with a universal operational code for each is a daunting and perhaps more doable and necessary than ever invitation.

Finally, I love his invitation that each of us creates our own growth portfolio of each of these virtues for ourselves--maybe a digital virtues Heartbook!--where we store examples, reflections, and even photos of each of these for us at any given stage of our own life's journey.

[Ben Dougherty · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book, and I think Gardner is right to draw our attention to these three central virtues at this point in history. He makes some insightful observations.

As a teacher, I was a little disappointed. I was hoping he might have more to say about how we can make these three virtues relevant for our students. But simply by bringing them to the forefront, he has done us all a favor. I know that as I plan my lessons for next year, these three virtues will be in my mind, and I would like to try to integrate this triumvirate into my work, weaving it throughout my lessons.

Finally, I will say that I was slightly disappointed that there were no "ah ha!" moments in this book. It was good, but it didn't offer anything truly remarkable.

[Rhonda Bondie]

So far this book poses important questions and offers frames for me to being thinking about the questions.

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, thoughtful, and occasionally provocative though the overarching narrative is unfocused.

[Dan Lawler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why We Can't Have Nice Things Anymore

Harvard professor Howard Gardner observes that truth, beauty and goodness are imperiled by postmodern skepticism and the democratization of meaning by anyone in possession of a mouse; hence the need for these concepts to be reframed by the really smart people. Human survival itself now depends upon this re-education of the masses: “The trio of virtues, while unquestionably in flux and under attack, remain essential to the human experience and, indeed, to human survival.” (Page 16.)

While humans greatly desire universal ideals of truth, beauty and goodness, those can no longer be had in a postmodern world. To paraphrase Zarathustra upon his descent from the mountains, “Have you not heard the news that Universals are dead?” Gardner, despite his protests, is a postmodernist at heart and his reframed virtues are made of whole cloth. He creates the illusion that truth and beauty and goodness are real categories with universal application, but if you look closely, you will find nothing there.

Truth, according to Gardner, is “the way that things actually are.” (p. 20.) How does Gardner know the way things actually are? The beginning of knowledge, he says, is the way a baby learns things: “From the opening days of life, our five senses tell us what the world is like and, by implication, what it is not like. A baby reaches for a cup and grabs it confidently—there really is a cup there.” (p. 21.) We then progress to the current pinnacle of knowledge and truth, namely, science and especially physics: “We can probably order the sciences in terms of the relative security of the truths, with physics near the top of the hierarchy…” (p. 25.)

Gardner borrows his truth from a by-gone era. Physics and mathematics are not the bastions of certainty they once were, and they haven’t been for quite some time. See, Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty by Morris Kline. The physicists can create mathematical models in their heads from what they perceive, but they no longer claim that these models represent “the way things actually are.”

Kline writes that "the belief in the mathematical design of nature seems far-fetched." (Kline at 349.) Nobel physicist Percy Bridgman flatly rejected any objective world of mathematics writing in 1946, "It is the merest truism, evident at once to unsophisticated observation, that mathematics is a human invention." (Kline at 325.) Kline adds that mathematics is "a human construction and any attempt to find an absolute basis for it is probably doomed to failure." (Kline at 312.) Albert Einstein emphasized the fictional character of modern science in 1931: "According to Newton's system, physical reality is characterized by the concepts of space, time, material point, and force... After Maxwell they conceived physical reality as represented by continuous fields, not mechanically explicable, which are subject to partial differential equations. ... The view I have just outlined of the purely fictitious character of the fundamentals of scientific theory was by no means the prevailing one in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But it is steadily gaining ground….” (Kline at 337.)

We are almost 100 years beyond Einstein’s observation of the “purely fictitious character” upon which scientific theory rests, but Gardner remains blissfully unaware and, naif-like, continues to believe there really is a cup there. Science cannot tell us what is actually there, and it no longer claims to know.

Beauty fares even worse than truth in Gardner’s hands, and he just throws them up here: “We may converge ever closer to truth, but our own experiences of beauty will increasingly diverge from the experiences of others” (p. 76); “the fate of beauty is fragmented and likely to become ever more dispersed, more personalized, continually subject to revision in the light of new aesthetic experiences.” (p. 105.) That doesn’t sound like a universal standard to me.

As for the good, Gardner hopes for some happy synthesis between “a mindless absolutism, on the one hand, and a feckless cultural relativism, on the other.” (p. 195.) But what that is, Gardner cannot say and it remains for future generations to decide: “our burgeoning contacts with the full swathe of humanity could lead, ultimately, to a shared sense of goodness.” (p. 189.) For the time being, “our sense of good may not be the same as that held by other persons or other cohorts, in other places and at other times.” (p. 190.)

Gardner is right that postmodern nihilism poses an existential threat to humanity which can only be saved by transcendental truth, beauty and goodness. He hopes these virtues can be found somewhere between postmodern skepticism and premodern absolutes. But he has not found them yet, and time is not on his side.

[Alejandro Teruel · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the first part of the book Gardner attempts to dismantle postmodern critiques of truth, beauty, and goodness.

He firmly believes in truth, as opposed to falsity, but considers that there can be different spheres for truth, that is to say that different methods apply when determining what is true in mathematics, physics, history or psychology. He reminds us that science is based on hypotheses, not absolute truth -while he does not mention it, his conception of scientific truth fits in well with Popper's insistence on refutability as a key characteristic of scientific hypotheses and laws. History, for Gardner, is a discipline with its own methodologies and principles, but physics is not a valid model for history.

As for beauty, he proposes that interestingness, memorability, and invitation to revisit can give rise to experiences of beauty and that beauty is based on emotion and a certain sense of awe. He believes beauty is not an absolute and that the sense of art has become increasingly individualized in our time, but that aesthetics is a process that should be developed by each individual.

Finally he proposed that Good is a property of our relations with other human beings distinguishing between properties of relations with individuals whom we know well (morality of neighbors) and relations with those who are unfamiliar (ethics of roles). This allows us, for example, to distinguish between good persons, good citizens, and good workers and also allows us to be good in some roles and (say a good person) while being bad in another (a bad worker or a bad citizen). For Gardner a good worker is characterized as carrying out work that is tecnically excellent, as being engaged in his work and at being ethical as regards the consequence of what he does or builds. In the best possible world the good worker is aligned with all the stakeholders of his work, but this is not always possible and gives rise to ethical dilemmas.

Garner argues against moral nihilism and moral relativity and considers goodness to be more culturally determined than to be biologically or economically determined, which is not to deny the important intuitions than can be gained from behavioral economics or evolutionary psychology.

Gardner is quite persuasive in this first part of the book and not as abstruse as I have possibly made him out to be.

In the second part of the book, the authors attempts to sketch out ideas on how education of children, adolescents and adults should help develop notions about truth, beauty, and goodness. I found this part of the book far weaker and less persuasive than the first part.

Overall the book attempts to provide a common-sensical and comfortable tonic and educational guidelines against postmodernist nihilism, relativism, and malaise. In this it is at most only mildly successful; for example, his analysis fall far short of Isaiah Berlin's more sophisticated and acute analyses of political philosophy.

[Cameron · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book as apart of a challenge and with my focus being towards “goodness.” As apart of the challenge I was also intending to read from someone outside my own worldview. This book met both those intents.
To summarize: I would say the author is well read, “knowledgeable” and has written this book in an approachable (pseudo classroom lecture) format which makes his frame of reference fairly easy to follow. The big ‘however’ would be how I think for all the knowledge shared it lacks “wisdom.” That does not mean I would dismiss the discussion or arguments being presented. Even though the author holds a strong Anti-theistic world view I am grateful for his discourse and aware more than ever of the interwoven nature of truth, beauty and goodness throughout history.
Immediately makes me consider Jesus discourse with Pilate:
““For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world-to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?””
-John 18:37b-38

In the end the author seems to be sharing his philosophical out-workings (which are still very much in work) regarding truth, beauty, and goodness. On one hand he is criticizing the post-modern view, but refuses to commit to an absolute position so I do not follow/agree with the defense/arguments made throughout to support his fluctuating positions. I suppose he would say that truth, beauty, and goodness are continually changing but I also don’t think these terms were clearly defined and so there are layers of discontinuity in the logical path. But the author knows this and addresses these very issues in the conclusion by comparing his view to that of other philosophers.

[Jeremy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I remember reading a book on how 'Truth, Beauty and Goodness' should inform our education system using evolution, the music of Mozart and the holocaust as topics to explore. I believe Howard Gardner wrote the book, but looking through his lists I couldn't see the book at a glance.
In any case, I had assumed this title would further explore the topic from a practical perspective. It doesn't. Instead this is a philosophical investigation, which to be honest, was hard work to get through - transported me back to undergrad psychology lectures with a professor who is able to drone for the full hour without moving a muscle . The man clearly has some good ideas but this needs ruthless editing.

[Vung Van · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trong một thế giới đa chiều, mức kết nối cao thì cách chúng ta nhìn nhận, đánh giá, thấu hiểu và lựa chọn quyết định luôn vô cùng phức tạp, bởi vậy người ta đưa ra khái niệm thời đại VUCA.

Cuốn sách đã cung cấp một hướng dẫn để định hình 3 chiều nhìn vô cùng lý thú về chân, mỹ, thiện. Nó vô cùng hữu ích cho bản thân tôi để nhìn nhận lại kinh nghiệm mình đã trải qua và bật cười khi chứng kiến nó, cũng như một hướng dẫn để tôi đồng hành cùng 3 chàng trai vô cùng đáng yêu, gia đình, xóm làng xung quanh mình.

Ngoài cuốn sách này, các tựa sách cùng tác giả khác cũng vô cùng thú vị: Thuyết Trí Thông Minh Đa Dạng, Trí Thông Minh Phi Học Đường

[Mr Hưng · Rating 3 out of 5]

Đầu tiên là sách khó đọc. Có thể là vì ổng là học giả, là giáo sư, là nhà nghiên cứu, nên viết câu hơi dài và khó hiểu. Thêm nữa là cách dịch của dịch giả, đọc rất khó hiểu.
Nhưng nội dung thì hay.
Nội dung là gì thì quên mất tiêu rồi vì đọc ròng rã 3 tháng trời mới hết nên quên gần hết.
Nhưng sau khi đọc được một phần nào đó thì cũng bị cuốn vào những ý tưởng của tác giả, cũng thú vị chứ bộ.

[Charlie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very low level philosophy, postmodernism as boogeyman. It's unclear how beauty, truth, and goodness are "virtues" rather than transcendentals. Some interesting thoughts on education and developmental psychology.

[Jennifer Fredin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good read. Both interesting and thought provoking.

[Amelia · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5
Till en början rätt så lovande men blev mer och mer gubbig.

[Stefano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un invito alla crescita personale e all'apertura mentale, per difendersi dal nichilismo postmoderno.

[Yupa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Una trombonata di libro.
Superficiale, semplicistico, estremamente ripetitivo.
Da dimenticare.

[Murat AYDIN · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amerikalı bir psikolog olan yazar Howard Gardner, "Hakikat Güzellik ve İyilik" adlı bu kitabı, zamanımızın hakikat güzellik ve iyilik kavramlarını tanımlamak ve gelecekte de varlıklarını sürdürmeleri için söz konusu erdemleri nasıl besleyebileceğimizi anlatmak amacıyla yazdığını ve bu bağlamda, kitabın biyolojik determinizm ve/veya ekonomik determinizmin hegemonyasına bir karşı sav olarak okunabileceğini ifade ediyor.

Kitaba adını veren üç erdemin, yani hakikat, güzellik ve iyiliğin alt başlıkları olarak etik ve ahlâk konularına değinilirken din kavramı da kısaca yer almakta. Yazar açıkyüreklilikle, din kavramının kendi şahsi ilgi alanına girmediğini, erdemli davranmaya yönlendiren her inanca saygı duyduğunu ancak etik ve ahlâkın tanımlanmasında din olgusunu referans almayı tercih etmediğini belirtmekte. Bunun nedenini ise, dini referans alan toplumların inançlarının ahlâklı davranmalarında olumlu etkide bulunmak bir tarafa, sanılanın aksine, suç işlemeye yatkınlığa neden olabilmesi olarak açıklamakta.

Karl Popper'in toplumları "açık toplum" ve "kapalı toplum" olarak sınıflandırmasına benzer şekilde, yazar da "sıcak toplum" ve "soğuk toplum" terimlerini kullanmakta.

Kitabın sonuç kısmında, günümüzde etkisi devam eden aydınlanma sürecinin kökleri itibariyle Batılı olduğunu, ancak evrensel bir etik çerçeve oluşturulması için yelpazenin genişletilmesi gerektiği savı yer alıyor.

Okuma keyfi açısından kitabı beğenmek ile beğenmemek arasında kaldım. İlk başlangıçta çok keyifli bulduğum okuma deneyimi, kitabın ilerleyen bölümlerde, giderek sıkıcı hale geldi. Genel olarak, beklentilerime tam olarak cevap verdiğini söyleyemeyeceğim ancak çok değerli bulduğum kısımları da yok değil. Özellikle başlangıç bölümü ve sonuç bölümüne denk gelen üçte birlik metni gerçekten üzerinde düşünmeye değer buldum. Kalan bölümde ise sıklıkla psikoloji, sanat, basın, medya, iş ve meslek alanları üzerinde yürüyen kavramsal akış okuma konsantrasyonumu biraz sekteye uğrattı.

Editoryal açıdan ise, kitap sonunda listelenmiş olan dip notların kitabın ilgili sayfalarında yer almasını tercih ederdim.

Akıcı ve keyifli bir okuma deneyimi yaşayamasam da konuyla ilgilenenler için kaynak bilgiler içeriyor olduğunu düşündüğüm bir çalışma.

[Tara · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's been a while since I read a nonfiction, and especially a relatively scholarly one that walks you through how to assess lofty concepts such as "truth", "beauty", and "goodness"!

This book is Gardner's attempt to guide us through how to perceive Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, in the postmodern era as well as the digital media era that we are in. He starts off defining what each virtue is within a certain context ("Reframed"), and then moved on to propose how we proceed to experience each, in a framework sort of way. Very interesting read, and perhaps some practical approach...

But I'm curious how I might ever come face to face with the situations that call his framework into practice, especially when he poses questions like this one: "How can we possibly anticipate the effects -- positive, negative, unanticipated, in all likelihood chaotic -- of artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, genetic manipulation, global warming, and the possible convergence of human neural networks and computer “neural networks” into an unprecedented Singularity?"

I wonder if we should hope that those who work in such fields have the sense of ethical responsibility that Gardner called for, to be mindful of the effects of their work on the rest of us who have little knowledge in such fields? I wonder too, if most of us would ever be proactive enough such that we would be able to influence inventions and their effects? So... I feel like, at the end of this book, I'm left with more questions!

Overall, his book gives one point of view or approach to these ideals in our time and age, but it would be hard for anyone to claim authority on how to live, according to Einstein, life's highest ideals! ("The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty." - Einstein)

Personally, it was sort of a great lecture for me to be at least aware... and now, back to "trashy" novels like, um... Lady Chatterley's Lover? LOL.

[Michaela · Rating 1 out of 5]

I must confess around page 150 I just skimmed through to the end. The beginning seemed to focus on achieving a definition for beauty which ends up being that something is interesting, memorable, and you desire to revisit it. Which is all well and fine. Then the middle seems to address the issue of lack of ethics in modern youth which I agree with based on anecdotal evidence but often wonder if their decline is based upon the behavior modeled by my generation (that of their parents.) I think it segued into the importance of exposing youth to beauty and from there either my mind wandered off or the author's lecture did. It probably didn't help that I read this the same day as an article in the NY Times explaining that our perception of beauty as symmetrical may have roots in genetic stability which manifests in physical symmetry.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Verum, Pulchrum, Bonum...My husband arrived at the same prep school as Howard Gardner, just after he had graduated, and also did not remember the school's venerable motto. I appreciated Professor Gardner's synthesizing of truth, beauty, and goodness although I did not find much that was either new to me or outside the realm of commonsense. The strongest sections, in my mind, involve child development and pedagogy. I also agree with his list of people he admires, foremost among them is John Gardner (Common Cause founder).

Quotations:
"Pure didactic pedagogy...rarely succeeds in engendering morality in children" (131).

"Gardner spoke admiringly of a colleague who had an 'uncluttered mind.' The abilities to assimilate and absorb quickly may be helped today by access to the latest media and technology; but they do not substitute for clarity of vision, purpose, and method" (176).

[dusty.rhodes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Welp, this was a good, quick, idea-filled read.

Some of it was old, some of it was novel, w/r/t connections between ideas.

The best arguments were for a return to teaching and speaking about large, noble truths (and their opposites) in our national discourse, daily lives and educational system. It is a bit repetitive, and it rambles to a finish, but it is clearly-written and idea-thick.

The very concept of a readable and relevant book about Virtues is welcome. That it is imperfect is acceptable.

[Jacob · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an extended, underwhelming essay by a researcher whose fame and notoriety led me to expect great things. Virtues aren't so much as 'reframed' here, as they are simply rehashed. Gardner doesn't make a compelling case for why the old framework doesn't work, or why the new framework is better. I see a much clearer argument being made for simply returning to classical conceptions of moral and ethical education.

[Daina Jaeger Mundt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had a difficult time getting into this book and finally decided to abandon it about 2/3 of the way through. The topic of the book was not what I had thought it would be, and much of what I read within the chapters wasn't anything new. While reading this book, I so often found myself getting impatient and thinking, "Get to the point, Gardner!"

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's fine to dislike postmodernism, but you don't have to take it out on your readers. The writing tended to ramble on, but what I gathered was this: the pendulum has swung too far away from the old days of a canonical truth, beauty, and goodness. I agree. There. There's your book. Saved you a few hours.

[Ipek · Rating 4 out of 5]

I anyway like Gardner and really appreciate what he has added what we thought we already know about intelligence and life. But unfortunately there was not much new thoughts in this book, it is more an elaborated version of what he has already said in the 5 Minds

[Constance · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a great fan of Howard Gardner ~ his perspective on multi-intelligence learning is "re-framed" in viewing Western Civ contextually . Makes one retool concepts of a life time.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

This looks at the evolution of the titular concepts through periods of history. The author goes beyond postmodernism to discuss how these concepts continue to evolve.