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Recommended Reading

News and popular culture is full of discussion points on this subject: Alex Rodriguez, Michael Phelps, Roger Clemens, and other “role model” athletes — do we expect more “virtue” from them than we do other public figures, like politicians? Britney Spears, the octuplet mom, Sarah Palin — what is a “bad mother?” Bernie Madoff and Wall Street — what makes us so blind when we want to be? Do our expectations of “good” individuals change over time or across cultures, or is there a core that is consistently “human?” Where do these values begin? What might change them?



We asked a few faculty members to help us put together a reading list based on these questions, a sort of hypothetical course on the subject. For reading beyond the headlines, here’s a start:

Paul Franco

There is one book that is absolutely indispensable for the subject of virtue, and that is Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. The class could begin and end there, but if one wanted to engage with modern reflection on the subject, I would suggest two other great texts: Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, for a more egalitarian treatment of virtue; and Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, for a radical critique of moral virtue. Perhaps it would be nice to throw in a contemporary work like Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue, the central chapter of which is entitled "Nietzsche or Aristotle?" And how could I not mention in connection with this topic my colleague Jean Yarbrough's wonderful book American Virtues: Thomas Jefferson on the Character of a Free People?


  • How to Be Good, by Nick Hornby

  • "The Gift," by Ian Parker (New Yorker, Aug 2, 2004)
  • 
Practical Ethics, by Peter Singer



The first text is a novel by the author of High Fidelity. This one deals with the question of how much we are morally required to do to help needy strangers. It's the story of a curmudgeon who undergoes a kind of mid-life crisis, suddenly becoming convinced that he should be doing much more to help the less fortunate. When he gives away his kids' computer and invites a homeless man to live with them, even his reasonably generous, liberal-minded wife has serious reservations. The second text is a profile of Zell Kravinsky, a man who gave almost all of his 45-million dollar real estate fortune to charity, and then-—still feeling like he hadn't done enough-—donated one of his kidneys to a stranger. The third text is a readable introduction to some central questions of applied ethics, by a philosopher who has attracted a great deal of attention for his views about animal rights, euthanasia, and famine relief. In this book, he addresses those issues, as well as the ethics of abortion, environmentalism, and immigration.

Posted February 13, 2009