Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    A Decent Life: Morality for the Rest of Us
    Unavailable
    A Decent Life: Morality for the Rest of Us
    Unavailable
    A Decent Life: Morality for the Rest of Us
    Ebook237 pages4 hours

    A Decent Life: Morality for the Rest of Us

    By Todd May

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Listen to the audiobook instead

    About this ebook

    You’re probably never going to be a saint. Even so, let’s face it: you could be a better person. We all could. But what does that mean for you?
     
    In a world full of suffering and deprivation, it’s easy to despair—and it’s also easy to judge ourselves for not doing more. Even if we gave away everything we own and devoted ourselves to good works, it wouldn’t solve all the world’s problems. It would make them better, though. So is that what we have to do? Is anything less a moral failure? Can we lead a fundamentally decent life without taking such drastic steps?
     
    Todd May has answers. He’s not the sort of philosopher who tells us we have to be model citizens who display perfect ethics in every decision we make. He’s realistic: he understands that living up to ideals is a constant struggle. In A Decent Life, May leads readers through the traditional philosophical bases of a number of arguments about what ethics asks of us, then he develops a more reasonable and achievable way of thinking about them, one that shows us how we can use philosophical insights to participate in the complicated world around us. He explores how we should approach the many relationships in our lives—with friends, family, animals, people in need—through the use of a more forgiving, if no less fundamentally serious, moral compass. With humor, insight, and a lively and accessible style, May opens a discussion about how we can, realistically, lead the good life that we aspire to.
     
    A philosophy of goodness that leaves it all but unattainable is ultimately self-defeating. Instead, Todd May stands at the forefront of a new wave of philosophy that sensibly reframes our morals and redefines what it means to live a decent life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateMar 22, 2019
    ISBN9780226609881
    Author

    Todd May

    Todd May teaches philosophy at Warren Wilson College and is the author of 16 books. He was recently philosophical advisor to the hit series The Good Place.

    Read more from Todd May

    Related to A Decent Life

    Related ebooks

    Philosophy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Andrea Long Chu: Females: A Concern

      Dec 15, 2019

      Verso, 2019 Based in New York City, Andrea Long Chu is an essayist and critic whose writings have been credited with launching a “second wave” in trans studies. Females: A Concern is her first book-length work, which provides readings of contemporary

      5 min read

    • Article

      Why You Feel the Urge to Jump

      Mar 30, 2017

      Have you ever stood in a high place and felt the urge to jump? Judith Dancoff did one beautiful, clear day on Deception Pass Bridge, a narrow two-lane causeway that ribbons between two islands north of Seattle. If she followed her compulsion to leap,

      9 min read

    • Article

      Are We Having Too Much Fun?

      Apr 27, 2017

      Are We Having Too Much Fun?
      9 min read

    • Article

      Man United

      Feb 25, 2022

      The philosopher Nina Power believes men are under attack. Western society has done away with “the positive dimensions of patriarchy”, that is, “the protective father, the responsible man, the paternalistic attitude that exhibits care and compassion”.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Elif Batuman on Fictionalizing Her Life, and Learning to Fact Check

      Mar 21, 2017

      In 2015, the New Yorker writer Elif Batuman was given a book contract to write an autobiographical novel about a Turkish-American journalist moving to Turkey to write for a New Yorker-like publication. Batuman herself had spent several years there wr

      7 min read

    • Article

      Where We Stand, and Why

      Nov 1, 2021

      Where We Stand, and Why
      3 min read

    • Article

      Nick Laird and Zadie Smith

      Nov 2, 2020

      My appreciation for the writing of Zadie Smith began January 30, 2007 at Foyles Bookshop on Charing Cross Road. I spotted the most beautiful book cover I’d ever seen, for a book called On Beauty. I bought the book without knowing anything about Smith

      14 min read

    • Article

      The Most Important Leadership Competency

      May 1, 2020

      You have said that the most important leadership competency for the 21st century is the ability to navigate differences. Why is this so important right now? One of the most amazing things we have witnessed in our time is the ability of platforms and

      6 min read

    • Article

      Q&A

      May 1, 2022

      Let’s start with your book, The Conversation. How is it that conversation—something so seemingly simple that we do all the time—can be such an important part of addressing such a serious and complex topic? Humans are not very good computers — we don’

      7 min read

    Reviews for A Decent Life

    3.5/5

    3 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      A Decent Life by Todd May puts into words a way of living a decent life, which in his terms is one that is moral without being either unattainable or too difficult (as in requiring so much selfless action as to be counter to one's own happiness).Like one of my early professors of ethics and moral philosophy used to say, the theories that we study are just that, theories. Each has strengths and weaknesses. More practically, they each seem particularly useful in some situations while being almost absurd in others. He referred to these as the elements in a moral or ethical toolbox. In other words, we take life as it happens and do what we feel is the most ethical thing for each situation. Not quite the same as what has been called situational ethics, which still has some strict aspects to it. Some situations call for a utilitarian approach while others call for a Kantian approach. Some, well, a bit of a mix and match. What May has done is try to give a little more form to this toolbox, without making it either unrealistic or too far toward the kind of moral relativism that basically results in a free-for-all where rationalizations substitute for moral contemplation.His system, if it can be called one, has an extremely workable framework. If one is not too familiar with the various schools of thought beyond the very simple, almost overly simplified to serve as an easy foil, explanations May offers, this "decent life" would make the world a better place if followed by all or even most people. For those who have studied the topic a little bit and incorporated some elements into teaching of their own, you will likely find a few places where you would make a small adjustment to what you would include. That said, just coming up with something this well-considered and wide-ranging is quite an accomplishment. If you don't care to spend a lot of time reading and studying different theories in moral philosophy, which is very understandable, this work will serve as a wonderful toolbox for you. May acknowledges in several places that many specific choices will be individual in nature while remaining within his system, while other such systems would, for the most part, have outcomes that everyone should come to if the theory is applied accurately. That "customization" makes this a valuable book for anyone who wonders how one can be a better member of society while also taking care of oneself.Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.